TED Video Discussion

Our Groups opinion of "TED: Changing Education Paradigms"

Lesley: Can see the point of not having the same age group together. We have special ed, advanced placement, but maybe that is not the best way to educate. We need to change people's outlook on school and being "held back-" that it is okay to learn with students who are not your age; the factory method of teaching was interesting..  Its good to hear other opinions, because it can help you in the future and help tweak your own opinion.

Danielle: Popping pills with not solve the problem, we need stop giving pills as a way of excuse. Everyone has their own type of learning and putting a set way for learning for children who are the same age all together can be risky. Danielle agrees the kids who have issues in class may just be bored, we need to know that all students have different strengths and weaknesses. I think as teachers our teaching techniques need to be more up to date with our society, they need to be more hands on for the students.

Brenda: Hands on work is the way. Putting students in special education classes may not be necessary for a student who may just need more attention, it can be like a punishment. Brenda likes that he used visuals in the video, he kept our attention and kept it interesting.

Lauren: This video affects me as a teacher because my it affects how I will approach my classroom someday. I want to make sure I give extra attention to students who need it, yet not take away time from the students who are ahead. I was surprised that the east coast had mainly ADHD students, was it their way of teaching?

What is Science?

For me, science is the study of life; the reason why the moon rotates the sun, why animals and people have instincts and how much is really inside one atom. Science is discovering, having to form a hypothesis and dig for the truth. It is a way of understanding the world we live in. Science is conducted by experiments, tests, making mistakes and then retrying over and over until it works. I have taken biology, chemistry, genetics and microbiology in high school and learned that experiments can be fun, a lot of work and just plain difficult sometimes. In genetics, my class had to bread and cross breed flies, we were split into groups and each group had their own type of fly, and the goal was to cross breed with other groups and see what dominant and recessive traits appeared in the offspring. However, with lots of teenagers and lots of socializing, the flies would often get loose and make their way to other groups and cross breeding was happening without our control. It got a little hectic and we had to start over from the beginning many times. I have had some fun science experiences as well, in microbiology my teacher had planned a "field trip" for us, little did we know that wasn't the case. As we were getting ready to leave the school we heard screams from people all across campus, they then proceeded to fall and spit up blood, it happened to about five students, all in order. It took us about ten seconds to figure out this was staged and that the collapsed people were drama students. We then had to 'get into gear" and wear goggles, gloves and white suits and work in groups to figure out what disease has spread across the campus, affected these "passed out" students and who started it. This project was our final exam and took about a week to compile the pieces. The mystery was a lot of fun, I had never had such a hands-on school project before. My teacher got in trouble for having such a dangerous project, and some parents complained, but it all worked out, and definitely was a memory from senior year I won't forget.