PLN4

Dear Mr. Karl Fisch –
After your article “The CSAP is Dead. Long Live the CSAP (err, TCAP)” I began to think deeply about standardized tests and my true feelings about them. My decision? Standardized testing is a completely necessary part of schooling. My reasoning for this is that colleges need to compare applicants side by side. GPA’s do not tell nearly as much because an A in a class could reflect a student’s knowledge, but also could reflect an easy class. Also, I felt like Will Richardson’s quote was not very well thought out and I disagree with his views. I agree on the fact that students need to be able to handle “real problems” and “the ability to make sense of the world as they experience it” but these things can be achieved just by living, and schools should never have to teach students this and therefore would have no reason to test students on it. Also, I think that instilling a “love for learning” in students is just flat out unreasonable and will most likely never be achieved. In the future, I would hope to see standardize tests used more for decision making on class placement and college applications.

PLN 3

Dear Mr. Will Richardson –
In your article “And What Do YOU Mean by Learning?” I feel that learning to ME is acquiring information in a way that it will be retained. For schools this means no spelling lists in English class, and only a few important dates to memorize in history. I also believe that these types of memorizations be replaced by hands on visual activities to help kids visually learn. An example of this would be in a World War II unit, coloring a world map with different colors for the allied and axis powers, this way kids would visually remember the country’s on both sides of the conflict without memorizing before the test, and then forgetting after the test. I also believe that if schools provide hands on learning that kids will be much more focused and would understand and retain the information they learn leaving them much better off in the long run. In the future, I would hope to see more of this teaching/learning style happening around the country and because of it, see kids retaining and enjoying the things they are learning.

PLN 2

Dear Mr. Karl Fisch –
In your article “The Learning Studio”, I feel that the idea of allowing students to have hands on training with real world situations such as the University of Virginia’s learning studio is a great idea, and certainly an immense improvement from the 1910 learning style mentioned in your post. As a student, I can whole heartedly agree that the “study then test method” does not allow students to learn information, only to memorize it for a short period of time the forget it. Also, as mentioned in your post, in a learning studio students work in groups which I feel is very beneficial because not only can students bounce ideas off each other, but because in the real world, when students are working at a hospital, they will need to socialize and help their coworkers. In the future, I hope to see this change made to medical colleges around the country.

PLN1

Dear Mr. Karl Fisch –

In your article “Dear Denver Post: No More Horoscopes”, I strongly agree with your negative feelings towards the horoscopes in the Denver Post news paper, and I support your idea for replacing this portion of the paper with science articles. Your statistic about one fourth of Americans actually believing in Astrology shocked me and made it even more evident to me that horoscopes need to be replaced by articles that are logical and supported by science. Isn’t the purpose of the paper to educate readers? I could care less if people looked at horoscopes, but to take away newspaper reader’s source of knowledge and replacing it with garbage makes me slightly angry. If people know more about America’s and the world’s problems, then people would be more knowledgeable about the issues and more inclined to help fix the problems. In the future, I hope to see this change made to not only improve the newspaper but also enhance the knowledge of its readers.