Final Comments

I think I am an official blogger now. I still do not think that my blog is as cool as I would like it to be, however I am feeling very “cool” now that I can upload a picture. I will not disclose the amount of time this took me. I think I have even figured out how to put in the paragraph breaks.

At the start of the class I did not have a blog, did not know how to blog, knew very little about MySpace, knew nothing about gaming, had never heard of Google Reader and was not listening to “This I Believe”. What was wrong with me? I must have been living under a rock.

In all seriousness I feel much more in touch with technology than I did fifteen weeks ago. I set out to learn as much as I could about the NCLB act. While there is much more out there that I did not even begin to touch on, I have more of a handle on it after spending a semester with it.

I continue to see mainsteam television addressing this issue, and it is my hope that this continues until we can come up with some better solutions in education. I was unaware that the Gates Foundation was involved in education and it has been very interesting learning about where they stand. While Bill Gates has not spoken to writing or English education in the terms that he has Math and Science he has taken on some of the political issues that surround education.

The model schools are something I did not know existed and I am very interested to follow them and see if the trend becomes more popular. I do agree that buisness is going to have to take on a greater part in education. I also, sadly see where the subject of public education has become a great podium pounder. I am hoping that in the future the solutions that are offered have a greater ability to sustain themselves than the ones offered in NCLB.

I intended to not be opinionated on this issue. I assumed that the more I learned the more understandable this law might become, at least in my mind. When I started looking at the history of education and the fact that it has been a struggle from the beginning, it looked like I might find this understanding. This has not happened. I have to say I cannot find one good or understandable thing about NCLB (who could have guessed).

This class has placed a great deal of focus on what reaches children. The texts and the classroom discussions have changed or opened my mind to the idea that maybe we need to learn from the kids. It is hard for me not to connect this to being a parent. Any parent will tell you that you cannot expect a child to come into your world you have to go into theirs. It is easy to forget this when you are thinking in terms of your job, and what you are required to teach. The comment was made that we spend hours as teachers searching around, having meetings, spending time and money trying to come up with a way to grab the intrest of students. It really is no different than what we do at home with our own personal children. I think that maybe the NCLB people need to come down to the current world of teachers.

Just as we need to look to our students to see what is going to help them, policy makers need to look at what is going on in schools today, how it has changed, how NCLB has changed teaching and learning.

In spite of this, it is good to know that people are still excited about teaching and are still coming up with ideas to make it better for kids. I have enjoyed learning so much about technology this semester. To be honest much of it has been from classmates. I am looking forward to my very own MySpace account and this summer I am going to learn more of the IM language than just lol. By the way, I did learn that in this class!