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I’m at the airport again, way earlier than usual — and I think that the security folks have been taking “be nice” courses. They’re friendly, engaging, and asking question, such as, “How do you like that brand of underwear.” Just kidding. But I had a great conversation with a young woman in blue about where to get Breathsaver mints in bulk.
I was just scanning through tweets for the first time in days and ran across some RTs of something I tweeted last week,
I tire of hearing people say, ‘We integrated technology because it’s what kids use outside of school.'”
I realize now it wasn’t the sort of thing that can be properly expressed in <140 characters.
It is not a bad reason integrate technology — to motivate learners with more familiar information experiences. But what bothers me is that it appears to ignore the greatest and most critical reason — that an increasingly connected, technology-rich, information-driven, and rapidly changing world alters the “what” and “how” of education.
We are no longer preparing children with the skills and knowledge that they will need for all of the rest of their years. In my father’s time, it was common to graduate from high school (or not), take a job, and do that job for the next 35 or 40 years, retire, and live another 10 years. Expectations were not much different when I graduated from high school almost 40 years ago.
But today, I suspect that much of what we teach won’t remain valid for five years after graduation — and that may be a generous statement.
Our focus should not be on using technology to make our students easier to teach. It should be on crafting learning experiences, within networked, digital, and information-abundant learning environments, where students are learning to teach themselves, and begin to cultivate a mutually common cultural and environmental context for for their lives.
Without contemporary tools and contemporary information environments — all we can do is continue to prepare our children for the 1950s — no matter how many hours they’re in school every day.
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Wow, that is a *very* old picture of Calgary. The downtown was more developed than that even when I lived there in the early 1980s. Now, tall buildings surround the Calgary Tower (center of your picture), almost dwarfing it.
Calgary is a lovely, happening place. I hope you’re able to stay for a bit.
At least there was enough of it there that you recognized it. I was wondering if anyone would. Unfortunately, it’s raining — not a common occurrence I’m told.
I just blogged a related entry before I read this; here it is, from particifaction.blogspot.com:
I think that the future of learning is self-directed, as enabled by web 2.0 (and beyond) technology. This may seem like a threat to contemporary (outdated?) educational systems, but it doesn’t have to be. If our job as teachers is (and has always been) to best prepare our students for their probable futures, then there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be doing that job to the best of our abilities at all times, regardless of technology-based cultural shifts.
Indeed, some of the things that we say we like to foster in students today include creativity, critical thinking, independent thought, collaboration, etc. These are lifelong learning skills: skills that are, perhaps, best and most relevantly taught through the use of Web 2.0 technology. They are skills that are not necessarily well taught in the environment of an outcomes-based, standardized testing education system.
To serve our students best, we need to adapt our pedagogy, and learn and teach Web 2.0 tools. This statement, I’m sure, will prompt a lot of “yeah, buts” from a lot of teachers: “yeah, but I don’t have time to learn it,” “yeah, but there’s a curriculum to follow,” “yeah, but there’s no money for technology,” etc., etc. Of course we have to make due with what we have, but the even bigger “of course,” as far as I’m concerned, is the “of course we have to advocate for meaningful staff learning time, of course we have to integrate use of these technologies into the curriculum, and of course we need to pressure Boards for the tools that will shape our students’ futures.” If we don’t do these things, I’m not sure we’re doing our jobs well…
David, I couldn’t agree with you more regarding our role as educators. Our focus should be on showing student how to use new tools, skills, technology; not just simply memorize facts and numbers.
As a science teacher my goal is the same. Science is constantly changing. You couldn’t find the letters DNA in a text book 50 years ago, now it is the foundation for the majority of life sciences. Students are best served by learning how to use the concepts and skills we teach in science to apply them to new and unique situations.
I would argue our job as educators in no longer to have students memorize facts and information, but rather to create an environment where students as you put it “are learning to teach themselves”. By doing so our students will not simply be prepared for their next test, but rather be given the skills they need to be successful in the rapidly changing world we now live in.