Tuesday, May 27, 2014
Team 1- Chapter 1
Chapter One discusses the need for balance, with regards to technology, in the lives of both children and the teachers that educate them. We are often bombarded with studies that indicate the amount of time children spend in front of technological devices is doing great harm to them socially and developmentally. Had you thought about the idea of teachers also living unbalanced lives; heavy on traditional instruction, light on digital experiences? Do you believe this to generally be true? If so, do you believe that teachers who rely on traditional methods are less effective than teachers that utilize current technology? Why or why not? Some may argue that students need traditional teaching practices and "old-school" instruction and activities to foster their imagination and their ability to focus on one task at hand. What is your opinion on this argument?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
You bring up a good point about adding an additional learning style. Technology use may fall into auditory and visual learning, but I agree with the research that is showing a change in digital student cognitive processing and long term memory. Thoughts?
ReplyDeleteWell in my view I do think some teachers are unbalanced, I even catch myself as a new teacher a little unbalanced just because a lot of my education was done in the old school method. Yet, I think there needs to be that balance of “old” and “new” school techniques with students because they do need the social interactions yet there still has to be the integration of the technology. What I have noticed with in my last 2 years teaching is that the current generation of students are lacking the ability to pay attention as Jukes mentions in the beginning of the chapter. But as teachers it becomes essential for us to make the lessons active and engaging so we have to find that balance so that students are focused and eager to learn. Juke also mentions on adapting out behavior which is something as teachers we do all of the time especially when teaching a diverse group of students from all different learning styles, and levels that we should be able to adapt to the new culture of teaching. I tend to do both “old” and “new” teaching because I feel that students benefit from both, I try to encourage something with technology in my lessons to make it engaging.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I was questioning was how can we get students better accustomed to the digital life when some may have not have the access or the experience with the technology ( I see this a lot because a lot of my students come from very low income families)?
I had been thinking the same thing. I live and work in a low income school district. We are blessed to have a lot of technology in our home at our fingertips, but most of these students do not. Would teaching with a technology rich curriculum benefit these students as much as students that are already fluent in technology? Would the technology become more of a distraction to learning if were used heavily in an environment that I described? I think that your question is a great one. After reading Diane Ravitch's book Reign of Error, I have to agree with her conclusion that poverty is THE greatest obstacle to success in school. One study that she sites in the book was conducted by PBS and it discusses the ability of America to mass produce vehicles, but not mass produce high quality schools. The Rocketship charter chain began in San Jose, CA and was designed to put students in front of computers for one hour a day, supervised by low paid aides. Specialized software adjusts to student learning and educational needs. (Ravitch, 2014). The students become very capable of earning high test scores that require them to point and click. Great idea, right? Well, turns out that the technology experts, top executives of Google, eBay and Apple actually send their children to one particular school that emphasize physical activity, and creative hands on projects....and has NO COMPUTERS AT ALL (Ravitch, 2014). What do you think that tells us? Why do you think they choose that environment for their children when they are at the forefront of technology that is changing the world?
DeleteMy concern is that change in processing and memory. It seems that since information is so available it is now not necessary to publish things to your memory. For example, the capitals of states. Why would someone need to remember this if they can just "Google" it? There are two ways to think about this, as we see in our reading. One: it isn't as necessary to remember these facts,as they can be looked up at any moment. Two: by not entering these facts into memory, students are damaging their ability to retain a long term memory. It is stated several times by Jukes that if we don't use it we lose it. Could it be possible that using technology to look up facts or to learn things "on the fly" is hurting student's ability to retain information in their long term memories? Are they now unable to compare previous concepts with new concepts, as the previous ones are not stored?
ReplyDeleteHi Caitlin,
ReplyDeleteI found the information about "flipped" classrooms very interesting and I really like the idea. However, even with the multiple formats to watch the video I feel like it would still be difficulty for all students (especially those in poverty) to get access to the videotaped lessons in a timely manner. I often give homework that involves computers and I have many students who do not have computers at home or do have one but parents use them for work. The DVD would be great (if they have a DVD player at home). I guess you could allow extra time so students could use computers at school but again if the school does not have access to many computers how would students watch these? It also sounds like these video lessons would be used quite often. I still think it is awesome for districts and students that have access to the proper technology! Thanks for the new information!
Hey Samantha,
ReplyDeleteSo with the students who could not watch the videos at home the teacher told the parents that they needed to let their kid come to school early or stay after to watch the videos. I know for my school it would not go over well if I told my students that they had to come in early or stay after every day just so they could do their homework. If I ever did a “flipped” classroom I would only do a few lessons out of the unit and I would do them on days that I know the students have study halls. The lessons would then be supplemented with a hands on group project that would show the real world value of what they are learning in my class.