Is it education or edu-tainment?

As a budding teacher, I am learning all about education methods, classroom management, teaching strategies, graphic organizers. . . the list goes on (believe me, it really does). Throughout our courses, we are honing our tools, getting ready to go out there and catch some students' imaginations.

And why not? One of my favorite quotations of all time relates to what education should be: "Education is not the filling of a bucket, but the lighting of a fire" (thank you, WB Yeats). As a homeschooled student, I certainly relate to the importance of inspiring student participation. I learned history in an incredibly interactive and entertaining way - and a ton of it stuck with me, much longer than if I had learnt it simply by reading a textbook.

If students aren't engaged, interested, curious, they won't learn. We teacher candidates are being taught a whole boat-load of ways to engage that interest and curiosity. Discipline problems drop to almost nothing when the lesson is worth paying attention to.

Great! But. . .

Some words from a professor of mine float back to me, reminding me that, just because they're paying attention and "engaged" doesn't mean they're really learning. They need to be getting an actual education, and not just edu-tainment. "Edu-tainment" refers to lessons (or lesson-like things) that aim more at preventing boredom than facilitating a learning experience. Am I, as a teacher, being funny/weird/creative because that helps them actually learn, or am I doing those things just to keep their attention?

The emerging thought that keeps hounding me is seeing the need to make school come alive for kids. . . without making everything MY job. Yes, I am there to guide, help, and clarify, but the student must not look at me as the source of his knowledge; nor should I be the reason he comes to class. I don't want my students to love history class because I'm teaching it. I want them to love history class because they love history. They need to understand how vibrant and important it is, and study it for its own sake. Yes, I am partly responsible for opening their eyes to that perspective, but they'll have to take their own part of the burden, too.

Does that make sense? It does in my head, but that's no guarantee that it came out the same way. The long and the short of it is that, though I would love for my classroom/tutorials to be the most popular, I want it to be because the students are blown away by their love of learning, not because I put on a good show.

Glogster

I don't know who is coming up with these titles. For the websites, I mean. I know who's coming up with the titles for my blog. The little voices in my head...

So, Glogster is another fun site that lets you create a digital newsletter/poster/display thingy to share with others. They have a plethora of fun designs, images and backgrounds, so you can create almost anything with it.

Here's my first foray:

http://historygeek87.glogster.com/the-blaze/

So... know any fun facts you'd like to see published in such a fabulous format?

Wordle!

I don't know why, but I immediately thought of "Turtle!" when I saw that name. (Master of Disguise, anyone?)

Anyway... It's really cool. You paste in a document or link it to a webpage and it makes a word cloud. Being the history nerd that I am, guess what I made! Here's a link to mine:

Cheers!

Post Number One

I guess it's a little silly to create a new blog, considering how sporadic a poster I am with my other one.

Oh well.

My main reason for doing so is that one of my teaching credential classes requires us to get used to instructional technologies; blogs fit under that category, I guess. So here we are! This will probably become a place for my more random musings - things that I don't really intend to make sense, etc.

Not that I ever don't make sense, of course.

So, first off: My Technological Experience
It would be safe to say that I am the most computer-savvy one in my home. Whenever Mom needs a PowerPoint, or when Dad first worked with Office 2007, I am/was the one that teaches them what to do. Mom swears that our generation was born with chips in our brains. If I don't know how to do something, I generally can figure it out; I'm no longer afraid of causing irreparable damage. Facebook (and before that, Xanga and MySpace) is one of the most convenient and useful ways to keep in touch with friends. I've dabbled in graphic design and have fun with Publisher. My family has historically been a PC clan (Personal Computers, that is; not Politically Correct), but one of my jobs had a Mac, so I know how to use those, too. I find technology useful; distracting, too. There are times when I need to shut off my computer and ignore my iPod in order to do anything productive - or so I can fully relax.

Item 2: My Educational Experience
As a teacher candidate at CSUSM's single subject program, I am surrounded by education all day, every day. Not that that's a bad thing, mind you. When I was at Biola, not only did I live, breathe, sleep and eat books, but I also worked as a tutor at the Writing Center. There's something about helping others develop a skill (and seeing the "aha!" moments) that is incredibly gratifying. It's fun getting those "aha!" moments myself, too. A key mantra that we candidates are being drilled in is that we're never going to stop learning. Having the title "Teacher" doesn't make us any less of a student than the 10th graders are. Hey, fine by me! Who wouldn't want to keep discovering new and fun stuff for the rest of his life?

Item 3: My Future with Technology in Education
As a prospective history teacher (especially if I set up on-line classes), I can see technology playing a big role in my methods. Though I always have - and always will - love to work with books, the amount of information at our fingertips is too good to pass up. As a research tool, I'll expect my students to take full advantage of the internet and legitimate resources for their own projects. Maybe I can use blogging as a way to get them to reiterate what they've learned. Publisher, PowerPoint and other Office applications have already become staples in the education world: it's hard to imagine life without them.

And now for something completely different. Even the most stalwart history-hater must succumb to the narrative of Eddie Izzard: