Blog Post #14

2.     Teachers Know if you have opened books and spent time reading the information with the new tracking software, CourseSmart, on computers for textbooks. It shows the teacher how many times a student opened the book and for how long. After analyzing the data, teachers concluded that students procrastinated yet still made good grades on the quizzes. This made the teachers think "is the course too easy or is the book not a good enough source of information?"

3.     In my opinion, CourseSmart is a waste of time. Regardless of how good quizzes and tests grades are, students will lie and procrastinate because it is their choice on how much effort to put in what what study habits work best for them. If you have students read from a textbook more than you teach, what are you there for? Everyone learns better when they learn hands-on and engage in activities; not just reading a book. My teaching strategies will less likely revolve around a book and more around in-class participation  This way you can see and understand how each student views things and how the way they interrupt ideas and techniques.

4.     If I were a student and my professor tracked my study habits I would lie, especially if I already knew what the book was talking about. I could open the e-text and leave it opened while doing something completely different and my professor would never know. Like I said earlier, teachers should be more focused on their teaching techniques than how many students are reading the book. If you teach me well enough, there is no need to read facts out of a book!

5.     If I talked to the teacher of the class in the article I would ask "why do you care so much about how long students are reading the book?" I would also ask why don't they take the key facts out of the book and put them into their lesson plans? Students should be doing comprehension quizzes on what was discussed in class rather than reading a book.

6.     The students of that class are probably thinking the same thing I am "why am I being tracked? The only thing that should matter is my quiz and test grades." So I would ask them how they felt about the CourseSmart program and if they think it helped them or if they just lied about the amount of time they actually read the textbook.

7.     My comment to that article would be I'm glad teachers are concerned about our study habits,  but why are they concerned about how much time we spend reading a book when they should be concerned with how well we are comprehending the information?