Blog Post #10

1. In the video Do You Teach or Do you Educate it tells you the definition of teaching and educate and makes it clear what the difference of the two are. The video makes it clear that teaching is the lesser of the two. It describes to teach as show or explain how to do something, encourage someone to accept a fact or principle, give information or instruct in, cause someone to learn or understand something, and induce by example or punish to do or not do something. Teaching is like what Dr. Strange says opening the students heads and pouring in the knowledge and then burping them so they can spit it back out on test and exams. When we teach the students they really learn nothing but how to memorize something and then forget it. Without fully learning it though the students are not benefiting coming to school because in their jobs they will need to learn more then just how to memorize something and spit it back out.
The video also makes it clear that to educate is the greater of the two. It shows what can happen when you educate instead of teach stating it is to illuminate, enlighten, inspire, and empower. Also the definition it gave of educator is one who gives intellectual, moral, and social instruction. When given the choice most teachers would choose to be an educator when seeing this video. Being an teachers means to impact students lives for more then just that year that you have them, but instead for the students to look back on that teacher and remember the things they taught them and not just educational lessons but intellectual, moral, and social lessons.   


2. In Tom Johnson's Don't Let Them Take the Pencils Home blog post he confronts the use of pencils with his  "Gertrude the School Curriculum Instructional Interventionist Academic Specialis." This person talks to him about research that says that kids who use pencils at home have lower test scores. Also talks about how the pencil is put there for entertainment and not for educational purposes; how the students will go home and just play "Hang Man" and other games and not do there homework. Also it talks about how students parents did not use pencils in there factory jobs and did not use pencils in schools so that is why the students think it is just  used to play games with. 
After rereading this post I figured out you could really replace the word pencil with computer and it would make perfect sense. How Johnson presented his argument was he took a tool that most schools think of as safe, and the tool used in every school and classroom and made it sound crazy that it was found in there. Johnson took all the excuses that most teachers and schools use so they do not have to use computers and switched it around to show those same excuses could be used for the everyday common object in schools, the pencil. 
What Johnson's argument is is that computers should be used in schools. In writing this blog post you can read between the lines of Johnson's post and see that he is saying that all theses excuses schools use about not using computers in there classrooms is just plain stupid. Yes it does give the students a lot of responsibility to stay on task if they use a computer, but won't they have to learn how to do that when they get a job too? To stay focus and not let distractions take you away from your true task. My favorite statement that this article said was responding to "How do you keep them accountable at home?" and he response by saying, "I don't hold them accountable.  I try and find projects that keep them interested.  But if they choose to play Hang Man or go on the pen pal networks, I'm okay with it. There's probably some learning that's taking place that we don't realize." When he says this he is telling everyone that is read this that yes some students will go astray and play games on the computer and get on social networks, but in doing this they learn something in itself. Even if it is if I do not stay on task then I'll never finish or get a bad grade or they learn something in the game or social networks itself.