I have a big tool box. I am one of those people who love school supplies and can be very creative. In the education world there are lots and lots of tools. Some of these tools can be electric, or they can just be regular things, like a white board.

Like I have said previously, I work at the Sylvan Learning Center in Richmond and there we have lots of tools. We mainly have manipulatives though. Sylvan is like a very tiny classroom. We only teach three students at a time, but we have access to all kinds of manipulatives. We have a white board for teachers to show students examples of problems and we have fraction cubes, clocks, colored counters, and many more items that the students can use in order to get a better understanding of a concept.

In the actual classroom though, we could have many more things. Reference books, blackboards, televisions, computers, coloring items, and projectors are just a few of the tools that can be used in the classroom. Teachers can use almost anything as a tool for education. I take that back they can use anything as a tool they just have to know how to use it themselves and what they are going to use it for.

To answer some of the questions for Nate’s post “Personal Learning Environments” I think that the teacher’s tool box and the student’s tool box could be the same. We would just use the tools in different ways. For example, if the teacher was teaching geometry and they were working on a unit that required the use of a compass, the teacher would teach the student how to use the tool and then allow them to use that tool to work on the problems. However, I am assuming that there are differences in the two toolboxes because the questions ask what you can learn from the others toolbox; however I am not sure what the differences would be.  But no matter what tool we use, as long as we are using it for the purpose of learning we are creating more learners.

I’ve read and thought about the article about in-person education and I agree that online education isn’t for everyone but at some point in their educational career. This world is moving into technology quickly and everyone should have some experience with it.

In the article, Jane Arnold mentioned that she likes working with people and that when she can’t work with people anymore than she will not teach. However, in all education you are working with people. It may not be face to face but we are still working with people through an online connection. Sometimes it is a little difficult connecting with those people but we still manage to make it work.

She also listed a few reasons as to why online learning would not work for some people and claims that in the future there may not even be onsite classes. However, her reasons for why the online learning will not work are the very same reasons as to why we will always have onsite courses. I think the reasons that she gives are good reasons but there are ways to change them or enhance them. One reason she gave was that it is uni-sensory. Online courses are mainly a visual thing but we can add more to our sites to make them oral. We can add videos to blogs and webpages. Turn up the volume and listen to lectures or experiments/examples. If we want more interaction, reenact the experiment/examples. Not having a computer/internet or not knowing how to type may hinder the experience of online learning but it should not stop the student completely. There are ways to get the internet or access to a computer. This is one of the main reasons that we will have onsite courses. We have classrooms which have internet capabilities and allow students to have access 24/7. In some high schools, we issue laptops to students like we do textbooks. As for not knowing how to type, we can all learn to do that. I’m not the best typer but I get by. I have never taken a typing class nor had someone teach me what I should do. I just hunted and pecked for so long that I know where the keys are and have a system that works for me. I will admit that reading hyperlinks is sometimes hard for me to. That is why, I try to print the screen that I am looking at, if I can. This way I have reference to it and can highlight and not have to keep scrolling up and down on the screen for information that I have previously read.

So online education is a thing of the future we just have to determine how it will work best for the things that we want and/or need.

I’m a little behind in my writing but I have been doing some thinking, which is quite shocking. But since I have a long drive everyday and no radio I have a lot of time to think.

So, I was thinking about the 16 questions and final paper for an online course and I decided that I like this course a lot more. I used to love courses where I knew exactly what was expected and could finish whenever I wanted to and didn’t learn a thing from them. This course is more involved and I learn something new everyday. Sometimes, I feel like I am not one of the smartest people because a lot of the things we talk about are new to me. I may have heard about the topics in other courses but like I said, I had those online courses that are answer questions and write a final paper and I didn’t retain any of that information.

I am also taking two other online courses this semester. Both of them are math courses and I have only had three or four assignments in both courses. I love math but I am not liking these courses. Yes, they are slack but I’m to the point in my education that I actually want to learn and remember the information and not learn it for now and forget about it. The other thing I don’t really like about the course is that the teachers are horrible at responding if you have questions. We are supposed to communicate with groups and with teachers if we have problems but the people in the course do not participate or answer questions in a timely manner. You may not hear this much but I am one of those people who likes to hear when they are wrong so I can go back and fix it or change it. I learn more from my mistakes then from learning it the first time. I like to make things better. I tutor math and I love it when students see me get a problem wrong, because 80 percent of the time they know exactly what I have done wrong. This leads me to another reason why I like this course. Because we are graded every week I have the opportunity to make up for mistakes or lack of writing and thinking, where in other courses you can’t do that. If it is wrong it’s wrong and that’s that.

I’m not saying that the 16 questions and final paper are bad assignments; I’m just saying that there needs to be more that goes along with them.