The relationship between society and educational institutions is one of the hotly questioned issues all around the world. In chapter 1 of his book, The Anti-Education Era: Creating Smarter Students through Digital Learning, Gee (2013) points out that society generates unequal conditions for people concerning race, gender, and class. That is, those who have the power lead society the way where they want it to go. Despite this, we humans ignore this evidence and continue on giving power to them. However, Gee opposes to this idea and suggests taking action against dominant powers in society because awakening of learners with critical thinking will help them to lead their lives. This demonstrates that the relationship between society and education is not one-sided; while educational institutions are influenced by fluctuations in society, they generate changes to better society and to guarantee the creation of a good society. The question is whether educational systems reflect this reciprocal relationship between education and society. More specifically, the question is whether educational systems guarantee the formation of a good society.

In quest for an answer to this question, Gee (2013) states that “schools treat memory as a bank that can be filled with accurate information” (p. 27). In his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire (1970/2003) defines this type of education as “an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor. Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiqués and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat” (p. 72). This type of system does not give chance to students to critically evaluate the world in which they live, in turn; they lose the opportunity to better their lives by making changes.  Yet, critical thinking stimulates creativity and consciousness toward the problems and situations faced in our lives. That’s why, teachers should give importance to critical thinking by preparing the environment for such a dialogue to occur. In other words, teachers should allow students to ask questions. In this way, students can make connections between society and education. This process, which Gee calls as “the circuit of reflective action” and Freire calls as “praxis”, is defined as “reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it” (Freire, 1970/2003, p. 51). With such a dialogue, it is obvious that our students and citizens will be more critical about the decisions that are made on their behalf. Because if they get this consciousness, they will feel free to state their ideas about anything and will be able to offer alternatives to “frozen solutions” which are offered by institutions that are defined as “frozen thought” (Gee, 2013, p. 85). This will also lead to a decrease in the habit of making certain ideas prominent in the society; as a result, people will not be informed about what constitutes proper ways of thinking as they will actively “think about, reflect on, and make new decisions about institutionally frozen solutions” (Gee, 2013, p. 89). This will then help us to deal with complexity that we face in our lives since critical thinking respects the individual and the social context that she comes from and does not derive from ideas given status by dominant powers in society.

 All in all, educational institutions should be socially constructed in order to meet the basic demands of society. Teachers are the ones who can change today’s society and educators of adults are the ones who can encourage adults to take action in regard to their own lives because education is not banking; education is getting freedom to tell anything about our own lives. This is the only way that education can guarantee a good society.

REFERENCES

Freire, P. (2003).  Pedagogy of the Oppressed (30th ed.). (M. B. Ramos, Trans.).     New York: Continuum. (Original work was published 1970).

Gee, P. J. (2013). The Anti-Education Era: Creating Smarter Students through      Digital Learning (1st ed.). New York: Palgrave/Macmillan.

For my graduate course (CEP 812), this week we have focused on defining problems of practice we face on a daily basis. The kinds of problems that we solve vary dramatically, yet for this week we have learnt about well structured, ill-structured (complex), and wicked (unsolveable) problems.

My first assignment asked me to create a screencast focusing on one of these problems. I decided to focus on previewing a text for reading comprehension. My Advanced Level English Language Learning students struggle with the complexity of the academic texts. I consider this a well-structured problem because students must preview a text for improving comprehension before they actually read it. Although there are some ways to preview a text, all of these strategies aim to help students to identify the key vocabulary and to get a general idea about the whole text.

Below is my screencast about WordSift. You can find this great tool here.

Teacher: Which is worse? Ignorance or apathy?

Student: I don’t care.

That comment is not easy for a teacher to hear. So far, I have heard comments like “I’ve tried everything. This student doesn’t care about anything.” These students sometimes can be the most frustrating ones to teach. But, why would someone give up so easily? My experience in teaching has taught me one good lesson: Students fail not because of “stupidity or banality” but because of their “desire to protect themselves and to survive” (Palmer 2007, p. 46). With this in mind, I started Educational Technology Certificate Program at Michigan State University.

Before I started the certificate program, I had been integrating technology into my lessons since I first started teaching and I thought I was good at preparing interactive lessons that put my students at the center of their learning. To me, I was ahead of the curve. But, that was all before I took the first class and experienced an amazing transformation in both my learning and teaching. The Educational Technology Program I became immersed in with MAET brought a new awareness. For instance, each week I am expected to turn in some assignments and that helps me a lot because I find the opportunity to reflect on my experiences and to get feedback on my progress. My contention is that reflecting on my experiences and getting feedback on my progress greatly influence my teaching as well as my interactions with my colleagues and my students because my experiences are one of the most valuable resources to improve my own teaching. In addition, since I have started using what I have learnt so far in a productive way, reflecting on my experiences has allowed me to use my experiences as a point of learning not only for myself but also for others because I try to share what I learn with others and each time I share something new with them, I get impressed by the surprised look on their faces and this encourages me to share more!

When reflecting back on this course, I found myself achieving a great deal concerning technology because the course provided us with a wealth of useful readings. One thing that I learnt was that a teacher should be comfortable with the idea of harnessing in newer technologies to be able to have meaningful lessons based on technology and to be able to integrate 21st century skills into their lessons. Also, being familiar with Universal Design for Learning (UDL) led me to think about the importance of addressing individual differences and thus, I now know that presenting content by using multiple media and providing differentiated support, providing options for action and expression, and providing options for engagement are some ways to catch the attention of more students because if the content is presented in different ways and provides options for learners, then it can be guaranteed that information is accessible to learners with different learning styles and comprehension is also easier for many students in the class. Additionally, I learnt about how to blend content, pedagogy, and content through TPACK framework and in my opinion this framework is vital to students’ success in foreign language learning because students as digital natives are savvier than I am; therefore, I have to keep abreast of the latest technologies and try new ones in my classroom.

Apart from these, I worked on several face-to-face instructional resources during the course and created my “UDL Enhanced Lesson Plan”,  “Paraphrasing or Summarizing?” StAIR, and my “How to Use Evidence” WebQuest. I have already implemented my lesson plan, StAIR, and WebQuest into my classroom. My StAIR and WebQuest focus on teaching students paraphrasing and summarizing and how to integrate evidence from multiple sources into a research paper, respectively. After my students used “Paraphrasing or Summarizing” StAIR, they have started working on their research paper by using my WebQuest. Now, they are really happy to be working on their research paper because the use of a WebQuest means employing a variety of teaching strategies such as team-based learning, cooperative and collaborative learning, and inquiry-based learning through a discovery process.

One of my goals is to continue to learn about various methods of incorporating technology into my teaching repertoire to enhance and increase my use of technology in education. To this end, I would like to learn to introduce using e-pals in the classroom and how to integrate podcasting into the curriculum and. One technology that I would like to use is interactive discussions with experts. This technology can cover a variety of content, but for my language learning students I would like to focus on speaking and listening. Throughout the next two months, I plan to continue my learning with CEP 812 in the Educational Technology Certificate Program at Michigan State University.  After this course is over, as an educator, I plan to continue to increase my educational technology knowledge by harnessing in newer technologies and also engaging in knowledge-building activities.