Response to Tony Gurr's blog

Tony Gurr's blogpost about "Motivation" explains how teachers should motivate students towards their own goals and help them create their own learning. From my understanding about his belief in freedom and education, he believes that limited freedom in learning prevents students from further development within themselves. In other words, limited freedom in education prohibits students' abilities to extend and reach for their own motivations and goals.

           Finding a motivation or a goal may be a broad topic for many students. How are they supposed to know what they want in life if they have only experienced such little part of "life" and the "world". This is where teachers kick in to help.

           There is, indeed, countless number of ways teachers could properly educate students. However, rather than searching for the "BEST" way to council students toward their goals and superior education, investigating some of the "WORST" educational method may be a better start.

 This is one of the many pictures Tony Gurr used to explain his opinion and position in "Motivation and Education." "Kids' don't LEARN (from):" this got me thinking, 'why are teachers struggling/trying to find ways to best educate their students, when really, all they need to do is to avoid the worst ways.'

           I believe that every educational method has its purpose (pros and cons); however, some methods are outdated and no longer useful. Before the development of technology, memorization was the key to success. Therefore, tests and quizzes were mandatory. However, the advanced technology we have today makes every fact "googleable." It is now the matter of how one chooses to use the knowledge internet provides, which determines their success or failure. It is time for teachers to open up their eyes upon a new skill of creativity and helps students properly use the knowledge provided for them. As easy as it sounds, this does not happen without students and teachers bonding together.

           "Kids' don't LEARN: .... from people they don't like!" This has to be the best statement I've heard in a long time. It is Very (times 100000) true that students don't learn from people they don't like. Think about it, even talking, or looking at a person you hate sometimes makes you mad which makes learning IMPOSSIBLE. This makes the positive bonding relationship between students and teachers CRUCIAL in education. However, there are many obstacles that can easily break the good relationships.

           Some educators believe that students are irresponsible and should only do what they are told. This is one of the most common ways teachers lose their positive relationship with students. It is true that most students in high school are not yet ready for complete freedom. However, high school students certainly deserve to have a voice in the educational system. With the intelligence of teachers and free minds of students, I believe, the "BEST" education can be formed.

           Teachers try to motivate students to reach their goal. However, I believe helping the students to realize what their goal is and their high potentials is more important than just motivating students who may be clueless about what their goal is.

          As mentioned in previous paragraphs, limited freedom does prevent motivation towards one's goal. Nevertheless, the process of realizing one's goal and learning about oneself may be just a little bit more important. Overused limitation in education a fence that blocks students from learning about themselves and constantly changing world around them.

 

 

 

Tony Gurr's way of blogging is very cool. I definitely found it less boring than reading a paragraph after another. The pictures were also very fascinating, they really helped me get a better look into his position in the topic. However, there were some pictures I did not fully understand.

 

Tony Gurr's blogging techniques also reminded me of a recent project I did in English class called "Poetry in Motion" It was very cool to see that putting words into an art of pictures and being able to express one's opinion through blogging was possible. I would definitely want to try this method of blogging later on =)

 

YAY!

Heyyyyy~ We hit 2000 page views! The school year is almost ending and I would like to say that it's been a pleasure to be in such a wonderful group blog. Have a good day everyone! :)

Response to Tony Gurr's Motivation

        The blog post “Motivating our LEARNers…or ‘Co-Creating’ a CLIMATE of LEARNacy?” by Tony Gurr explains to teachers that instead of trying to motivating students, they should listen to the students’ opinions and guide the students through their OWN learning. However, despite the effective presentation method and persuasive visuals, I personally disagree with the main message the author is trying to spread.

        The presentation format of Tony Gurr’s blog post is very unique. Half of the post consists of words while the other half is all visuals. The made the post very interesting and easy to read on, despite its long length. However, some of the pictures presented are somewhat irrelevant in my opinion, or need further “googling” to clarify. This may muddle the main idea of the post. For example, I couldn't (and still cannot) understand the picture that showed “I am back, therefore I am”. I do not see any connection of that section with motivation and learning. Other than that fact, the blog post was relatively pleasant to read and understand.

       However, I do not completely agree with the ideas that Tony Gurr is presenting to us. He said that teachers should give students their own choices on deciding what they desire to learn; teachers should guide students to follow their passions. Although this may work with some parts of a course, it will not be able to fully take over the curriculum. Not everyone is capable of independent exploration with minimal teacher interference. A great way to explain this is with the Genius Hour Passion Projects we have been doing in our English class over the semester. Despite all the fun and freedom we had, I still feel like we did not completely cover what we are supposed to learn. Yes, we did obtain a valuable experience by creating a new sport, and we did learn a great deal about the history of magic, but there was also a downside. Genius Hour took up a great deal of time that could be used for other approaches to learning, such as formal essay writing. This may seem boring, but in my opinion, but it is a more efficient way to develop English skills. On top of that, sometimes too much freedom will also lead to laziness, low-quality/irrelevant work. As a student, I feel that we do not have enough base knowledge, skill, or discipline to make choices that will benefit our learning.

