Chapter 5 Rethinking Education

Wow another long chapter! The title of chapter 5 was “The seeds of a new System of Education” The beginning of the chapter lists everything that the chapter talks about. It says that there is an explosive growth of home schooling, workplace learning, distance education, adult education, learning centers, educational television and videos, computer based learning software, technical certifications, and Internet café’s. (Yep a mouthful)The first part of the chapter talked about homeschooling. Apparently this is a really good thing to do to your kids if you can do it effectively. According to the text children who are schooled at home score significantly better on standardized tests in every subject area. This is kind of a cool fact because the parents of homeschooled children only spend 3 to 4 hours a day working with their kids. The chapter then moved to workplace learning, and reeducating their workers. Many businesses are resorting to this method as we advance with new technology. They even pay for it in certain situations. The chapter then moved onto distance education. This has been around longer than most may think, even longer than the internet. PBS had a big help in education many people around the world at the same time. There are even k-12 schools that are completely distance learning. The chapter then moved onto talking about learning centers. Private vendors of education such as learning centers like all the other items in education are continuing to expand. This is a very prominent practice in Japan.

The next part of the chapter talked about educational television and videos. Some examples of this include Barney, the Electric Company, CNN C-Span, discovery Channel, and many more. The authors pointed to the fact that kids watch a lot of TV. so why not show them something entertaining and educational? The next heading talked about computer-based learning software. This talked about video games such as the Sims, and world of war craft. This to some may seem like just computer games, but actually they can be very educational and can help student learn many things such as reading. The last two headings talked about technical certifications, and Internet cafes. There are majors in colleges now that are exclusively computer based, and the people who gain this major are certified to work with all sorts of new technology. Internet cafes provide a bunch of people to meet together and not just drink coffee but have access to internet. With this power you are not grounded to your home or business to receive internet, you have another available location.

This chapter was super long and was more informative than helpful in convincing me that technology is really an awesome thing. Some cool things that I read about were the facts that technology is helping so many people around the world receive education. Through the process of distance learning, online schooling, and educational television millions of people can learn at the same time in a million different locations.

As a future educator I will be very open to complying with all of the titles talked in this chapter. I was in a distance learning language class and I loved it, so maybe my students will be able to experience the same thing.