Week 5: Is Knowledge Obsolete?

           In the past several weeks, I have spent a great deal of time reading articles and other resources in which experts claim that technology is the wave of the future.  Those of them who use it in their classrooms will succeed, while those who do not utilize technological innovations will not.  For this week, I watched a video by Sugata Mitra, in which he showcases the advantages of using technology even for those students who have never seen a computer before.  They quickly teach themselves how to use the machine, and use the programs within it to teach themselves foreign languages and even advanced biology. 

            While this success rate is astounding, Mitra proposes a very controversial world view.  While it is not outside the norm to say that schools are obsolete, Mitra goes so far as to question if knowing is obsolete.  Although this world view has not been explicitly stated in sources I have read in the last few weeks, many proponents of a classroom centered around the use of modern technology emphasizes how different today’s world is from the past.  There seems to be an undercurrent of feeling in modern education, which holds that technology, is not just a tool but must be at the center of student education.  While it cannot be denied that technological innovations such as tablets and smart phones offer opportunities and tools which had been unavailable in the past to all students, many seem to believe that one cannot be educated extensively without the use of modern technology. 

            As Dr. Ruth Reynard has pointed out, society and employers expect students to be well-versed in both academics and technological skills. While understanding and implementing modern technology is very important, I believe that because technology is a tool, students must possess a fund of knowledge because there will be many instances in which they have limited or no technology at their fingertips.  It is I those instances when there academic knowledge will prove to be most essential and therefore cannot be neglected simply because we possess technology which allows them to forego a deeper expertise.

Week 4: Flip or Flop?

For a traditionalist like myself, the idea of putting a student in control of the classroom is, in many ways, an illogical idea. For students to learn they must be taught. Yet, how can students learn when the teacher becomes merely a guide. When I first started reading about flipped classrooms, I was skeptical; but as I began to delve into the research behind flipped learning, I saw there was actual evidence backing up this model of instruction. Put simply, there are not enough hours in the school day for many students to fit in the required classwork needed to succeed. Whether it is because of sports or other activities, students often do not receive the required instruction time they need. This circumstance is what compelled two Colorado chemistry teachers to attempt to use this revolutionary model of learning.

These two discovered that in this setting the teacher does not deliver content but instead acts more as a guide, which leads to greater interaction between students and the teacher as well as one another.
While I do believe that the idea of a flipped classroom, has merit, I am, as always, reluctant to throw full support behind a relatively new idea. I do not, however, believe, there is any “silver bullet” method for teaching students. As a tool, I believe it can be very useful. In fact, after studying the flipped classroom, what struck me most about it was how similar it seemed to my own college education. Content is read outside of class while class time is reserved for interaction with the teacher and fellow students. This, I believe, is the setting in which the greatest amount of learning can occur. In fact, it is the environment in which critical skills, in particular are honed. So while I do not think that the flipped classroom model will become the standard classroom setting, I do believe that teachers can use it as an effective tool for educating and engaging their students.

Week 3: "Listen! And I shall tell you a tale..."

The opening line of Beowulf captures the imagination and attention of anyone exposed to them, whether they are read or heard spoken aloud.  This ancient mode of learning, through story, has been used throughout the ages.  The Iliad, The Odyssey, Beowulf....all were spoken tales related to the listener in such a way that they would not be forgotten. 

 In an age of bullet points and slides filled with "just the facts," it is refreshing to see that people are still using this ancient method of teaching.  In fact, the website Digitales exists for just this purpose, providing a resource for teachers and others to use in teaching lessons through story.  This method is becoming more widely used in other areas besides the classroom.  Presentations made in the workplace also make use of the story as a medium for communicating ideas in a manner which listeners and readers can easily remember and recall.

While people have always loved a good story and often used them to teach, we are only just beginning to understand the science behind why telling stories is so effective.  Using stories to teach is effective because it activates parts of the brain which would experience the actions of the story.  Stories make things "come alive" in a way which a recitation of facts cannot, because they only activate the parts of the brain related to language processing.  Although this method could be used in the study of many different subjects, it would be especially effective in teaching history, a subject which quite often is thought of as a memorization of dull, uninteresting facts involving people dead a hundred years ago.  By using storytelling, the events and people of those eras will live again in the minds of the listener, just as the opening of Beowulf resurrects the ancient hero for the reader today.

Week 2: The More Things Change, The More They Stay the Same

For the past week, I have been reading about the use of technology in the classroom.  As someone who has always felt that the use of technology in education should always be minimal, the readings and videos of the past week have been something of a system shock for me.  I do not own or use either a tablet or a smartphone.  In fact, I refused to use email until college, and only then because it was the primary mode of communication with my professors.  I've always been one who shunned newer technology, waiting until it had been proven and tested for a long time before using it myself.  As an educator, however, I realize that I will not be able to afford such a long waiting period before using newer technological tools in teaching curriculum.  New technology should be implemented as soon as possible, once it has been tried and proven.  Yet, technology must always been a tool.  The end of schooling should be for students to be educated, able to master subjects and use them with or without technological tools at their fingertips.
I recognize that the constructivist model of education has become more prominent in recent years, and as Melissa Taylor has written, this change is for the better.  Education should be child-centered because it is not enough for educators to teach--students need to learn.  When I was a child, I learned the times tables through rote memorization, drilling again and again until they were memorized.  Once I had them memorized, I could always return to them, using them in math problems far more complex in nature.  I still prefer to use those lessons instead of a calculator, and often it comes in very handy.  When I work, I have to handle money all the time, and restaurant patrons don't want to wait for someone to figure sums on a calculator.  I still do use a calculator in my day to day work, but as a tool, to augment a skill I already possess.  When I was a substitute teacher, I met too many students who were unable to solve simple sums  and needed the aid of a calculator to do so.  I worry about how a tablet with special apps installed could be used to solve problems even more quickly, enabling students to complete many assignments without learning the lessons which will serve them later in life.
As handheld technology has become more affordable and more accessible, I can see how it has replaced much of the more expensive, older equipment which students have used in the past.  This change would, I believe, be especially helpful for special education students.  Many pieces of equipment which can only do one thing and are expensive can be replaced by one small tablet like an Ipad.  Yet, as Anya Kemenetz has pointed out in her article for NPR , such is not necessarily the case.  The studies which exist to support  such a finding are very limited in their scope and number.  Furthermore, it is difficult to determine if it is because the Ipads themselves are a useful tool, or if the newness of the technology is what keeps students attentive.
I think over the next few years, as the newness of modern technological advances begins to fade, we will see if these new inventions will begin to disappear from the classroom, or will take their place along side the calculator and blackboard as useful tools in the education of young students.