Creativity and Education in the Classroom

The videos from class on Monday has shown the difference in cultures and how all students are different because of what culture they have been brought up in.  We seen in the videos that the those kids had the determination to figuire out what they wanted to do on the computers, because it was something new to them and interesting.  Does that mean we need a new way at looking at education in the classroom?  I am not saying that we do, we should just see more of the students creativity that can be brought into the classroom.  In the videos it said that the students that learned from them computers ended up having the same scores as those with a teacher in the classroom.  The students that learned from the computers, they learned on a basis that they wanted to.  They would go and learn what they wanted, when they wanted on there own time and schedule.  While those kids that are in the classroom, have been in the school for a certain amount of time learning one thing after another.  Giving the students the space of learning what they want would seem to let the students be more relaxed.  Although if this would happen in the classroom the teachers would have to make sure that the student are at least working towards content that has been discussed and make sure they do not end up running out of time for the students to learn everything that students should know in that grade level.  This would then make it harder for teachers to teach to the test.  This would make it so the students would learn what interests when they wanted to learn it and then be able to fit in other content when needed.

But from the class discussion on Wednesday about teaching to the test, this would make it so the teachers would have to make the tests more personalized to what they have gone over. After reading this article, it made me realize more about testing and our nation. http://fairtest.org/facts/howharm.htm In this article it explains how these standard test are actually hurting our students test scores and that our nation is starting to depend too much on testing.  In the world today, we think that test scores mean everything, that it will tell us where we sit compared to other countries.  In all reality these scores are never going to have the same meaning.  In some countries not all students get to choose how far in education they go, only the top of the classes get the chance to go to college.  While in a nation like ours, everyone gets and has the opportunity to go as far as they want to go into education.  So the level of learners are all different.