Educating Citizens

I believe that “educating citizens” is the most important aspect of schools. On the surface, this seems obvious. Of course schools are intended to educate our citizens. However, I believe that there is a deeper meaning.

Educating citizens doesn’t mean filling students’ heads with facts and numbers and dates. It means providing them with the tools to function as effective citizens in today’s society. That’s not to say that the content-specific facts that we seek to convey aren’t important. They are also necessary in order to succeed in society. However, the greatest gift that we, as teachers, can give to our students is the ability to think and reason as functional adults. From this ability stem all of the skills needed to contribute to society. Simply memorizing a litany of facts may help students pass exams, but it will ill-equip them to succeed outside of the classroom.

At present, I believe that the most important skill to impart is the ability to critically evaluate information. We are constantly bombarded with information from sources varying from reputable to completely fabricated. The capability to filter that information and analyze its meaning is essential in today’s society. Without this skill, students will be doomed to fall for every hoax, ideological discourse, and misrepresentation of reality that they encounter.

On the other hand, and educated citizen is able to assess which information is worth knowing and disregard the “junk” that so often populates the internet. They will then be able to take advantage of the wealth of good information that technology allows us to access. The more accurate information that individuals can get their hands on, the better able to actively participate in and contribute to society.

This type of literacy must be addressed in the classroom. Teachers who fail to teach these skills to their students are doing them a huge disservice. We must encourage them to think critically about the information that is presented to them. This type of knowledge will stay with students long after the facts, formulas, and numbers that we teach have faded from their memories.

Historical Twitters

I found this video linked at a blog called Speaking of History. It should amuse all of my fellow history buffs out there.




I think that things like this video are great classroom tools to use. While it doesn't have any outright educational value in terms of conveying facts or dates, it is a good way to engage students with the material. Obviously, it isn't something to build an entire lesson plan around, but it would make an excellent introduction to something like a role-playing Twitter project.

Classroom Drawing

First off, I want to point out that my classroom drawing was horrendous. There's a reason that I'm not an art teacher. I never quite progressed beyond the ability to draw stick figures.

The technology I included in my classroom was fairly basic. All I really wanted was a TV, DVD player, computer, and a projection system. While I think it would be wonderful to have a classroom set of laptops for students to use, I don't think this is a realistic expectation in a public school. I think that the projection system is especially important because it will allow me to make use of many of the technological skills that we will learn in EDUC 504. I'm excited to learn more about the Poll Anywhere system and how to incorporate blogs and Twitter into the classroom. I've studiously avoided Twitter in the past because I thought it was silly, but I recently discovered that it's an interesting way of keeping up on breaking news.

I think that the ability to use these technologies is even more important for teachers nowadays because the students we will be teaching are so technologically advanced. Much is made of the negative effects that the Internet, text messaging, and blogging have on students in the classroom. While I agree that all of these can have a detrimental effect on students as they provide misleading information or serve as a distraction preventing them from focusing on their studies, I also think that they can be harnessed to change students' concepts of learning. By presenting information to them in their "language" (ie. through Twitter or a blog), it is my hope that I will be able to more fully engage students in the classroom.