Dean Shareski posted an interesting blog entry this week in Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech about telling the new story. The title of his post is “Telling the Old Story”. Unfortunately, there appears to be a problem with his WordPress and I was unable to post this reply. So I just thought I would doctor it up a bit, and post it here.
In the entry, Dean includes a quote from the monthly newspaper of his provincial teachers association, describing the experiences of a teacher who was using technology in one of the projects that she has her students do each year. The quote closed with…
Zakaluzny explained that when her students had done similar activities in the past, many of them became frustrated if they made a mistake because trying to correct mistakes usually means beginning the activity again.When using technology, however, it is easy to alter the size of words, move graphics around, or insert more content without having to start over. Zakaluzny commented that students not only enjoyed this lesson, but also put more time and energy into making their posters just right.
I think that the example that Shareski used is right on target in illustrating the problem with the “Integrating Technology” story. Now that students are using computers and the Internet as a tool for their learning, and, oh yes, they’re enjoying it more and spending more time and energy on their work — we have integrated technology. We can relax now.
I’m afraid that we can never relax again, at least when it comes to continually retooling our classrooms and re-crafting our students’ learning experiences. Now here, I’m going to chide Dean just a bit. It’s what he asked for in his post. Dean says that we need a…
…new story about how learning happens, how technology changes the nature of teaching and learning.
This is absolutely correct. However, I think that the story that is going to change our classrooms into ever improving and adapting learning engines will come from outside the classroom. These stories should be told outside the classroom, and they should be told from an outside the classroom perspective.
Its not so much that technology has changed the nature of teaching and learning, but that technology has changed the nature of information and how the world works, and how people work and learn and play. Because the world that we are preparing our children for is changing so dramatically (and continuing to change), we must rethink the what, how, and why we are teaching our children, and retool our classrooms to accomplish new goals.
The stories will come from forward thinking educators. But we need to get those stories out into the public, and get parents, neighbors, school board members, legislators, and even presidents telling those stories.
I think that we should start working now on some new stories, and set a target of having a list of good stories available for Open House next year. We can make them available to teachers and ask them to select one or two of these short “did you know that…” stories to tell to their parents at open house, and to post them regularly on their classroom web sites.
I guess I need to put together a Wiki. Give me until next week. I’m home today, but off to the NSBA conference for the rest of the week and into the weekend. This could be an interesting project.
So David where I struggle a bit is that you say “its not so much that technology has changed the nature of teaching and learning, but that technology has changed the nature of information and how the world works, and how people work and learn and play.”
While I agree with your statement, it may easily be interpreted that our current instructional model doesn’t need addressing. Obviously the changing nature of information is causing the need to revisit our current instructional model. I guess when I use the word technology, I think of it in terms of changing information. Perhaps not everyone else does.
Dean, The statement that you question is entirely within the context of the new story. From the perspective of the classroom, I agree with you 100%. As I envision the new story, however, it is bigger than the classroom. It’s the reason why the classroom must change. Many people look at technology in the classroom, see new possibilities for new teaching and learning experiences and say, “This is why we should change” — and they’d certainly be right. But to affect dramatic change on a much broader basis (local/national/international), I think that the story has to come from outside the classroom and what we do there.
Now where I zoom in a bit, is the distinction that I frequently make between changing technology and changing information. I suspect that technology to most people is all of the tools and machines that have been invented, since they were born. It’s a lot of stuff, and it’s hard to vision out specific changes in education based on “a lot of stuff”.
However, information is something that everyone deals with every day. It’s the words they read, pictures they look at, video they watch, and audio that they listen to. Information is a common link between my schooling and that of my children. If we can make a case for how the nature of information has changed, and therefore, how education should change, then we may be able to paint a more coherent picture.
Sorry! I’ve been programming all day, and my thought processes are too mechanical right now.
Later!