I had thought how I was going to maintain engagement through the 40 minutes or so and was pleased with that. I had asked them to make their own rubric on how engaged they were and give me instant feedback on a 1 to 5 scale. It was good so must have kept their interest. Learnt this off Tony Ryan at the Ulearn conference. He also said do something to attract interest in the first 90 seconds. So did this as well.
I wanted to do some Internet work but all they had was a dial-up connection. So often we ask people to act in a 21st Century way on last century's technology. Luckily I had saved some web pages and videos but still that dislocation between the reality (slow Internet) and what we need to have for you tube, bebo etc
My basic premise is that what we teach in schools is years behind what is actually happening. Our kids use cell phones, Internet, ipods like they are normal. I did text my daughter in the presentation and got a reply within 90 secs even though she was sitting in a class.
However we still assess through NCEA how to draw a line graph! When was the last time someone did a line graph (or pie or bar) by hand in the 'real' (ie non-educational) world! Haven't our examiners heard of Excel. Or the preoccupation with content. When you look at the external examinations they are still (especially Level 3) mainly about content. It is great that key competencies are in the curriculum but why are these skills not in the exams.
I do believe content is important. It is what you hang the learning off. But when you look at our assessments it is very much like the content is everything. This in the age when information is available so readily through Google, wikipedia etc.
But we still ask
- What is an ester?
- What is the Doppler Effect?
- What is gravitation?
- Etc etc
Why can't people simply look up the answer on the Internet? After all that is what now happens in real life. We need to teach how to determine the veracity of the source, how reputable is the information, what are the credentials of the writers.
I feel this is the challenge. It is not simply enough to rewrite the curriculum. We must do more!
4 comments:
Felt that the content of your presentation raised a huge number of challenges for all educators especially those of us working with real diversity in the classroom. I'm hoping to pick up on this with colleagues - if I can distract them from their specialist core work.
Thank you - really inspiring and opening doorways - here's to keeping them open. The humour was great too.
JS.
I think the issue of diversity is big. Catering for diversity of people arounds special needs is huge but I think also issues of diversity of race and economic status are also big.
I beleive the Web allows an equity to more easily occur. It is interesting to look through bebo and myspace pages and see how strongly those who usually have less access to a voice are present.
I think these technologies are huge as use.
Today I visited a school and met with a very young boy born without arms or legs and being successively included in a mainstream classroom. Verbally he presents as very intelligent and able. He can also communicate via his art work and a laptop, as well as using his mouth to manlipulate tools.But wordprocessing is his strength. As his support team we discussed sourcing other tools for him such as a "page turner". I sat there thinking that this wasn't a support but yet another barrier - couldn't we just link him into the internet? There appears to be a family issue over the need for a controlled use of the internet [which is fair enough]but what gave me hope was that the family have purchased a computer for home use. From very small steps I am hoping for future big steps and then seven league strides and then full flight and then truly this young boy will have far more ownersip of his world and be a part of ours and most importantly we can be part of his.
Today was a very enlightening day.
JS
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