Comments4Teachers Week 10-12

For this assignment, I am reading Tom Johnson's Adventures in Pencil Integration. The first post I read was entitled, "A Party for Pencils." In this post, Mr. Johnson describes how sometimes as human beings, we find ourselves focused on things that don't really matter in the long run. Technology is important, and it's very useful and innovative; however, we still need to focus on the projects being completed with this technology. Students may write a paper and include some really amazing technological stationary and photos, but the content of the paper should still be the main focus. Don't let your own focus be swayed!

This week I read another post by Tom Johnson. It was called "pencils and pointless prep." It gave an example of a student known as "cynical gifted boy." He asked the question, "why do we use pencils?" The response given was "It's a learning tool. Why do you learn?" The response the student gave was all about preparing for the future. He learns to prepare for tests, middle school, high school, college, work, and retirement. Mr. Johnson makes the wonderful point that we need to learn for the now, not the future. The future is important, and you do have to prepare for it in certain ways, but it's not against the rules to learn in the now.