Thing 16 - Teach Digital

I was very interested in what the college students were saying. I was hearing them worry about their education and wondering if they were getting the right education for their future. I remember thinking the same thing when I got my MA in special education. Am I learning the newest, best practices for teaching special needs children. The songs the same the words are different that's all. What I also heard the kids saying is that there is more than one right way to do an assignment and that the professors were not willing to allow the students to deviate in any way from the peramiters the prof had set. I wonder why? Is it fear? If the student can meet the crideria of the assignment through technology why not? I know as a special ed teacher than technology can and does make a huge difference in how the child does the assignment. Why would that change as my student hits college age?

I loved the sarcasm coming out of the teacher's mouths in The Teacher Movie. Being a bit of a sarcastic person myself I could laugh at the silliness of the whole thing. Sadly in many instances it is true. I do hear teachers complain in the teachers lounge, I do hear an occasional teacher say what do I care I have one year and I'm out....but I think that is true in any profession.

Do Schools Kill Creativity - wow I needed to listen to several parts of this talk over again. I do think we kill creativity in school every day. I think part of the reason I teach special ed is because I view learning differently than other teachers (?) I don't know if that's true but I think about my kids and how they learn best and apply that to their daily learning by any means I can use to get them to learn. The traditional curriculium does not work with my population. Sir Ken Robinson said that intelligence is diverse and dynamic. I agree. The statement he made "We have to rethink the fundemental principals of how we're educating our children" was right on. I just also read an interesting article in a magazine that was talking about A & P grocery stores. It said that the owners kept on running the business the way they had always ran the business even though what made them a success was the way they marketed groceries during the Great Depression. After WWII consumers demanded more variety, bigger stores etc., but A & P wouldn't change because it they wouldn't change what had always worked for them before. So one of the biggest grocery chains in the US became eventually nonexistant because they wouldn't change. I thought, gee, isn't that what we're doing in education in many respects? We need to change what we're doing and teach to a future that we know nothing about. A huge challenge for educators and since we're not encouraging enough creativity in learning (according to Robinson) then who in our future will be creative enough to design a new system?

I constantly think about technology and today's students. I have no answers but I have a lot of questions. Technology is here to stay. Some of it I like, some of it I wonder about. I see my grandchildren and other children walking around with their game boys or hear them talking about all the time they spend on their Wii's and I wonder what is happening to their brains. My grandkids like to spend hours on their Wii, as do their friends. I don't think this is a good thing. I wonder about their brains and how they are being rewired for a new faster way of thinking. Is this good or bad? I do not like how they do NOT spend quality time reading and ask my self will reading just for pleasure become obsolete?

On the other hand, I teach special education. I had a student in my class who needed technology to communicate with anyone. Thank goodness we have the technology to help him express his every thought. Imagine being very young and having to live without being able to communicate your wants and desires. He uses a Dynavox http://www.dynavoxtech.com/ and when looking for his exact system on their web site I see it has already been replaced by new technology. I wonder how often his will need to be replaced or updated. They're quite expensive for the small device that they are. Or I should say his first one was quite expensive. I understand around $10,000. I'm hoping that they have come down in price similar to how computers have.

We recently (as in this week) have had smart boards installed into 5 classrooms in our school. Already one of the regular ed teachers has reported that one of my students seems to have a much easier time viewing the smart board as opposed to the white board. I think that the smart boards will be great if we get the training we need to use them proficiently.