Podcast Reflection #11: NPR Education; 1) School Budget ABCs: Ads Plus Bus Equal Cash 2) Pressure Mounts To Ax Teacher Seniority Rules 3) The Way You Learned Math Is So Old School 4) Miami's Education Success Story

 The first part of the podcast discusses advertising on the sides of buses. From the information presented in the podcast I would not be comfortable taking a side on the issue. From the teaching standpoint I can see where the extra money from the advertisements would be an excellent help to fund the school and activities. It would be helpful but I am always hesitant for big businesses to get involved with funding because I feel like they would use that leverage in some ways. But other than that the podcast mentioned that the students cannot remember what are on the sides of the buses so, currently, it is not affecting them. I am hoping for more studies in various areas of the country to be done. Besides the advertising on the bus issue this podcast discussed the issues of mathematics. Many parents are figuring out that they are not able to help their children in math anymore because of the way math is being taught. This is not a good scenario for the student or the parent. This has happened due to the fact of the creation of calculators that do the arithmetic for you. Students know how to use calculators very well but struggle with the paper and pencil method. This latter method is not widely used anymore and has become somewhat obsolete in the real world. A mathematician that was on the show said that the math taught now is not so much memorization as it was before but an understanding of the number system, but still advocates for students learning their multiplication tables as we did in the old days. From his perspective, the best way to do this is to memorize it rhetorically. I agree with this statement because it becomes very hard for students to do all the processing of numbers in their head and it is easier to memorize it like we would memorize spelling of words. It is hard to say what is the best method when things in the past have worked, but new developments are working well for some students also. I think we should have a combination of old and new techniques so the students who understand one way can use one methods and others can use different methods.

Picture Credit: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/12/28/earlyshow/living/ConsumerWatch/main1167398.shtml