Cuban Chapter 1

Cuban Ch. 1

Cuban discusses some themes familiar to current education practice. First, Cuban talks about the paradox in education of constancy amidst change. I believe the only constancy is that there has been an educational system and that system is constantly going through change. Cuban discusses some of the changes that schools have undergone. One thing is for certain education is in constant change.

Second, Cuban discusses the teacher-technology relationship or lack of relationship. He tells us historically teachers and has been “inflexibly resistant” to new technology and this continues into the current classrooms of today’s schools. As discussed in previous blogs there are several reasons why teachers are so unwilling to use the technologies available, the most relevant of which is lack of training. Teachers feel as though their instruction is hindered or “wasted” in trying to use the technology because they can’t get it to “work”.

Third, he talks about the contradictory social messages that teachers are faced with. Cuban lists the following four notions teacher face and that still rang true today:

· Socialize all children, yet nourish each child’s individual creativity.

· Teach the best that the past has to offer, but insure that each child possesses practical skills marketable in the community.

· Demand obedience to authority, but encourage individual children to think and question.

· Cultivate cooperation, but prepare children to compete.

In my opinion, teachers are continually asked to perform tasks that are above the realm of human possibility. I didn’t get the memo that along with my certification came superpowers (and I didn’t get the superpowers either- sad face, pouty lip). I feel that administration has added so many extra duties, paper work and documentation that instruction is suffering.

Cuban also echoes ideas mentioned in both Postman and Hughes. Discuss those ideas.

I did not see any direct and clear ideas of Postman and Hughes in Cuban’s writing. Postman and Hughes did discuss the enchantment that technology had on some people. Cuban also talked about those “who saw solutions to school problems in swift technological advances” (pg. 5). We have read about the spell technology cast over people.

There may have been others commonalities I am not seeing at the moment.

Cuban mentions a research study (p 13-14) that imputes a casual relationship between film use and student achievement. Research the terms “media comparison study” and “no significant difference research”. What do you find?

The research study Cuban discusses implied that films motivated students to learn.

I Google searched “media comparison study” and the following address provided a partial answer. A media study is “Media studies is an academic discipline and field of study that deals with the content, history and effects of various media” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_studies).

“No significant difference research” was the parameters of another Google search and yielded the following website: no significant difference research. It is a website devoted to research study outcomes between alternate forms of delivery. Another interesting result was http://www.thejeo.com/Basu%20Conger%20Final.pdf . This was a study comparing face-to-face learning with distance learning.

In statistics, I learned that “no significant difference” meant that the results were not significant. The results could be attributed to other factors and therefore the hypothesis could not be proven true.