Response to two visions of today's students

Two videos to respond to
A Vision of K12 Kids Today
A Vision of Kids Today

A Vision of K12 Kids Today

A Vision of Kids Today

Response

Create, analyze, evaluate, and apply.  Are these just words that children hold up on whiteboards to convince us to let them text and tweet in class, or are they something else?  They should resonate with current and future teachers, as these words are the exact ones that should appear in higher-level, high quality lesson objectives. 

Were teachers able to help kids learn to evaluate sources, create original works, and analyze data before new technologies came about?  Did the introduction of smart boards and wikis usher in a new age of successful teaching, leaving behind an era stretching back to the beginning of time when all teachers only lectured, focusing on coverage, and failed to achieve that impossible to define goal of understanding?

No.

Creating using a computer program is just an updated version of creating using construction paper and glue.  Are there benefits? Yes.  There is a level playing ground for students who do not possess strong scrapbooking skills but can use their computers as well as any other student. There are drawbacks too though.  Some students only have access to computers in school.  Can you assign a project that requires both a computer and more time than can be given in the classroom?  There are many questions.

One thing is certain from both of these videos.  Kids love technology.  They believe that the use of technology in the classroom is not only positive, but also essential.   Technologies often take a while to filter into a classroom, and by then students have already mastered and sometimes grown bored with the technology.   Having students already familiar with your chosen technology is optimal, and it seems that students are willing to oblige by forging ahead of education and trying every new technology themselves first.

A last point – both of these videos were created using a basic video camera, pens and paper/whiteboards.  While they featured images of new technology, and were shared on youtube, they were creations using technology that is older than any of the students in the videos.  Sometimes it is not how new a technology or project is that engages students, but the freedom to create that does.  While new technologies often are more interactive, with a little creativity and a little more time invested, teachers can come up with projects that allow students to create, analyze, evaluate and apply using what they are learning.

Initial Statement

There are a lot of tools that a successful teacher must use.  Patience, a diversified approach, empathy, and strong classroom management skills are some of the tools that allow a teacher to connect with a diverse classroom with varied learning needs.  One thing they all have in common though is that they are fundamentally part of the teacher or their approach.  The physical tools of education though – paper, whiteboards, overheads, etc. – are often taken for granted as the time-tested tools of the trade.  However, as much as many people who support cutting education funding would like to think, the technology of the classroom has evolved as well.

The students of the 1980’s are many of the teachers today.  These former students grew up in a time before ready or any access to computers, cell phones, and the Internet.  To use hyperbole, the distractions their teachers had to compete with were twelve channels on television and sandlot baseball.  Technology has changed now and teachers can chose to ignore it, or try to utilize it to both engage students and to broaden the options that a teacher has when designing lessons for multiple learning styles.  While engaging the students in the first half of the effort with teaching, actually giving the students a chance to learn the material is just as important.  This is what teachers should be focusing on with technology – how to use it to help students understand material that traditional approaches have not been successful for.  If a student who would have struggled twenty years ago can better understand the reason for the fall of the Roman Empire by creating a flowchart online, then that is the reason for technology in the classroom.

Everyday, students use technology that older, current teachers never would have dreamed of seeing in a classroom.  Laptops, blogs, wikipedia and other new technologies have made finding information easier than ever.  It also makes finding incorrect information far easier.  If a student does not know how to use search engines and find scholarly sources, then what is the use of all of this amazing technology?  A student’s responsibility with technology is learning how to use it appropriately.  In the classroom, students should be exposed to the proper way to sort through information, organize that information, and analyze that information and then from there it is the student’s responsibility to continue those practices outside of the classroom.

Assessing students is the final component in teaching a lesson, but should be planned first.  It is the role of the teacher here to confirm that the students understand what the content was and are able to utilize that new understanding.  Technology like Power Point, Prezi and other programs can make putting together a final project more interesting and even help communicate ideas better than traditional essays.  Teachers should not shy away from assessing using these new tools even if they are using them in traditional ways such as book reports and persuasive speeches.