Education Thoughts with Jay

Multiple choice tests are probably the most common types of tests in grades 6 through 12, and for good reason too. Students like them for the 25% or higher chance of getting a question correct, based on how much they have prepared for the exam. For teachers they are easy to grade and not too difficult to put together. As we begin our Flipped Classroom project in AEDU 209, the topic of creating multiple choice exams was talked about since we'll be having to do so for our project. The readings we were given on how to make good multiple choice exams were interesting as well. One question that comes to mind for me, is the effectiveness of multiple choice exams as compared to the effectiveness of short answer and essay exams. During my years as a traditional undergraduate student, I've experience many different teaching and testing styles, having attended three different institutions. My first two institutions were the University of Illinois- Chicago (UIC) and Moraine Valley Commu...

When many of us imagine a class being taught at any level above elementary school, we think of some teacher spouting off some lecture that takes up the entire class, while the students in attendance take notes at their desks and occasionally ask questions. This is how the majority of teachers in schools used to carry out their lesson plans, and I can almost guarantee that many still do. Well, ladies and gentlemen, times are changing! Whether or not that traditional way worked best before the information age, can be debated until everybody ceases to exist. Educational researchers have been searching, for years, to find the best way to teach students. Today's classrooms are a tad different than the classrooms of our parents and grandparents. Computers and tablet devices appear to usurp the longstanding place of books and teachers appear to be taking a different approach in their lessons. Gone are the days when every class guaranteed a lecture that spanned the entire class period ...

Never in a million years did I think Twitter could be used as a professional  networking tool. I've been a user of Twitter since 2013, mainly for personal reasons, and it had never occurred to me that people use it as a way to connect with their professional peers and colleagues. Late in my undergraduate years at Monmouth College, did networking occur to me. When I had decided to forgo any graduate level studies, unlike the majority of my peers in the other science departments, I began working on branching out and making connections in the working world. Networking for me began with going to my college's career center which then lead me to create a LinkedIn. For those of you who do not know, LinkedIn is basically Facebook, but for work and careers. For a while, I thought that LinkedIn was the only professional networking platform on the internet. I had tried using Facebook in the past, to network, but I had no success with it. Fast forward to the beginning of my Technology ...

I, for one, have always loved stories. Ever since I was a kid, I absolutely loved a good story, and I was blessed to have had parents that loved to read to me. From elementary school to junior high, my nose was always in a comic or storybook. As I got older, my love for a good story moved from books to movies and video games. To this day, a good story that I have not read in years will still be fresh in the back of my mind. So here I am, ranting about loving stories in this educational blog. What's the point? Recent studies by educational research show that information taught to people in story form, tends to stick best with us! It honestly makes so much sense! When I read this information in the handful of articles we were given to read in class, I had flashbacks to my time as a college student. For those that do not know, I am an alumni of Monmouth College with a B.A. in Biology. Truthfully, I did not like it very much. It was like nothing ever stuck for me! I always loved to...

Technology has been around for a fair amount of time, since the 20th century and has continued to evolve. From the rise of modern technology and the advent of the take-home computer system (computers have been around for many years longer than most people know) came the birth of the internet. The internet has revolutionized our entire way of life, especially with social media coming into public prominence in the early to mid 2000s. It seems like everything in the real world is tied in with the cyber world nowadays. When I first started using the internet, the times were different from today. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the closest thing to social media were Instant Messenger Chatrooms. Looking back, it could be argued that we were taught to use the internet based on what the previous generation's experience was with it, which was very little. The rule of thumb with chatrooms was to always use a fake alias, or a screenname,  and to never give out any personal information. T...