STSD Curriculum & Technology Update

Regular updates and musings on curriculum and technology in the Salisbury Township School District in Allentown, PA.

Educational Change

I had blogged about this about a year ago on my own blog, but thought it worthwhile sharing here...

Renate Nummela Caine and Geoffrey Caine present some significant ideas about why and how our educational system thinking must change. In their article Understanding Why Education Must Change, the authors assert correctly that our students will be working in an era of communication, not in factories as was the case in the past. Our present system of education is based on a series of assumptions:

1. Only experts create knowledge.
2. Teachers deliver knowledge in the form of information.
3. Children are graded on how much of the information they have stored.

Our future system will need to be based on a new series of assumptions:

1. Dynamic knowledge ( the sort of knowledge that is naturally and spontaneously invoked in authentic interactions in the the real world) requires individual meaning making based upon multiple sources of information.
2. The role of educators is to facilitate the making of dynamic knowledge.
3. Dynamic knowledge is revealed through real world performance.

In regards to technology:

Also, if we consider what technology in the information era makes available to children and students, we find that trying to control knowledge the way we are used to is beginning to look like holding water in our hands. Information is available everywhere and in multiple forms, from complex software to 500 television channels to the world wide web. Not all children have access to every one of these, but not having access is already handicapping children now in school and will continue to do severe damage to their futures as the school years progress. This massive flow and availability of information, together with our new appreciation of just how interconnected the human brain is, will be for education to become much more complex. And that is precisely what is needed if we are to teach for dynamic rather than surface knowledge.

Comments

Our present system of educational assumptions are analog, and our audience is a digital generation.  We are teaching the way we learned and then wonder why students experience disconnect.  On the assumption that we connected with them in the first place, somewhere in the drill drone, we lose them in surface knowledge so easily accessed online.  Project-based learning with technology infusion in real-world applications engage students.  Research designed in presentation software for an international videoconference moves beyond the surface.  Now imagine tablet PCs, students blogging during the videoconference, conducting a sidebar Q/A using Skype, updating research, and taking/posting notes--all in different programs.  International audience.  Real world.  Dynamic learning.  Not just tags, either.

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