Midterm Reviews

Education for a Sustainable Future

Issues of freedom and control. Students now and always have been dependent on the teacher in a classroom, unfortunately even if they feel independent they have been born into a word that has control. Teachers try to control behavior with negative repercussions instead of shaping it positively. Now even though teachers try to teach students, not much teaching is being done as much of the information being taught is rote learned or memorized learning with limited interactivity in a classroom setting. Very little creativity when rote learning is the main way of learning. Teachers enter the field of education to help students become effective inside society, they feel successful when they help students succeed, these are words from Education For A Sustainable Future. The further we distance ourselves from nature, the higher the likelihood for unsustainable practices coming, and this means that we tend to think differently from what we are supposed to think in. In many instances the video talks about the importance and effects certain practices do on students such as competition. Competition is ingrained into our social system, it is very important to know what it does. Collaborative experiences is important to the students because it shows different ways of learning than just learning through textbook based readings or teachings of a test instead of teaching for a test. While the video also states that students are made to compete against one another instead of using their resources to help one another. The video Education for a Sustainable Future states that “technical hitch, for example, is more likely to be solved quickly and imaginatively if scientists pool their talents rather than compete against one another”- Alfie Kohn. Whenever I was in school grades pre-kinder through 12th grade I felt that if I had to help another student, they would eventually catch up to me and made me feel uneasy about it. Today I know that helping others helps my understanding of others’ minds but also that it helps me more. Communication should be discussed with physical reference, or when we learn something we should be able to know when we are going to use what we have learned outside of the classroom. Education as it states should be an able structure to produce sustainable and relevant practices: working toward establishing the world’s resources as a common heritage for people on earth, transcending the artificial boundaries that separate people, reclaiming and restoring the environment to as nearly natural condition as possible, sharing and applying new technologies for the benefit of all, focusing on interpersonal skills to improve relationships, encouraging the widest range of creativity and incentive toward constructive endeavours, providing not only the necessities of life but also challenges that stimulate the mind, preparing people intellectually and emotionally for the changes that lie ahead. All of these practices should be encouraged, while many of us hope to be equal in education, “race” and other aspects we do not live on a planet where most of these practices do not exist. They also talk about asking questions that stimulate the four processes, students do not need to become subject matter experts before they start to think critically in a subject. It is true that schools do not need to implement things into the classroom that have not been backed up yet by scientific proof and studies. Real life learning encourages the belief of connecting what students learn to real life experiences. Even though this video was informative and gave key points for their point, it lacked some more newer aspects, such as words too fast to read and the audio needed more help. The theme is to create a better society of learning.

Future Learning:

Arithmetic keeps getting refined and refined, it is all the same content being taught but in simpler ways to make it ‘easier’. Teachers create “problems separate from the relevance or the context in which they need to be used” which is one of the reasons why students are so disengaged. Students even without being taught can teach themselves almost anything if they are given internet connection, interaction with others and given the absence of the teacher. All of these are instances when small things do not necessarily need to be taught by the teacher, the teacher is there to guide and be there for the students walls. Computers are not necessarily a distraction for children, they are a tool for learning with others. Technology can give students an environment where they learn and not memorize facts but to create knowledge. Efficiency is a key factor in student learning, with information being taught and learned when we have a reason to learn it. This video flows and creates good points that connect to the next subject matter. Collaboration between students is very important, some students sometimes do not feel too comfortable to talk out loud as much as others will. Information on textbooks and other information holding identities takes time to correct when data is updates from a long lasting belief. Students are taught to be submissive, to be quiet and steady when they are being taught, this creates an environment with the teacher with the utmost power instead of giving some power to the students. Some questions may arise “how do we motivate, engage, keep them interested” sometimes people do not need to know all the facts before doing something, it is more of “just because I wanted to.” The video also states that reading comprehension is a critical skill which is very true, not everyone has access to technology or anything in between. Information search and retrieval is important for students’ ability to look up information. Students should be able to ‘believe’ and have different ways of doing so. The way learning occurs may not be so simple or straightforward as we may think, it is about student learning and their own ways of thought. We are faced with technology everywhere we go, technology is a tool for simplicity.

Humans need to apply

Humans need tools to make life easier and remove physical movements and replace them with mechanical ones. Technology is taking away jobs from people as that technology has existed for a long time as it has become cheaper and faster. Mechanical minds will eventually push out human minds “better technology “makes more better jobs for humans”. Technology gets better, cheaper and faster at a rate that we (humans) are not prepared for. Even automobiles (self driving) will eventually be able to drive us to any destination as soon as it is better than the average human driver. Economics always wins against workers who try to fight technology that does jobs more efficiently than us. People are more expensive to employ than software bots or other types of bots that teach themselves how to do new actions. Bots write articles, sports articles, or anything that can be written about. Bots also are powered and can go on for much longer than people do, making the time gaps non existent and more money is gained. The different types of bots will eventually be able to do everything for us and we will all be pushed out. Robot revolution is here and new jobs will not save us, even then most jobs will be overtaken by automation. The video does not show one aspects but also multiple examples of how technology is evolving and changing how we do things. This video gives us examples how automation is an inevitable “tool to create abundance for little effort”. In the future most jobs “humans need not apply”. It is also a video to teach us about the faster alternative is not so expensive as we thought. Each point ended with asking more and giving more information.