DIZON 1

Gabrielle-Jan Dizon
September 15, 2016
Expository Writing 101:EI
Essay 1 - Rough Draft

Educations Role

In Cathy Davidsons written piece, Project Classroom Makeover, she discusses how as
technology evolves, our educational system must also change to adapt to the new ways of
thinking discovered by these advancements. The main anecdote of her article was an experiment
conducted by Duke University that consisted of implementing an Apple product, in their case the
iPod, in an educational environment. Davidson also tells us about her mother-in-law, a teacher in
Canada, and how her teaching style was a method of bringing out the talent of her students. I
agree with Davidson in saying that the education system in place now is narrow-minded. It does
not stimulate creativity or aid in the development of the problem-solving skills that are needed in
this technological movement.
Education served as part of Americas process of industrialization, as it was the seen as
the most efficient way to train potential workers(Davidson 57). It is possible to think of the
traditional classroom as an analogy to a factory in a sense; the teacher would have the role of the
supervisor or boss and the students would be the workers. In this hierarchal setting, the teacher
provides the direction for the students to carry out, learning to pay attention as directed
(Davidson 57). This method of teaching would apply well to the past as most of the jobs in

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America were in factories, where one had a specific task and only had to be told what to do and
that was it.
Although this method is not a viable option anymore as Davidson says that the
increasing mismatch between traditional curricular standards of content-based instruction and the
new forms of thinking [needed], (60) are growing as most jobs one can get with a degree are
those that hold a great value to problem-solving and creativity. This is one of the reasons why
she was a supporter of Duke University selecting the iPod to integrate in the classroom. The
experiment showcased a form of inquiry-based problem solving (Davidson 60). As this study
was based off no curriculum, the students were free to develop new and innovative ways to use
the iPod in the classroom setting.
This goes into another point Davidson brought up in this piece, crowdsourcing, defining
it as outsourcing to the crowd (Davidson 51). Students would collaborate to create
applications that could be used to help them in their studies. In a sense this broke down the
hierarchy of learning as the university wished to discover what the students could teach them.
Davidson saw this as a great opportunity to see how the digital age could benefit them all.
Letting the students create their own softwares plays into one of the principles of crowdsourcing
as stated by Davidson, being that the community most served by the solution should be chiefly
involved in the process of finding it (Davidson 51). The iPod is marketed towards the younger
generation as a means of entertainment but she is saying that the marketed demographic can also
help to improve and evolve it.

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Davidson brings up the various uses that students as well as teachers have been able to
use the plastic device in their classrooms. She tells of how students of the School of
Environment released and audio documentary about a Northern Carolina town and the growing
concerns of lead paint in the buildings. They would bring their information together via a course
website and edited it to be released at the end of the course. In this piece, she also mentions the
use of these audio functions in the medical field to listen to all possible heart arrhythmias in an
actual exam as well as having a diagnostic use for other doctors. It was also very useful in the
music department as an easy way for students to share with their fellow students [to] listen and
critique (Davidson 53). Students would also use the device to record lectures for easy access
when any time was available. This revealed the power of crowdsourcing in a sense, that the
community that something, in this case a product, is created for can help to make it become
something even greater than expected.
People had their doubts in the experiment due to the unconventionality about it. This
comes from that narrow mindset that has been engraved in the education system since the
Industrial Revolution. This is the age of technology where problem-solving plays a major role
but our school system is still focused on feeding information based on tests. Davidson mentions
that as we narrow the...skills we test in schools, more and more kids [outside] that spectrum
will be labeled as failures (Davidson 61). We do not live in a cookie cutter society where the
same solution works for every situation. It is vital that critical thinking and problem solving
skills are also focused on in the classroom as education is supposed to help develop our unique
skillsets that we use throughout our lives. Davidson includes an anecdote from her childhood to

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explain this concept well as she well understood the relevance of the Gettysburg Address and the
Preamble of the Constitution and was able to write a two hundred page essay about the pieces
but was unable to memorize either one.
The education system should be one that embraces individuality and challenges the
student while at the same time being able to adapt to the moving trends of society. It should not
be limiting how people think and putting them inside a box. Learning is not simply being told
facts and memorizing them. It is a processes of experiencing new things and being able to think
in new ways with the guidance of instructors as well as the guidance of fellow peers. As this
whole world is connected now, there are infinite sources to learn from.