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A "Standard" Argument

     With this being my second semester in the Education field, you can bet that I have heard tons about common core, and standards, and how frustrating they can be to make sure you seem what you need to over the school year as an educator. And I am here to say that no, standards, you don't scare me!

     This semester has been largely focused on digital media and literacy in classrooms, in all of my courses. And at the beginning I thought that it would be so easy to just add some fun online stuff to my lessons and call it a day. However, I now know that is no longer a reasonable option, this requires much more than that.

     On a blog for education, Edutopia, Monica Burns highlights some of the things that we need to keep in mind when using digital technology and combining that with the Common Core Standards. You can read the full article here. Some of the things that she discusses are about embracing the idea of multimedia instead of being afraid of using it. She also states how we should be empowering students to write and be creative in doing so, letting them use any digital tools that they are able to.

     As far as Common Core and the NCTE Standards go, they are all relatively similar. Most of these standards are really just trying to get us to encourage students to think deeply, go below the surface of what we want them to read and write and dig into the deeper meat of thinking. Question everything. Analyze everything. Ask not only how to do something, but why we do it. These questions will make our students better thinkers for the real world. Not only will they be able to do things, but when they don't know the answers to things, they will have the power and ability to find the answers on their own.

     I am also really starting to enjoy the "Arguments in the Real World" textbook too. There are so many great ideas for lessons in there. The portion about the blog really made sense to me, because I myself tend to struggle with what to do with our posts every week, thinking that I am never doing enough. I also love the idea of including memes into the lessons on arguments, because they are such a big thing right now with social media.

    And to end my lovely post this week, in the spirit of the meme, I post this. Just as a reminder that when there are people fighting over things on Facebook, that is NOT a discussion, it is a heated debate. Most people do not understand the difference. Facebook is one of the biggest places to see online arguments, and no one ever seems to "win" them, they just go on forever.

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