My brain has come up with some random thoughts after reading lots of articles, blogs, and tweets about education over the last week.
1. Everyone child deserves a strong, good education. But, what does a strong, good education mean/ look like?
2. Some facts are important to learn, but learning how to find and analyze information and how to think critically and solve problems is more important.
3. Encourage students to create and be creative. Help them be creative and use ingenuity to solve problems.
4. Relate educational lessons to the real world and do the students' experiences.
5. Use technology, tools, toys, props, etc. to emphasize and explain concepts and topics.
6. Use technology to expand the school day and learning environment.
7. Use technology to do different things with your students that you would have been able to do without technology.
8. Make your lessons exciting, engaging, educational, and fun.
9. Collaborate with other teachers to improve student achievement. (a PLN is great for this).
10. Care about your students.
11. Educators need to have a strong voice in educational policy. Too much is decided by non-educators with minimal educator input.
12. Everyone is responsible for the quality of education and student achievement and success. We all have to work together.
13. There is a lot of money wasted by governments in running schools. There are plenty of ways to save money without affecting the quality of education. Use less paper. Use open source and free resources instead of expensive software licenses and textbooks.
14. Schools are designed poorly. We need more room for group work, collaboration, exploration, and projects and less rows of desks.
What are some of your thoughts on education?