Freire really struck a chord with me as well when I first saw his work. Immediately, I could relate to the feeling of having knowledge deposited on me from some of my former engineering profs. Interesting question about how Freire would view technology in the classroom. One thought is he may think it could be a useful tool, but could also be a hindrance if used inappropriately further reinforcing the banking model.

Can definitely relate to your story regarding early education experiences. I was lucky to have fantastic teachers through elementary school that pushed me to reach my potential. This set me up to continue being successful through high school. These early teachers were crucial in my development and provided me with the confidence to be successful throughout my entire educational experience (…which continues…).

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Never seen that random essay generator. Pretty neat. There is one for computer science that can produce a fully formatted journal paper with the names of the authors you want. Oh technology!

Especially in foundational courses, you really have to think outside the box when looking to apply critical pedagogy. Since many of these concepts have been around for a very long time without changing, it is easy to present them to your students as facts and be done with it. Something which may be useful is trying to find ways for your students to come to the foundational realization while you lead them on the journey to new knowledge. It can definitely be more difficult and require more prep to figure out how to guide your students to a fundamental piece of knowledge instead of simply telling them. However, when you lead students to an answer, it likely will be more meaningful.

Personally, I think the current generation of students are quite remarkable. Their ability to find information is unparalleled. Obviously this has to do with access to the internet and other mediums, but one of the things we can do as educators is help them synthesize the information they acquire. This is the key to harnessing the current generation of learners and helping them progress to the next level.

Unfortunately, I have experienced professors who believe they can simply deposit knowledge. As an engineer, these were the classes which I do not even remotely remember the subject matter. While it may be more prevalent in K-12, it is still a model which is used by many in higher education.

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Are any of your programming projects group based? A couple of my friends have ended up doing programming for their jobs after they finished their graduate degrees (one at Facebook and the other at Tilt). Both have mentioned that all their projects are team based, but much of their educational experiences were individual programming assignments. Just a thought about how to bring some of the real world into the classroom.

The idea of this class is really interesting to me. Being able to help students find their way in their journey to understand their own learning styles should definitely be something we encourage at the undergraduate level. Even being exposed to this type of course early on in their academic career could help them as they progress through their undergraduate degree.

The future learning piece is so important. Finding ways to spark a students interest so they go out and do follow up learning on their own is really one way to have a large impact on a student. In addition to the points you bring up about future learning, I would say making the material fun, especially at the middle school level will really have an impact on encouraging future learning.

Interesting take on making connections in the classroom. This is definitely a great pedagogical approach to push students to bring their own lived experiences into the classroom to promote learning.

Cody, diversity is a hot topic with university administration. However, I do think it is important that we have the conversation about inclusion and diversity in academia. Pedagogical methods are important, but we must also be cognizant of how the experiences of our students within academe may drastically differ based on race, gender, and many other aspects of a persons identity. Trying to understand our differences is vital to promoting an inclusive classroom.