Chapter 9 - Teachers Must Let Students Access Information Natively
I like that the chapter started with this quote: "We can no longer afford to educate today's students for tomorrow's world with yesterday's schools." I think this is a great quote because as we have been reading in our book, Understanding The Digital Generation, there are still teachers in schools today who do not use today's resources and technologies in their classrooms to educate the students. This is only holding today's students back in their learning process.
Chapter 9 talks about accessing information natively, which ultimately means young people who have grown in the digital world will use new digital tools while employing strategies that are foreign to older people who grew up in a different non-digital world. Why is it important to allow students to access information natively?
"What kids today are learning outside of school is better preparing them for life than what they are learning in school." Think about this statement and let me know what some steps are that we as future/current teachers could do to change this?
I think that you pose a very important question Matthew, "Is it possible for all teachers to become natives?" Sadly, I think the answer is no. I have been in several schools that have teachers that have been there for several years and they are very set in their ways for teaching and that is it. They already have Academic tenure which refers to a policy that gives professors and teachers a permanent contract, effectively ensuring them a guarantee of employment … for life. Teachers that have tenure cannot be fired unless for “just cause,” such as severe misconduct or incompetence, and even then cutting through the red tape can be extremely difficult. Such teachers CAN and most likely WILL stay stuck in their ways of teaching and will not take the extra time to learn how to incorporate technology into the classroom.
ReplyDeleteThe next question is what will we do about teachers like that? Is there anything we can do?
A quote that I saw in chapter 9 that caught my eye was, "Revolution does not happen when society adopts new technology; it happens when society adopts new behavior (Shirkey, 2008, p.160)." I feel this connects with your quote about how students are learning more outside of school rather than inside school. As teachers we could have all the shiny, flashy new technology in the world in our classroom but if we do not make it a regular behavior and adopt that way of thinking, it is useless. I believe it is crucial for teachers to except the fact that technology is here and it is not going to go away, it will only become a stronger influence on our students. This is also why I think we need younger teachers to take over for the older teachers that are not willing to comply with the changes in our world.
ReplyDeleteI agree with what Sara said about the adopting the technology. PD opportunites are a great way to learn about the technology and how to integrate it into classroom. Actually, in this past year I have taken a couple new trainigns on differnt programs and how to use podcast in instruction. My students loved the podcast so much that thy are searching them on their own!
DeleteAlso allowing the students to access the technology is needed! We can't go backwards "old school" on everyhting for our students we needed to push them to use the resources they have at hand.
Cienna, you also bring up a good question about “what will we do about teachers like that?” in referring to the tenure teachers. I remember doing my student teaching with a tenure teacher and telling myself “If this is what tenure does to a teacher I don’t ever want to be tenured.” The teacher did not care about his students and would just make up lessons on the fly that did not have anything to do with the lesson that he taught the day before. He also refused to use anything but the chalk board, even though he many different forms of technology at his disposal. Unfortunately, I don’t think that there is anything that we can do at this point in time with the teachers that are already tenured, but we might be able to change the requirements for any new tenure teachers. Maybe make it so that even though you’re a tenure teacher you still need to be a lifelong learner and keep up with the digital natives so that when they graduate they are ready for the technology that is incorporated into every job. Anyone else have any thoughts on what we can do about tenured teachers?
ReplyDeleteI was just thinking about the same problem. What might be some options for providing students with consistent access to technology? Cell phone would be my first answer, but how can they be monitored? Another option might be providing ipads or notebooks to each student. I know there are grants out there that can contribute financially to this integration, but who has time to apply for them? I think we are really at a tipping point where students require technology access throughout the day, but schools are unable or unwilling to provide that to them. Financially, it is a real stumbling block for the motivated educator.
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