Special Blog Assignment

"A World Where No Grades Existed."
This article, written by USA Today, explains how teaching students should be more like playing video games. It also said how more and more teachers are "flipping" their classroom so that students are doing their homework at school and watching lecture videos at home. The last idea explained in the article, was that possibly in thirty years, there will be no more grades. As a future teacher, I would want my students to know what their grades were so that they know what to improve on.

In the first part of the article, USA Today mentioned that teaching students should be like playing video games. Now I do have to admit, playing video games are fun and challenging, but there is a time and a place for playing video games and it is not in a classroom. I would, however, play mind games with the students to get their brain working so that it is easier to memorize facts rather than "drilling it into their heads" per say. When I was in Elementary School and it came time to memorize the multiplication table, the teacher had us play a game to help us recall how to multiply four by seven and so on and so forth. Sure, Angry Birds is a fun game to play because it gets you thinking about how to knock down the forts to crush the pigs, but I personally do not think that students will get the benefit of how to use that knowledge in real life.

The second part of the article mentioned how teachers are now "flipping" their classrooms. The whole concept of this idea is that there will be less time lecturing about how to work certain problems and more time actually working out the problems. I do have a pro and con about the whole idea about "flipping" the classroom. The pro: less time lecturing during class time so that the teacher can help students who do not understand how to work out a certain problem. The con: having to watch the video lecture at home on the computer. I thought that the whole concept of "homework" was so that it was meant to be worked on at home and not school, hence the name homework. What happens if the student does not have a computer at home? Then they would go to school early the following day to watch the video. Well what if the school does not have computers or iPads because of funding issues made by the school system? Then that student is probably going to fail because of not being able to watch the lectures. I do not think that that is fair because how will the student succeed in life if everything is converted to watching videos? Simple solution. Have tutoring sessions so that the children will succeed and not fall behind.

The last point made by USA Today was that in about thirty years from now, there will be no such thing as grades. I will admit that grading papers and assignments are time consuming but in the end it will all be worth it. The reasoning? Students will know what they need to work on so that they can improve their scores. I am for grading because I want my students to know what the certain areas are that they need to work on so that their scores will become better.


In conclusion, I believe that teaching should not be like playing video games but more like logical games so that it will benefit them later on in life. I also think that "flipping" the classroom is one's own choice. If you want to record the lessons and make your students watch the videos then by all means go right ahead. But I personally do not think that recording lessons will help the students in working on their homework. Lastly, grades are essential in schools because it allows the student know if they are behind in a certain area and where they need to work to improve their score.