Comments on: Black and White Education

By: EJ Wilson

EJ Wilson — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 12:44:18 +0000

I had a great talk with one student in class the other day – trying to convince her that school was less about the content she was learning and more about the skills, such as critical thinking!

It’s a tough sell because the idea gets lost in the actual “doing” within a school. But like the students, and as professional educators, we need to see the value in the lessons we teach. Sometimes it’s as simple as explaining “why” before we teach something new.

I am however a HUGE fan of integration. Break down those walls! All classes should overlap, and all subjects should be fair game! Your History teacher should also be your English and your Ethics teacher.

By: Simon Oldaker

Simon Oldaker — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 08:55:20 +0000

Manage the march of technology in the classroom carefully. Making the exciting world of information available to students means making everything available to them. The young aren’t necessarily disciplined enough to stay on-task, indeed, they have been carefully trained to seek entertainment.

There is a lot of talk about this in Norway at the moment due to the sudden increase of 1:1 schools. My blog has some overview of the debates (in English).

By: Dave Maclean

Dave Maclean — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 05:00:30 +0000

I was recently at a school plan review meeting. The staff at this school was working on a rubric that measured the progress of students’ ability to think critically. The rubric was the result of the district telling them last year that they couldn’t make critical thinking a goal unless they could datafy it. Oh the humanity. Anyways…on the whiteboard was a cornerstone statement that the staff lived by:

Do not ask a question who’s answer can be looked up.

Nice.

By: CPDubbleU (twitter)

CPDubbleU (twitter) — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 04:11:19 +0000

I’d like to add to a specific part of Elaan’s post above. Elaan states, “Change is absolutely vital in our practice.” YES! I think of change as not only vital but actually the cornerstone of educational practice. Why are we here if our students are the same when we say goodbye? Learning = change, does it not?

‘Out with the old’ does not mean discarding our well developed pedagogy but, instead, it means tossing out dated and obsolete methods that no longer relate or effectively reach the students we teach.

What is really interesting is seeing teachers using iPhones, text, and facebook in their personal lives. They have Macbooks, surf the net for ideas, and email colleagues. Yet none of these technologies are used in their regular classroom practice (with the exception of research on the net). Why are so many still limited to stand and deliver, test, repeat when that concept is so utterly ineffective and BORING to us?

Once again David, thanks for the brain food!

By: Ken Allan

Ken Allan — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 00:08:56 +0000

Kia ora David!

I go with your idea of let’s go with the new but not discard the old because of it. You’re right about the tendency to chuck out ALL the old. I call it the bath the baby and the bathwater.

And you’re right to state that there’s nothing new in the approaches. Technologies have always been advancing. It’s just that technology is advancing at an extremely swift(er) rate to day. Also, society has lived through an age of use-once-throw-away. I think that a bit of this has tainted the way society now looks on any technology that’s been around a while, including some that’s on the web.

This has particularly been accelerated by
the way the audio and video industries have changed – that within less than a hundred years have seen, as you ably describe, changes that are huge – never mind the film in full technicolour.

Catchya later
from Middle-earth

By: Elaan

Elaan — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 13:57:31 +0000

Another problem inherent in this is that educators don’t want to be told that what they are doing is “wrong” (outdated, antiquated, redundant, obselete), especially if they have had success with it in their practice. I think that when trying to elicit change, it has to be less of a black & white approach, and more of a grey approach – less of the “what you’re doing doesn’t work anymore” and more of the “if you try this, not only will your life be easier and the kids will love it, but they will actually take charge of their own learning!”.

Yes, it’s a bit of a sales pitch… especially for educators that are more established or reluctant to utilize technology.

And the flip side of that of course is, if you are an educator, and are not open to change, then you are in the wrong profession! Change is absolutely vital in our practice. I think the key is to make the change less drastic and scary. Some of the very best educators out there are not technologically savvy (and are maybe even technologically-resistant!) but I am positive that if they were on board with the changes you speak of Dave, even more amazing things would be happening in classrooms today. The question is, how to get them there?