Comment for Teachers Part 3

For this portion of the "Comment for Teachers" project I commented on Paula White's blog "Reflections of the TZSTeacher." I responded to two blog posts: one about setting up a community of learners in classrooms, and one about interactive whiteboards. My first comment was about creating a community of learners and read as follows:

"Greetings,

My name is A.W. Faris. I am a Secondary Education/ English major at The University of South Alabama. I am taking a class called Educational Media (EDM 310) and was directed to your blog as part of a class-wide project. I really enjoyed reading this post. I feel like too many teachers today simply go through the motions of teaching kids “factoids” that are really just part of state requirements. I think that kids get a lot more out of an education that teaches them to be free, independent critical thinkers. I understand, however, that this can be a difficult line to walk at times for educators. It sounds like you are doing a really good job of this in your class. I like the fact that you create a support system that allows your students to at least attempt to solve their own issues amongst themselves. Thanks for posting"

The second was about Interactive Whiteboards (IWB's). Here is a transcript of my comment:

I think you are definitely posing some very difficult and thought provoking ideas here. In my opinion, the main problem with whiteboards does seem to be the availability and accessibility of them. If I had to state where I stand (out of the two possible) I would say that I am not for their use, yet. I think that as time goes on, technology like this will be much more accessible for more educators. I think right now, these technologies are so new, that some kids tend to make a sort of mockery out of lesson plans centered around them. They view some of these technologies more as toys than actual useful educational implements. As time goes on, and more teachers have interactive white boards and smartboards in their classrooms, I think kids will become much more responsive to learning with them. These technologies are exciting, but we must remember they are still in the fairly infantile stages of their development. This is really exciting post. Good stuff!

A.W. Faris
University of South Alabama
http://www.arthurfarisedm310.blogspot.com
http://www.edm310.blogspot.com"