John T. Spencer is a blogger. He is a fan of maintaining some classic mediums of education such as pencils paper and chalkboards vs printer ink, Ipads, and smartboards. In this post he does(or at least displays) a comic made as a spoof on the old pc/mac commercials.
I am not sure that I truly understand the connection, but in my not-so-educated opinion, I believe he is trying to get the point across that all pencils are alike and just like computers they will try to trick you into thinking they are different when in reality they are all flawed.
We were assigned to read a second blog from the same website called "Why Were Your Kids Playing Games" . In the blog the man is a teacher in a Junior High school and is called to the principals office. While in the office the principal attacks the man for the use of a game that he fears the parents may find inappropriate. The teacher attempts to defend himself by saying that the children are doing this because it helps them to learn. In response the principal fires back with the complaint of if it isn't going to help them pass the standardize test coming up soon, it's unimportant. My favorite part of this satirist post is where the man makes the comparison of the children only learning enough to pass a test to the teachers onbly paying attention to the "buzzwords" on next weeks BINGO game and as a result, not actually retaining anything discussed in the meeting.
We were told to read over the rest of the posts, and I found so many of them humorous. The writers allegorical and satirist sense of humor is 'right up my alley. The next post I chose to focus on was called "10 Points on Pencils", it mainly focuses on different ridiculous arguments the above mentioned fictional principal has against pencils and our sarcastic authors response to them. Give it a read, its worth it, and it good for a laugh!
As the last part of our assignment we were to read a blog called "Don't Teach Your Kids This Stuff Please?". This post was written by a man named Scott Mcleod, he is an associate professor at a University in Kentucky. This post is very snarky, and sarcastic. He uses those two forms of entertainment to keep you interested and makes a long list of technology items: HTML, RSS, Emailing, Cell phones, etc etc. He then says reasons why they are all "bad", and discourages you teaching them. At the end he admits that the only reason he doesn't want you teaching these is because he wants his kids to have a leg up. It is very well written and gets the point across well; however, I do think that one downfall was that a lot of the funny downfalls of these items that he listed are VERY good reasons for not making many of these items easily accessible to younger children(sexting, porn, cyber bullies.) That being said, I think whatever form learning takes, its still education and should be valued, Its as simple as that!
Amanda,
ReplyDeleteRemember to have the ALT and TITLE modifiers for images. I think you made an interesting point about the pencil cartoon. It doesn't matter what type of computer you have if it's getting the job done. There are palpable differences between PCs and Macs when it comes to performance and longevity though. However, it just depends on use and how much money you invest in the PC and how well you take care of it. Macs are less likely to get viruses, mostly because the majority of people have PCs and the people who design the viruses are targeting the majority.
I like where you went with this. I thought that the cartoon was also a parody of the Mac and PC commercials. I thought that he was trying to say that even though the Ticonderoga pencils cost more they are sturdier pencils than Papermate, just like the Mac is so much more expansive than a regular PC it is worth it. I feel that he was saying "Spend the money now and have something that lasts longer, or you will have to just keep buying the cheap kind because they keep breaking on you.
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