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Our classrooms require a better window on the world than this… ((Han, Churl. “My classroom in Frieze.” Churl’s Photostream. N.p., 29 Jan 2006. Web. 8 Apr 2010. |
I frequently receive comments and e-mails from readers expressing their agreement with something I’ve written or said. And then they lament the realities. “But, I have only one working computer in my classroom.” “But, interactive white boards are a pipe dream for us.” “But, Internet is too slow and/or too filtered for practical use.” ..or “We’ve been told to stop using technology or any supplemental materials after March and use only materials designed specifically around test prep.
We are not working under these conditions because of our zip code or because of some unavoidably cyclical function of our reality. These constraints do not happen like weather patterns that we simply have to hunker down and wait out. They happen because of decisions that people make due to greed, misinformation, politico-social agendas, or ignorance.
That we continue to try to prepare children for the future under these conditions is not the problem. The problem is that there are some (many) who still believe that these conditions are good enough.
“What was good enough for me is good enough for ‘your’ children.”
My advice?
- Dream and decide:
- What you want your classroom to become?
- What kind of access to information you need, in order to facilitate learning?
- What kind of access to information does your classroom need for relevant learning to happen?
- What kind of access to information do your learners personally need to drive their own learning?
- Answer the questions,
- “What will your community’s children be able to learn in this classroom?”
- “What kind of relevant and compelling learning experiences might your community’s children enjoy?”
- Reject any technologies from item 1 that do not directly contribute to item 2.
- Take the answers to item 2 and turn them into a story.
- “Here is the classroom that is possible.”
- “Here is what your children will learn in this classroom.”
- “Here is how they will learn and what they will do with what they learn.”
- “Here is the classroom I want, the classroom your children deserve, the classroom that our future requires.”
- Tell that story. Set up a page on your web site called “My Dream Classroom.” Update it regularly. Share it with other teachers. Share it with your students, your friends, and the parents of your students.
Make its upkeep part of your personal professional development.
DW – that is absolutely spot on. And it surprising how simple actually assembling such “classrooms of tomorrow” can be.
These children (link below) are very articulate about their changed relationship with teaching and learning that resulted (I think I showed these two girls in Sydney? maybe?):
http://www.heppell.net/bva/bva3/greycourt.htm
S
Funny that you should use Churl’s photo of a Frieze Building classroom. That’s a building that used to be the old Ann Arbor High School, then a University of Michigan liberal arts building. That building has been torn down. A new living-learning community is under construction there that will house student dormitories as well as the Schools of Information, Communication, and Film and Video (as well as a few other programs). So the very classroom you depict in this blog post is no more … and will be replaced with high-tech, high-touch spaces for collaborative inquiry into how people, information, and technology interact. The University says it more eloquently here: http://www.ns.umich.edu/index.html?Releases/2005/Jan05/r012605c or view the live cam here: http://www.si.umich.edu/north-quad/site-cam.htm
So YES, it’s possible to change thinking AND learning spaces!
What a great post! Your advice is spot-on! I especially like the idea of setting up a page on your website and keeping it up to date. It’s like making a list of goals; Once they’re actually written, you’re more likely to work to achieve them.
Those that do publish their dream classrooms can you either post a link here and/or post a link on twitter with the hashtag #dreamclsrm
Thanks
What do you think about educational tools for students such as Koofers.com?
What do I think about Koffers? Here’s a line from their web site,
I suppose they serve a purpose, but they don’t interest me. Koofers and others of its ilk are designed to help student succeed at school, to excel in the game of school. I remain convinced, from experience, that there is still too great a gap between the game of school and the game of life.
What interests me are products that help students learn to learn by empowering them to gaze upon the world they are learning about and to interact with the world, not by giving them better access to the classroom and instructor.
David, I love this thought, and I hope to have the opportunity soon to post just such an article on my blog. I think the idea of creating it as a story is brilliant. Two thoughts occurred to me as I read it:
1. We should encourage our students, parents, administrators, board members, [insert other stakeholders here] to create these same stories. I think what they dream about would be highly informative to us, and comparing the student stories to the adult stories would tell us a lot as well.
2. Perhaps if all school planning, from curriculum renewal to building construction to staffing to scheduling, began with this exercise, we might have a shot at attaining the dream sooner than we thought possible.
This has been encouraging because as an pre-service teacher traveling to different schools and seeing the listed problems, I loose hope. Thank you for the word of encouragement.