While most of my previous blogs may have seamed like rants that schools need be ‘modern’ and to try and keep up with the times and I just found a video on teacher-tube that looks at the same issue. Shift-happens totally blew me away, it really makes you think about why we need to teach problem solving and creativity not just content, skills and simple processes. Some of the ideas proposed are amazing, consider the implications of teaching students for jobs that don’t yet exist. Think about the importance of the web and social networking sites if that many million children are already using my space and billions of Google enquiries are made every year. This is just enormous evidence of the changes that are already happening. The video claimed a weeks worth of the times newspaper contains more information than a person was likely to come across in a lifetime in the 18th century, it makes being a future teacher sound both daunting and very exciting. With that much information out there it becomes more important to know how to find it, use it and how to share it. More than anything this should get you thinking…..
The notion that schools are backwards thinking, boring places may not be new(Wallis , C & Steptoe, S., 2006), but Wallis and Steptoe (2006) has come up with some potential solutions to fix this age old problem. The answer was to teach students skills, values and attitudes, to give them the ability to collect and analyse facts but not the get them to memorise facts which will soon be forgotten. To bring schools up to date they must reflect the globalisation and technology that are so much a part of today’s ever-changing culture. Schools today have the opportunities to connect with students around the world, students have opportunities to use technology to open up new possibilities and more exciting, individual ways of learning. However, schools too often follow tradition.
It is like saying ‘If it’s not broken why fix it?’ well our education system is not broken, but instead of aiming for students to merely grasp basics we could set ourselves a higher bar and start pushing the boundaries of what is possible in education.
It seams the research is in! Incorporating ICT into other Subjects has been found to be strong motivators for students and can help keep them on task (Becta 2003).
Contrary to popular belief ICT was not found to prevent students working things out themselves (Resnick, 2006) instead it was found to increase the time they spent on academic pursuits outside the classroom and to broaden their knowledge. Students were also found to take more care writing drafts and gained self-confidence from the higher quality of work produced with the aid of spell-check and publishing programs. This provides more examples of the need to integrate subjects and to increase use of technology as a tool rather than a stand-alone subject.
I have just finished reading Computer as a paintbrush(2006) and found it a very fascinating reading. Today in schools there is a lot of focus on computers as an exact method or as a branch of science, but this article inspired me to think about computer learning in a new light, as a creative endeavour almost like an art.
The author strongly believes in the use of technologies that can challenge children’s thinking and get them to work creatively in a fun and playful manner. It also looks at the negative technologies which are pre-programmed to elicit a certain response and require no (or little) interaction from children such as the TV. As I teacher I believe it is important to be able to recognize the difference to be able to get the most out of technology based learning.
I strongly agreed with any attempt to move computer based learning from the realms of simply publishing word documents and internet research to a creative and exploratory medium with a strong emphasis on fun and meaningful learning.
Published in:
Singer, D., Golikoff, R., and Hirsh-Pasek, K. (eds.), Play = Learning: How play motivates and enhances children’s cognitive and social-emotional growth. Oxford University Press. 2006. Computer as Paintbrush: Technology, Play, and the Creative Society. Mitchel Resnick. MIT Media Laboratory
The notion that schools are backwards thinking, boring places may not be new(Wallis , C & Steptoe, S., 2006), but Wallis and Steptoe (2006) has come up with some potential solutions to fix this age old problem. The answer was to teach students skills, values and attitudes, to give them the ability to collect and analyse facts but not the get them to memorise facts which will soon be forgotten. To bring schools up to date they must reflect the globalisation and technology that are so much a part of today’s ever-changing culture. Schools today have the opportunities to connect with students around the world, students have opportunities to use technology to open up new possibilities and more exciting, individual ways of learning. However, schools too often follow tradition.