C4T #1

The blog page I was assigned to is called Pondering Paige. Paige Vitulli is an assistant professor in the College of Education at the University of South Alabama. The blog post I am going to summarize is "EDU 301 Birds inspired by John James Audubun." After a field trip to the Mobile Musuem of Art, a group of education majors were assigned an art project. The field trip was to view displays of Audubun's artwork of birds. The students were each assigned a bird picture to replicate using only materials that will be realistically available to students in the classroom. There are very specific directions to the drawing that can be located on the Pondering Paige website.
In response to this post, I thanked Paige for including the directions to the assignment because it is an assignment that can easily be done with a science lesson or can easily be tweaked for a different subject. The most valuable thing that I received from this post was that the important thing about this assignment was that the materials used were "materials all elementary teachers could realistically possess, even under budget cuts and lack of support for the arts." - Paige Vitulli
Back in September 2011, Ms. Vitulli posted a video titled Pay For Grades: Does Cash for Students Work? The video stated that select students in grades 4-6 would give be given up to $100 in the summer if they passed certain tests. In return to the incentive, the school's test scores had drastic improvements. When the money incentive was taken away, the student's were less driven to succeed in the class and their grades dropped.
I commented on the post about my opinion of paying students for their grades. If I was a student, I would love getting paid for good grades. However, if you look at the bigger picture, it is not a great idea. The students are no longer learning to further their education. They are learning so they can get some money during the summer. I do not think incentives in general are a bad idea. Cash is just not the answer to getting our students to want to learn.