Working in education as a teaching coach, I get a lot of exposure to new web tools and ingenious ideas for their use. I have bought into them and the concept of 21st Century teaching. I can think of dozens of ways to get classroom lessons involved with higher Bloom’s skill sets. But getting teachers to think that same way--they need a coach. Technology has never intimidated me. I have been involved with high end user technologies all my life from aviation to photography, from computer maintenance to technical consulting. Technology is great. However, I need to add that it is a great “tool”. Technologies alone do very little for me or for education for that matter. The science that brought them about is always interesting and very, very erudite anymore. It is above the huddled masses with whom I reside. So, the crux of my job is to daily come up with ways to bring the now technologies as learning tools into “classrooms from the past.” I do not exaggerate. When your kids walk into the average classroom of today’s schools, they traverse a time warp as they pass through the door frame. Back, back to teaching methodologies of the distant past. I know teachers who miss ditto machines. That is just plain creepifying!
Not to say that everything from the past has got to go--far from it. The basics are still the basics and there are basic things to learn at all levels of education. There are many didactic lessons out there of great importance. What I am saying is, we are expecting students to learn only how to function in a single, specific classroom. They walk out of a world where so much is provided, easy and even taken as given into classrooms that treat what they know and use everywhere else as tainted. These poor students are handicapped immediately. They nearly become nonfunctional. As nonfunctioning students they struggle to get the simplest of lessons. They are like a fish out of water. They are in a class where they have to dig matter from a book of what copyright? As compared to, for instance, browsing the web where they search with a tool for specific information and find up to the minute results in seconds? Which one is real to them? Remember now, kids want relevance. (That would be relevance to them.) The collective creativity of the web talks to learners where they are. The information can be and is often a combination of visual, aural, and kinesthetic origins. This is just what the educational experts say how people learn best. That fill-out worksheet is looking pretty drab at this point compared to interactive blogging over the finer points of a piece of literature, or math problem solution technique, or science experiment. They not only get to give their two cents worth, but can see what everyone else thinks, get to consider and comment other points of view and maybe do it with a person who lives in another country; and all this in real time. How about a Spanish class where the conversation is with students who natively speak Spanish? That is exciting. That is real, or, as we say in the vernacular, authentic. The good old days of teaching--they are here at last! Well, with a little coaching.
Not to say that everything from the past has got to go--far from it. The basics are still the basics and there are basic things to learn at all levels of education. There are many didactic lessons out there of great importance. What I am saying is, we are expecting students to learn only how to function in a single, specific classroom. They walk out of a world where so much is provided, easy and even taken as given into classrooms that treat what they know and use everywhere else as tainted. These poor students are handicapped immediately. They nearly become nonfunctional. As nonfunctioning students they struggle to get the simplest of lessons. They are like a fish out of water. They are in a class where they have to dig matter from a book of what copyright? As compared to, for instance, browsing the web where they search with a tool for specific information and find up to the minute results in seconds? Which one is real to them? Remember now, kids want relevance. (That would be relevance to them.) The collective creativity of the web talks to learners where they are. The information can be and is often a combination of visual, aural, and kinesthetic origins. This is just what the educational experts say how people learn best. That fill-out worksheet is looking pretty drab at this point compared to interactive blogging over the finer points of a piece of literature, or math problem solution technique, or science experiment. They not only get to give their two cents worth, but can see what everyone else thinks, get to consider and comment other points of view and maybe do it with a person who lives in another country; and all this in real time. How about a Spanish class where the conversation is with students who natively speak Spanish? That is exciting. That is real, or, as we say in the vernacular, authentic. The good old days of teaching--they are here at last! Well, with a little coaching.
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