Book Description

Just imagine millions of students, young and old, all over the world, sitting still and listening. Are they happy? I think not. It has been observed by educators and confirmed by non-verbal/mathematical evaluations that there is a measurable discrepancy between the potential and the actual performance of many students. Conclusion reached is that the way we educate our students in educational establishments, does not produce successful or happy people. The purpose of this book is to identify and describe the raw material we have, the students and their environment, the tools we have, books, computers and the product we hope to produce creative and productive students. To achieve this we need to design activities that will allow the students to be involved with each other and independent of each other. We must also take into account special gifts, varied abilities, and handicaps. Activities which do not address the above conditions such as text books exercises, rote learning, and various busy work tasks are killers of all the attributes we love in our students - spontaneity, creativity, enthusiasm, curiosity, and humour. During my last few years teaching K-12 I came up with activities that were mostly student generated. They presented their work to the class and we graded it together. I have spent much time on classroom management for without organization, routine and order chaos reigns. Equal understanding by both, students and teachers, of the benefits of the well-run classroom will add much to the learning environment. I also have taken some time in coming up with grading strategies. As we spend much time on testing and grading we need first of all to free the teachers from this tedium, and then examine whether the benefits to the students warrant so much time spent on the testing process. Perhaps my most rewarding task was the organization and design of a grading rubric. We had so much fun. Most importantly the teacher with a hundred and fifty student reports ha