Robert Leneway, 2011
We are living in fascinating times. It is both exhilarating and challenging. Powerful emerging technologies, data systems and communications have converged to change how we play, work, communicate, learn and even what we think about. It is fundamentally changing our institutions and support systems, especially schools. Christensen, Johnson and Horn, (2010) claim by 2020 over half of the U.S. student will be learning online and will reach a disrupting tipping point when tax payers will ask do we still need classrooms.
To adapt to overwhelming amounts of information, and continual interaction with visual media and game playing, researchers tell us that the newest generation of K-12 students have neurologically changed their brains to try to keep pace and literately see and learn differently than their parents and grandparents, in that they see and remember visual images in place of text (Carter, R. (2009), Feinstein, S. (2004), Goldstein, 2007) Kandel, E. (2006)., and Small, G., & Vorgon, G. (2008)). The television is being replaced by computer screens, mobile devices and game consoles as primarily sources of information and entertainment (Prensky, M, 2006). Today’s paper textbooks are about to be replaced by intelligent, colorful, multimedia response programs that fit on mobile devices such as iPads, Kindles and smartphones. According to Aponte, G, Levieux (2009), the new interactive games require a decision every 1-2 seconds and rewards every 7- 12 seconds. Meanwhile, our schools, our classrooms and our curriculum have remained relevantly the same for decades.
At the same time, recent media attention toward the state of education has multiple hands trying to gain control of our educational systems and the content they teach. Recently, legislature like No Child Left Behind and governmental threats of public sector takeovers has taken much of the power and funding from programs that needed it. It is clear from this media attention that public education is being attacked by powerful enemies. Public education has to change or die. Perhaps the greatest hope for responsive change to both changing student learning needs and external threads comes in the form of educator’s attempts to develop coherent curriculum program changes.
In a recent interview, (Leneway, 2011) a fifth grade teacher said: "As I look at my class today compared to my classes ten years ago, I can really see a difference in interests and the way students spend their spare time outside of school. As students are evolving with the times, their interests that we, as teachers, have become accustomed to are changing. My avid readers in class are now downloading books onto their “Nooks” instead of bringing their books to class. Students are texting and/or messaging via Facebook on their free time at home; and the majority of my students can play and “master” more and more video games that I have never heard of and am clueless about…..More and more of my students are “antsy” and more apt to “play” with technology than use the traditional ways of learning without utilizing technology. I have found myself adjusting and changing my lessons/projects that I teach over the years to keep them engaged."
As a another high school teacher said during an interview, “Education can adapt and embrace the 21st preparing students better for a world that has technology at its core of almost everything we do these days.” While another teacher reported: There are better ways to do things, so we do them in better ways. Why would education be any different? Yes, math is still math: but math is much more efficient, faster, and easier to learn when using electronic programs and smart boards. English is still English: but using a word processor for a 20 page report is much faster, more efficient, and much easier than handwriting a 20 page report.
In their best selling book, Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns, Christensen, Horn and Johnson 2008, 2011) claim that “for America to stay competitive, … we need to rethink our understanding of intelligence, re-evaluate our educational system, and reinvigorate our commitment to learning. In other words we need ‘disruptive innovation’.” The challenge to school leaders is how to provide a coherence and relevant curriculum experience during “disruptive innovation.”
4 comments:
The digital student! I agree with every word that you mentioned in that article. Technology has changed so much that even a young person like me can be behind in the advancements. When I research and find what the younger children use complete tasks or find information, I sit in shock to know that they have deprived themselves of traditional study methods and source. There is the reality that teachers may have to change the way they instruct due to the way our children learn and seek information. The big difference is the “everything” is digital for them.
Today’s children often find themselves in their cell phones, television or computer. With that being said, our children need to be taught in ways that are efficient to them (if you want to speed the learning process). I agree with changing the way we teach, but I wish that a couple subjects stay the same. Although there may be several different ways to teach math, but that type of information must be processed in the most powerful computer known to man (the human brain). If we become totally dependent on technology, then we are not being fair to ourselves. There would be no use in being educated if we let technology take care of our daily operations.
I also agree with you on becoming totally depended on technology, but we also need to recognize that it has changed the kid think, and learn.
I think that technology in education is important and that as educators, we need to be finding ways to integrate more technology into our classroom everyday. The problem that I see is that students begin to "zone" out of the tangible "real" world and become entrenched in the virtual world. As a teacher, I know that students learn differently than I did in high school eleven years ago. My students used video cameras in my woodshop and I used an interactive white board daily, but this technology supplemented what I was doing as a teacher, so many people want to replace the teacher.
Students need to have a teacher that is encouraging them and helping them on their way, the students also need to have interaction with one another. I have worked with people that have shut themselves off from the world and are tied to their devices. These people are not interactive and have little “real” world life skills. We need to have a balance between technology and the way things used to be.
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