Prior to reading this weeks articles and approximately half of the book, "A New Culture of Learning", I did not think about technology in the classroom because it is generally outside of my daily life. My oldest daughter just finished her kindergarten year and I am in no way an educator. But I think once you know to pay attention you can see aspects of the 21st century scholarship debate creep into our Pike classrooms. For one thing, my daughter goes to a computer lab at school and plays educational games and is being familiarized with computers.
Having said that, I think there are lots of ways the school (she attends Fishback Creek Public Academy in Pike Township) could increasingly incorporate technology into the class curriculum. For example, they went on a field trip to the Pike High School planetarium this year. While I think that's cool I do think they could use that as inspiration for other trips. I recently discovered something called World Wonders by Google; I was playing around with the application and thought that it might be a really awesome way to take American kids on "virtual field trips" to some of the most famous world heritage sites - places we might not have a chance to visit otherwise and seem much more interesting when experiencing it at a 'street level' as opposed to just reading facts in a book.
Despite all the potential, my main concern and question is: are parents ready to embrace the new wave of learning? I think that changing educators minds is a little bit different as they live in the contextual space, they can physically see the effect and benefits of using the newer literacies. But for parents I think there is a lot of concern about what is a game/gamification, how much screen time is too much, can you afford the technology to keep up with what is required in the classroom? All these questions and more seem to be an important distinction I didn't see addressed directly in this weeks reading.
I'll have to check out the World Wonders site-that sounds great! As an elementary teacher, with a lot of experience in Kindergarten, I appreciate your perspective as a Kindergarten parent. I can understand the concern about technology "gamifying" education. I have found that kids don't take tests or assignments that are on the computer as seriously as they would a paper pencil one. If they don't understand a question, instead of thinking about it, they'll just impatiently choose an answer and move on. This is a real issue in the younger grades, because we do NWEA testing on the computer, and I've seen many kids just randomly choose answers to questions that I know that they know.
ReplyDeleteI love your question. As I discussed in another response (that keeps not showing up), I think this is one of the reasons for Common Core math..it is more difficult, it's more time consuming, but it teaches conceptually rather than through memorization.
ReplyDeleteInteresting thoughts on gaming. I'm curious of your thoughts as well. Do you think the speaker below has a relevant point? She is the author of one of our books on the list in the course. I didn't pick it but she sounds pretty neat to listen to.
https://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world?language=en
Kyle, great question and good thoughts. Technology has permeated our lives - yet for many of us - I don't know if we can ever be completely ready for all the changes and opportunities that come our way as a result. There is just so much out there. Educators may see the benefit of using technology in a classroom, but just being aware of the choices of tech resources to use can be daunting. I agree that parents may find it even harder to keep up.
ReplyDeleteKyle:
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing your cartoon about our new digital learning. It made me laugh and think about my own children. Despite the fact that I really love technology and all the things it can do for us (yes I am one of those people that owned an original Macintosh Computer in 1984), in my parent role, I find myself questioning my children's use of technology all the time. My son has a Chromebook for school and they have several digital texts, complete and submit assignments online, etc but sometimes it seems like a lot. I found an article in US News with 4 tips to help parents embrace Digital Education but I think the biggest thing we can do is educate our parents.
http://www.usnews.com/education/high-schools/articles/2011/10/25/4-tech-tips-for-parents-to-embrace-digital-education
I know that my son's school hasn't really provided any guidance to parents. What have you seen with your own children? Do you feel that they've kept you "in the know" and that non-technologically savvy parents can keep up or are our attempts to integrate tech into the classroom undermined by parent's lack of no-how?
As a Spanish teacher, we visit sights all of the time in the Spanish speaking world that we obviously don't have the time or money to do during the school year. Your driving question is interesting to me because, I don't think parents are ready. The parents at my school want to see good test scores on the AP and SAT, I don't think that their ability to work with another classmate is extremely important. You have given me something to think about and for that I thank you.
ReplyDeleteKyle,
ReplyDeleteI like your question about if parents future ready? We spend a lot of time getting students future ready that I think parents are left in the dark. When I began a few years ago at my current school, we were not using textbooks in the math classroom. I didn't really agree with this but so many parents saw no value in the ipad and just wanted us to have textbooks. I really think it isn't so much that parents don't like technology, many of them probably use the same technology in their jobs and at home. I think for most parents their main objection to technology is it is different, and they translate different as not as engaging or effective. I think this stems from much of our home technology is used for entertainment, so they see the incorporation of technology as a method to entertain students. I think one thing I have done is I try to make technology processes easy for parents. They get frustrated by different learning management systems and lots of apps that they have never used before. This was a great question and it may always tend to be an issue. When my own children are in high school 12 years from now much will be different than it is now, and I will have to learn much of those new technologies. I think this is the thing many parents are afraid of.
Kyle - I appreciated your candid reflections. I think that there are lots of opportunities to engage parents around this new kind of technology supported learning. So many of the digital programs that students use in school are also accessible at home. I think we really need to engage parents in the classroom and the possibilities for doing this digitally are far beyond the capabilities that I had when I was teaching.
ReplyDeleteSomething Bethany said made me think about an article I read a long time ago titled: "Television is "easy" and print is "tough": The differential investment of mental effort in learning as a function of perceptions and attributions." The title kind of says it all and I'm guessing it might apply to screen time today. Basically, the researchers found that kids perception of how hard the medium was was directly related to how much mental effort they invested in a task. The article is a little dense but still an interesting read if this kind of thing interests you.
Here's a link to the abstract: http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=buy.optionToBuy&id=1985-10765-001