Podcasts

I listened to two Podcasts from TEDTalks Education. The first one that I listened to was called "Bill Gates: Teachers need real feedback." This video was extremely interesting because Gates explained how teachers in the United States are not receiving the appropriate feedback and in turn cannot improve the way that they should. Currently, the U.S. does not top the list on being the most successful academically in any subject. Gates believes that the reason for this is the lack of teacher feedback. He actually said that most teachers get feedback in one word- "satisfactory." Bill Gates said that receiving one word feedback provides no information to the teachers and also gives no hope for improvement. Overall, I liked what Bill Gates had to say about teacher feedback. He believes that teachers deserve better than to only receive mediocre feedback.

The second video that I watched was titled "Ramsey Musallam: 3 rules to spark learning." This speaker for the video is a chemistry teacher. Listening to a real teacher is so much more interesting and relevant than listening to someone give advice on education when they have never really been in the classroom. He said that student questions are the real seeds of learning. Musallam stated that the first rule is that curiosity comes first. Rule number two is to embrace the mess. Learning can be messy and is not always pretty. Rule number three is to practice reflection so that we can revise our work. According to Musallam questions are so important and growing curiosity is something that should be taken advantage of.

I really liked watching the Podcasts. It was an interesting way of learning really great educational information. In some ways, I found that watching the Podcast was more interesting and valuable than just simply reading an article.