week 13 Drill and Practice

Drill and practice is one of my favorite strategies to use for test or any other skills. I think of sports when I hear drill and practice. Take basketball for example, you practice your free throws everyday for 4 hours using the exact same shooting technique. Eventually you are going to get better because you have practiced so much that it is almost impossible for you to miss. When it comes to education drill and practice has it pros and cons. Teachers use drill and practice techniques for things like multiplication. Students need to know these on command and drill and practice drills the information into your brain. This is good because once you have practiced these enough you will no longer have to practice because you will already know them. The con of drill and practice is that some teachers use drill and practice as a way of teaching and this isn't the correct way to go about teaching and learning. Students then begin to get bored and don't learn anything. A good way to deal with this problem is to only use drill and practice in moderation. And we need to be careful about what content areas we use it in because drill and practice techniques don't have the same effect in a reading class as it does in a math class.
So we just need to make sure that we aren't using it our only method of educating our students.

Week 11 discussion Tues 5:30-6:50

Some educators feel that distance technologies will greatly improve education; some feel education will suffer if they are overused. What are factors you can cite in support of each of these positions?

Distance learning definitely has its great sides. There are so many people who can benefit from distance learning. Those who are full time workers and don't have transportation to school, disabled learners who physically can't make it to school. There are also those who care for other people that need assistance 24 hours a day. There's even the stay at home parents who work at home and simply would prefer to take an online class. Students can also be given assignments that involve traveling and the only way to stay in contact with teacher is through distance learning. There are many more beneficial ways that distance learning not only improves learning, but accomodates and modifies it as well. On the other hand, distance learning only allows for cyber communication. I feel that this hurts socialization and people skills that are necessary in everyday life. It also demotes critical thinking because the learners that get readings and assignments can easily look for help when asked to think critically and do responses. So if not careful, I guess you could say that distance learning has the ability to promote laziness.