Are high-tech classrooms better classrooms?
Despite the hype over Apple’s new iPad textbooks, there’s little proof that gadgets do much to improve education
http://www.salon.com/2012/02/03/are_high_tech_classrooms_better_classrooms/singleton/
A good friend and I started work on an idea for educational games years ago (we have been unable to find investors to take it from the current state to a test-able prototype) and I was quite sure that we were working on a winner and convinced our approach was best for students. Recently I was gung ho over the idea of creating a ‘flip school’ where students would get their lecture at home via the ‘net and do their homework at school where there would be someone who could help (I sometimes have problems understanding what my 2nd grader’s teacher is trying to teach our boy). However, after reading this article I am starting to think that perhaps these approaches are several steps down the slippery slope on the educational industrial complex. Reading about the approaches Finland takes toward education, I think here in the US we are going about things really backwards. If we were to carefully graft technology onto the Finland approach I think that we would probably have the best of all worlds, but I think until we ‘clean house’ and get a stable, functional educational system (which, based on the Finland model, we are far, far away from) adding any sort of technology is just a way to prolong the agony without providing the slightest improvement.
It isn’t a lack of technology that’s ruined our schools. It’s a lack of educators. It’s a lack of recognition that children are children, not a collection of weird pets that need to be pounded into uniform molds and issued suppressants or stimulants if they don’t fit quite right.
Parents don’t want to participate or accept any responsibility. Neither do teachers. Furthermore, how can a teacher can’t teach if they can’t perform at the grade level they’re trying to teach?
I apologize for the rant to the real teachers out there. I know several. They’re dedicated and knowledgeable. Unfortunately, they’re also too rare.
Lose the “can’t” in the second paragraph. 😉
I have, on occasion, tried to apply for high school teaching positions in science, but never get any response. I guess it is more critical to the educational hierarchy that you be a trained educator than it is to actually understand the material. I find the exact same issue in higher ed as well. I never hear back about my applications to teach even at the community college level (forget University level) and the feedback from insiders is that without a PhD you can fuggedaboutit. Why would ANYONE think that technical knowledge should be secondary (heck, why not tertiary or even quaternary?) to having an education degree? I have worked with several professors who where literally a chapter ahead in the book they were lecturing from, no wonder our graduates leave clueless, they are taught by clueless people!
I had a teacher friend who was overloaded with tutoring jobs. She asked me to help out, so I jumped in and started tutoring high-school kids in advanced algebra and trigonometry. (There was one college student trying to learn Visual Basic.)
The students fell into two categories: those trying to make a passing grade for the year and those taking advanced classes so they would have a leg up on the next year and beyond. Fortunately for me, she gave me students from the second group (the sole exception being the college girl trying to learn programming).
The second group, students working a year or so ahead, also fell into two categories: those with a personal desire to get ahead, and those being pushed by their parents. The second group (their parents, actually) wanted you to merely do their homework for them. I wound up telling two of the latter group to go find someone else.
I was in my 50s at the time, decades beyond my high-school math classes, totally rusty on the details, and generally running in the mode where I was literally a chapter ahead.
Any teacher who is running in that mode for more than short bursts is almost sure to burn out and quit trying. Consequently, I have nothing but disdain for such teachers and nothing but boundless admiration for the ones that know their material and couple that with an ability to transfer that knowledge to their students.
The ability to transfer knowledge is not a simple process. What works with one student won’t work with another, however bright that student might be. This aspect was troubling. I had to learn a lot more than the material I was teaching.
Math, being what it is, is based on solid relationships. One cannot, however, merely lay out these relationships and be guaranteed that the student gets the concept. I find that one has to use analogs and metaphors.
I always started out with the concepts that I had developed for myself. When that didn’t work I would cast about for another approach. When I found it (and I always found it) I could see the light bulb flash on above the kid’s head. When that moment occurs it is one of the very best feelings you will ever have in your life.
I feel sorry for all the children that are saddled with inept teachers. It comes so close to guaranteeing failure to learn.
Amusing side note: since I wasn’t certified I could not acquire the teacher’s version of the textbook. In one instance I lucked out and my friend already had one. What a difference! It had all the answers in the back of the book instead of merely every second or third one. Even better it had a lot of additional material interleaved throughout the book. It probably had three times the content of the student’s version. A dedicated student with that material (not the answers) could learn the subject with considerably reduced input from the teacher.