The Myth of Average—Class 6

We began class by watching a TED talk called “The Myth of Average” by Todd Rose.

 

Essentially, Rose suggests that an “average” student doesn’t exist. No student is like any other because there is a great diversity of aptitudes for the numerous factors that contribute to student success. Rose goes further to state that learning environments created for the average don’t meet needs: talent is a liability and areas of challenge prevent achievement. He advocates the use of iPads for flexible learning environments. Given all the great iPad features I’ve learned about since starting this class, I would absolutely agree!

We were asked to note our emotions when watching the video. I felt hopeful and excited and the PollEv we completed showed that many other students agreed with me.

I look forward to using this webpage (polleverywhere.com) with a class. It allows anonymous responses so students shouldn’t be nervous to answer—it could be used for emotional feedback or you could use it for a quiz. What I like most is that more common responses appear in larger font, which is similar to the wordle. The only thing I would do differently is to wait for all students to respond before projecting the results.

 

I appreciated our discussion about the Dracula reading and what must happen in order to read. Sometimes teachers might forget about important first steps like attending to the task because these things are second nature for us. Things like vision control and anxiety probably would not have been the first things to enter my mind if a student was experiencing difficulty reading, but now it seems so obvious to start there. And an iPad could help with all these issues.

 

To end the class, we watched part of a PBS video called “The Secret Life of the Brain” about the child’s brain.

It discussed reading, dyslexia, and brain plasticity. Really interesting! I’m planning on watching the teen brain section of this video.