Friday, November 12, 2010
Are Schools Becoming "Dangerously Irrelevant"?
Watch this. It has helped me think about this issue more carefully. I like what he says about the responsibilities of schools and in general, I agree with his conclusions. I still wonder if there is a place for basic knowledge of facts. The word "facts" always makes something sound passe..it is not popular to talk about knowledge in this way. However, it would be nice if students understood the foundations and history behind our country's birth. Whether we live in an information age or not, we still must navigate the tricky landscape of politics. Also, whether you can access a multiplication facts table online or not it is pretty inefficient way to live if every time you need to make a minor calculation you have to access some piece of technology. I am still wondering what these new schools should look like, how we can help make technology a tool for connection rather than disconnection, and how we can make sure there is still time for disconnecting from the machine and connecting with the people in the room.
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Great that you found this! I like Scott's work and still understand why he sometimes stirs up a lot of controversy on his blog comments :).
ReplyDeleteI think that even the biggest tech geeks understand that we still need forms of basic information to provide context and "big picture" understanding. I think that the disagreements happen in whether we require kids to memorize (because *no one* believes that kids remember stuff much beyond the test) things in isolation or if we teach those "facts" more in contexts of bigger problems to be solved or projects to be created.
Amen, we need people to navigate the really tricky world of politics -- and quite apart from technology, most people in this country still just don't bother voting...And sorting out politics now means also sorting out all the deceptive media campaigns, which is really technology literacy at some level.
So yes! I agree with all you say here.
And then what?
That's where things can really get fun.
With programs like AR or all the "Electronic worksheet" software that schools like, there really is not connection. It really is kid and machine.
But right there with your Touch, kids can connect by sharing photos of their school with e-penpals in Kenya and get photos back from them (there's a a great project on Flickr where kids all around the world take a picture out their classroom window at the same time every day and share them with kids around the world),
...or blog back and forth with the students in the local high schools, or co-create a wiki with kids after school -- even though some kids have gone home and some are working at school.
They can watch videos that their classmates made and show them to their parents, and they can send an audio recording of them reading their brilliant writing to grandparents on the east coast.
Schools have always been about disconnecting kids from each other because learning was thought to be all about individuals "learning" things in quiet classrooms (unless the teacher was talking) and showing one by one that they could repeat it back.
So what if tech is part of connecting kids in ways never possible before? He's talking about that here around minute 10.
And part of getting past memorizing in quiet classrooms is kids using what they can access there in their hands to build amazing projects together in school because we no longer need to spend *so* much time telling kids things?
What very cool things could we do then?
Wow, Lauren-where did you come across this? I really enjoyed listening to this guest speaker. He points out 3 functions of school that I am now going to have to contemplate--as they relate to what we are doing with technology:
ReplyDelete1. Prepare students to be socially functional
2. Prepare students to be masters of the dominant landscape of their time
3. Prepare students so that they can be economically productive (so that they do not live in their parents' basements until they are 40 years old).
The speaker also points out that there is a big shift away from manual labor jobs, there are disappearances in routine cognitive tasks (we can go to a kiosk to do business as opposed to dealing directly with a sales-person. Technology replaces cognitive work).
I could relate to these statements: There is a ton of content out there. Some of it is junk some is phenomenal. It is our task (yours and mine--especially as we are in tech class and as we begin our teaching careers) to weed through the mass of information and decide what is good and helpful and what we can ignore. Because of the use of mobile devices, we can print or share information anytime and anywhere.
As I watched, I had an uncomfortable feeling start to tug at me, especially after our conversation the other day, about our kids and the type of technology (or television) that they are exposed to. His address has me questioning how Hailey will be prepared for the economic/job outlook/landscape of the future. How does this make you feel about preparing your own kids--even befor we start to consider the kids that we are teaching?
It makes me question what types of technology I will really be implementing in my practice, what the schools will have their hands on (what is available) and whether or not I will at some point transition from being the teacher at the front of the room to a delegating the role of learning and teaching to the students, using information and technology. What are you thoughts?
-J