Cap’n Refsmmat’s Blog of Doom

I’ve often blogged about education in the past. As I am a high school student, it’s a topic that’s rather close to my heart.

I recently came across a like-minded blog post that spurred me into action. I’m a student: I can easily talk to dozens of teachers and students to get their opinions on the state of our education system. At the same time, I’m a website administrator: I can easily set up a website to spread my message.

These two facts collided shortly after I read the aforementioned blog entry. The Web is an amazing place to spread ideas and coordinate a grass-roots movement, so, why not? Assuming nobody’s done it before (tough assumption on the Internet), I think I have a new website to start.

What’ll it do? A variety of things, really. I think the key point will be to collect all of these ideas espoused in blog posts and personal websites into one neat and concise resource for students and teachers to read, then start spreading this around to teachers. If you’d like to help, or you know a blog post that has some helpful ideas, post a comment.

I hear people say they aren’t good at taking tests all the time. “I understand the material, but when I take the test, I fail!”

I can understand this problem for people who get excessively nervous and can’t think when they take the test. But for people who take the test with a sound mind?

I think this is a problem of understanding. I don’t think “not being good at taking tests” is a fair excuse; the problem is far deeper.

Refer to my earlier post for details.

PowerPoint seems to be a popular teaching aid. After all, it saves lots of messy writing on the board or the use of boring overhead projectors. And who doesn’t enjoy bulleted lists swooshing on screen complete with sound effects and little clipart stick figures?

I don’t.
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I spend quite a bit of my time helping high school students understand physics and mathematics concepts, so I’ve also spent some time wondering how I can better help them understand things. It’s a tough challenge, because I’ve never been like other people in terms of understanding — I’ve always been such a voracious reader that I can use my prior knowledge to make sense out of things.

I do not, however, see many other people doing the same.
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