Cyber Bullying

Parents, teachers, children and community members should be encouraged to mingle on social media sites like Facebook. Anyone who has read Lord of the Flies knows what can happen if children are left unsupervised with out authority. A recent article in the St. Albert Gazette describes an incident of cyber bullying.

http://www.stalbertgazette.com/article/20101023/SAG0801/310239965/-1/sag/students-ganging-up-in-cyberspace

Facebook is a community and a healthy community has a mix of people. I do not think that a teacher and students should be "forced" to be friends on Facebook but I think kids should have positive role models involved in their lives as much as possible. I would hope that adult community members would be more likely to interfere and decrease incidences of cyber bullying.

Social Media

The use of social media sites such as Facebook are banned in many schools along with cell phones and other electronic devices.

I feel that this is a wrong decision. There is a new Mayor in Calgary and many credit much of his success to Facebook.

http://www.facebook.com/NaheedNenshi

Effective use of Facebook and other networking tools are important to the next generation. It is often claimed that cell phones are disruptive in classrooms. However they are the future of the Internet. As more and more computer programs such as basic word processing will be located in the "cloud" of the Internet. The idea of having a large box in your house as a computer will soon be a thing of the past. A hand held device such as a cell phone will connect to your monitor and keyboard anywhere (school, home or workplace) and will connect you to all your data located on the web. That is the future.

Educators need to monitor the direction of technology and help prepare children for the future. Stop banning technology out of fear and embrace the benefits.

Diploma exam results

So the government of Alberta has announced that it is pleased with the improvement in Diploma Exam results but that critical thinking skills remains a concern.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/edmonton/story/2010/10/12/edmonton-diploma-exams-results.html

Wow - who could have predicted that elimination of all of the written response exams in math, physics, chemistry and biology would have resulted in an increase in exam scores but a decrease in critical thinking skills?

I would think that pretty much every person who has ever been trained in teaching and anyone who has a degree in any of these subject areas could have predicted that result. In fact anybody who took one of these courses in school most likely could have predicted that. So about 90% of the population probably would have foreseen that outcome, but the Minister of Education apparently is confused.

“Standardized testing can easily identify trends, but it can’t determine why a specific result is going up or down.”

No ... but sometimes common sense can identify a really obvious correlation. Perhaps it is time for Minister Hancock to speak to teachers and ask them. I am sure there are more then a few that would be capable of explaining it to him in simpler language so that he could understand.