Where does the time go?
I can’t believe it has been over a month since I last posted. There just does not seem to be enough time for the half-time CFF coach and half-time math teacher to do anything that isn’t 100% necessary to get done. This is a bit of a bad thing for me, as I haven’t had time to reflect on things like I should. That’s one of the things that CFF and 21st Century education is trying to get us to do more of, yet it seems more and more as if I don’t have time to reflect. If I don’t have time, then how will my teachers have time?
We had a great inservice day last month. Well, I guess it was an Act 80 day, but it’s the same idea. There was not a full-day agenda. We started out the morning with a tech update from our Director of Technology about email, then we switched everyone over to OS X Mail from QuickMail. Those that were already using Mail were cut loose to to work on their own, and those switching over joined in shortly thereafter. This gave me a wonderful opportunity: Time to meet with the teachers to discuss their use of technology. Even though I only had enough time to meet with eight teachers, I was able to accomplish so much. Being half-time, it is very difficult to meet with many of the teachers, as their prep times do no coincide with my CFF time. Also, many of the teaches expressed that they felt they accomplished more in this one agenda-free day than in any inservice day where it is all planned out.
Over the past few days, there have been a few things I have seen that have gotten me thinking. The first is this post from Will Richardson. Basically, what we have here is another blog on the fight between schools and technology. As we all know, cell phones are a social technology device and nothing more, right? Wrong! True, that is the most common use of the technology. But why can’t we open our minds to new ways to using existing technology? We did it with the iPod. Weren’t they just created so we could take digital versions of our music with us? Now look what we have: True, we can still carry around our music in our iPods. But we can also carry around podcasts created by teachers and students. And not just audio podcasts, but enhanced podcasts and vodcasts, too. We could put entire courses that we have downloaded from iTunesU onto our iPods and learn while we drive, run, or just relax by the pool! Was that the original intention of the iPod? I doubt it.
This same idea could be applied to cell phones. How could we use this technology in a classroom environment? What if we were doing a weather unit in a science class? You could tell your students that we need data from 10 locations other than our district about what the weather is like. Students pull out cell phones, text a friend or family member who is in another area, then get the responses. Maybe we’ll get more than 10 locations, maybe less. It depends on the availability of the friend on the other end. How else could cell phones be used in education?
True, not everyone has a cell phone, so how would we be able to make the technology available to everyone? Maybe we could team kids up, those without phones with someone who has a phone. Parents may complain about the $.10 used in sending a text message, but isn’t that cheaper than the $2 pens some of them have? And besides, how many of your students have unlimited texting in their plans?
The big thing here is that education is changing. It’s no longer, “What do you know?” It’s shifting to, “What can you learn?” I know there will be many who say that it’s always been, “What can you learn?” But don’t we all learn in different ways? Is it so important to know all the information or where to find the information when it is needed? I consider myself quite savvy when it comes to technology, but I also know that there is A LOT that I don’t know. What do I do if I want to know something? I access my network. I speak with other CFF Coaches. I browse the web for tutorials. I talk to our building tech. Why do we restrict our students from doing the same?
Now, I’m not saying that students don’t need to show that they are mastering content. I still believe that tests and quizzes should be conducted as an individual assessment of what a student knows. But I also believe that there needs to be a way for the students to show what they can learn, such as doing a project on their own (and quite possibly with a partner or two).
The next two bits of interweb goodness I saw both dealt with creativity, but in different ways. David Warlick wrote about teaching to the test. We spend all of this time trying to get our students ready to pass a standardized test (Show me what you know) that we and they lose out on the creative part of education. Let’s take away an art or music elective to give kids another math class or a reading class. Ok, math and reading are two very important skills (reading is probably the most important one) that students need to have mastered by graduation. But how many enjoy these subjects, especially if it is a course designed to prepare them for a standardized test? It this their educational experience?
As a math teacher, I can remember what my high school math classes were like, and that’s mostly because I did a lot of helping out my classmates. I didn’t learn much from my one math teacher, but I probably learned the most in her class. Her teaching style didn’t match my learning style, so I taught myself. I obtained a higher understanding of the math. But if you were to ask me about my English classes, I probably couldn’t recall a thing from any of them, other than the 3D stickers from Freshman English and some of the stories I wrote. I do still remember things from my Chorus and Music Theory Classes. Art had many memorable experiences. And my mother still has the box that I built in Freshman Shop. The classes where the creativity was able to come out are the ones I was able to take something from.
Finally, Larry Lessig spoke on creativity at TED. I highly recommend that you watch this presentation. It’s only about 19 minutes long. And I don’t think I should share my opinion until you watch the clip. I would so much rather have a real-time conversation about the ideas than to just post my ideas here. Leave me a comment if you would like to discuss this presentation.