        As a high school student, I understand that our teachers try to find a balance between what we NEED to learn and what we WANT to learn. However, I don’t think that we are ready to have that freedom. We still need a superior guidance to push us forward and see that we complete all our work. Freedom is not a right; it is a responsibility, a discipline. Until we show that we have enough willpower to control ourselves – I do not believe we have done so yet – we are not ready to hold this burden.

Response to Tony Gurr's blog&blogpost

"Motivating our LEARNers..."

      When I first opened Tony's blog from the link Ms. Lees posted, his blog design and atmosphere struck me as a simple, even playful blog. His title "allthingslearning" does not follow any normal "Titles Spaced and Capitalized Evenly" rule, and is just splat onto the top in a large font that makes his blog seem different. I feel it is a bit messy actually, with the huge list of links and sites right under the title, but I think it works. His blog is just simplistic and kid friendly so there doesn't need to be sub folders and dividers to sort everything. I am not saying it looks unprofessional, but it is just unique.
      His blog posts, particularly the post on 'Motivation', is also very fun to read. He incorporated many graphics into his post (more than half was graphically illustrated, which he created himself- wow) to make it more interesting and exciting. It is really cool how he illustrated quotes, such as this one:

 

This way of incorporating visuals actually reminds me of the recent "Poetry in Motion" project we had to do.  Any examples of Poetry in Motion you can find is pretty amazing itself; how people find ways to illustrate words. I actually made one too based off a song lyric. It is just on the post underneath this one, but here's the link.
      I found the content of his blog post a bit confusing at first though. There are definitely a lot of references in his post (at least I think they are referring to something I don't know?), and only a few of them I understood. I found many things just random as well. Maybe I just do not get his point and relation he is trying to make. For example:

"the Secret"??? I really don't get this part...
      Anyways, I do agree that if you want to motivate students, teachers must provide them with choices, not just restrict them to certain limitation. Teachers must let student have a say in learning, and listen to their voices (unless they are stupid nonsensical). Teachers must care about their students and treat them with respect as well.

Remember the GOLDEN RULE:

 

LUKE 6:31

      I believe Ms. Lees tried to have a more interactive and motivational learning experience with us, the students, by doing the "Genius Hour" projects. She let us choose our own topics on anything. I found this project really fun to work on, and it really showed my motivation in the end. At first both Stella and I were planning to make only 1 or 2 stop motion videos, but in the end we came out with 4! Ms. Lees would ask us for our opinion of how the projects were, and even what we should do for other projects (eg. the Chrysalids novel small assignment). This was truly a class I was motivated in (funny because English may as well be my least favourite subject).

Demons by Imagine Dragons

My Poetry in Motion video has been having troubles rendering... I will upload it ASAP!!

Okay, so after rendering it, I am now uploading it onto youtube, unfortunately it is not very fast.

"Uploading your video. 278 minutes remaining."

DONE (:

 

When the curtain's call

Is the last of all

When the lights fade out

All the sinners crawl

I want to hide the truth

I want to shelter you

But with the beast inside

There's nowhere we can hide

Don't want to let you down

But I am hell bound

This is my kingdom come

This is my kingdomcome

At first I was not planning to put the song with the lyrics, that way it could be longer and more like a simple 'poem'. BUT I decided against it since I did not want it to be slow (and boring), so I put the song along with it~ :3 That is why it seems short, but there is still 10+ lines (12) okay?!

Feel free to leave a comment/suggestion because I did work hard on this because I found it very fun XD
Criticism is acceptable. I already know some of my timing is still off.. =__=''

Poetry in Motion: On Top of the World

This is just the first ten lines that was due today, I actually had it done last night, but I didn't want to post it until I added more, but I didn't have the chance to, so enjoy! 

On Top of the World - Imagine Dragons

(If the quality is bad, try this link)

I actually wanted to finish the chorus as well, but I had to have this done and posted for tonight, so this is just a PREVIEW version. I will add more to the video and re-post it when I finish the chorus! 

Digital Poem "Fate"

Sorry, it's a bit late, but here is the digital poem:

http://youtu.be/t6GMcuX3mBo

It lags a bit, so please don't be picky on the bad quality.

Poetry in Motion Question

How did you guys record it? I don't seem to know how to turn powerpoint into a video....

It's death again by Mark R Slaughter

here is the link you my vedio 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVd152b2FAE

It took me like an hour to post this !! lol

Digital poetry- Sympathy by Emily Bronte

Hey guys, here is my digital poetry. It's on "Sympathy", by Emily Bronte.

Excuse me for the bad quality and random lags; my computer was acting weird.