In the Ted Talk video, G. L. Yang explains his life working with comics. He highlights the educational potential they have through the description of his experiences with them as a high school math teacher. He found through his work that comics tie in verbal and visual effects which aids students in comprehending topics or themes, in his case, math. The students reading the comics had the ability to determine how slowly or quickly they could go through, an effective “remote control” was given to them. In addition to this Ted Talk, G. L. Yang is one of the authors of Secret Coders. Theses comics establish and teach the basics of programming while also offering a story line to go with it.
Hopper is created as a real and engaging character as she deals with the struggles many teens do– divorce, moving, making new friends, etc. The purpose of the story line is to keep the audience engaged and give them something to relate to while learning new topics. This makes it easy for the reader to grasp the necessary knowledge provided within the text. In the article about tapping into parallel universes, by Hall and Lucal, superhero comics are advocated for use in the classroom since they connect sociology to everyday life. Using comic books in general ties in imagination, but usually superhero comics are those that make cultural assumptions about many realms. Male or female power roles and the stereotypes that go along with them are easily seen in this type of graphic novel. Race is additionally apart of this assumption. Many questions can be brought up for discussion, and the article offers the reader two ways to teach these types of comics, giving teachers the background and support they need. Teachers can also have their pupils conduct new research on these novels in order to bring out new interesting topics not yet discovered– every time these books are used in a new setting, a new point is always pulled out. The article effectively states that you can’t go wrong by using these comics to parallel sociology to life. The last work was an article by Collins and Halverson about the technological revolution and how it is changing the schooling/education system. Education is lifelong and this revolution is bringing new ways to learn that deviate from traditional schooling. They have many differences such as but not limited to: custom learning v. uniform learning of schools, a system where the teacher is the expert while a system where there is expansive diverse knowledge online anyone can access, and the amount of coverage in each type of education. In addition, the article presents the new systems technologies can fuel like homeschooling, online workplace learning, learning centers, and web communities where people can connect and chat. Technology provides a new era where students rely less on authority: the state and parents, and can access what they want to know whenever they want to know it. Lastly, the article addresses the pros and cons, making it an effective argument by showing what could possibly go wrong and then refuting it with the good points. The author illuminates that technology could create a cultural and economic gap, but has so many benefits that outweigh that cost.
In my algebra 2 math class in high school, my teacher used a “flipped classroom.” This was similar to Yang’s first method of recording lectures for his students, but rather than watching in class we watched them as homework. I didn’t particularly like this system because even though we had the ability to skip back and forth, not having the teacher face to face was difficult. Doing our written homework in class seemed pointless, and during the videos I always wanted to ask questions. While I see how Yang’s choice to create comics could be intriguing and may work for some students, I don’t think it would work as well for me. I believe this could be because I have been cultured to the tradition of lectures given in person where I have visual notes and audio information. As much as I don’t think the comics would have been useful for someone like me, even though it is all visual, I would like to try it once to see how I feel.
Would you want your math class to be taught via comics when the teacher wasn’t present? Do you think it would benefit you or be a detriment to your learning?
EDU 185: Gigi's Blog 
I do not know if I would want a math teacher to teach via comics because I don’t know if it will work. If I had to choose now, I would not prefer it because I don’t think it would be as efficient as lecturing the traditional way. Since there are many steps and a lot of possible types of problem a math skill can come with, I think that it will be hard to show all of it in comics. I think that it will hinder my learning because I am also not as interested or familiar with comics than I am with textbooks because that is how I’ve been taught my whole life. However, “Secret Coders” might have changed my mind about comics and to use them to teach, but I am not yet fully convinced in a subject like math. However, if it was a different subject like English where one is taught the different spelling tricks or grammar, I think that it might work. I also think that not every teacher has the ability and skills to teach using comics, especially in a subject like math. I would also not want a substitute teacher to teach me in a form that I do not quite understand well enough, and I think it would be harder to understand a substitute teacher than the regular teacher because there is already a connection established.
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