למידה, אינטרנט ... ומה שביניהם

As I listened to the presenter, something didn't sit right with me. At first I couldn't figure out what it was. So much of what was being said I agreed with. Tech needs to be part of the entire learning process; social bookmarking during research, Google Docs to create a common document, collaboration between peers, the creation of technology projects – things that I advocate and have implemented in my own classroom. It wasn't until talk turned to the importance of outlining student objectives at the beginning of each class that it hit me — This is a teacher-centred classroom that’s being advocated — the complete opposite of my own classroom.

And that's when I realized — it's not enough to embed technology. It's possible to embed technology in every aspect of teaching and learning and it still be a completely teacher-centred classroom. The teacher in control of what is learned, how it's learned and for a large part, how students show their learning. This needs to change.

Rebekah came to me completely distraught that Chloe wouldn't jump through her hoops. So I responded from my own experience as a teacher and said, "Well, why don't you ask Chloe what she wants to learn about?"

Rebekah looked at me and retorted, "That is not what school is like."

"Well, that's what my classroom is like."

Quite emphatically she exclaimed with all of the authority that a seven-year-old can muster: "Well, all the years I've been at school I've never had a teacher like that. Miss so-and-so didn't do that, and Mrs. so-and-so didn't do that. You sit in your desk and do what the teacher tells you. That's how school works."

"Maybe we will shift to a new form of classrooms, leaving the traditional way of gathering 20-30 students in a room everyday," said Harun. "Maybe students will have their own cubicles as we do now, and they will run apps and watch videos, etc. Or maybe they will not have the obligation to come to school everyday, they will study at home, with their parents working at home."

Ok, so here we go again. This is what "learning" looks like to folks who think an education is simply mastering a set of concepts and skills that we deliver to kids. We know what they need to know, and all that we really need to change is the delivery method. Cubicles and apps. That’s reform. Cheaper. More efficient. Quantifiable.

The author would like us to believe that education is being “radically rethought” by the online and “blended” options that are available to students. But let’s be clear; the only things being rethought here are the delivery models of a traditional education and, most importantly, the financial models to sustain it and make lots of money for outside businesses who see technology and access as a way to not only line their pockets with taxpayer money but also bust the unions that stand in their way.

"Also, technology will also change learning from drill-and-practice to project-based learning," added Harun. "Students will have more hands-on activities and real-life projects, which is still not the case in here."

What children see or interact with on the screen is only a representation of things in the real world. The screen symbols aren’t able to provide as full an experience for kids as the interactions they can have with real world people and things. And while playing games with apps and computers could be considered more active than TV viewing, it is still limited to what happens between the child and a device — it doesn’t involve the whole child’s body, brain, and senses. In addition, the activity itself and how to do it is already prescribed by a programmer. What the child does is play according to someone else's rules and design. This is profoundly different from a child having an original idea to make or do something.

Today’s cultural pressures on children—media saturation, materialism, test-driven schools, and the fast pace of life—threaten to undermine some of the basic building blocks of healthy development.

It is hideously simplistic to privilege one media over another, especially when decrying the death of creativity or loss of innocence. For example, nobody ever questions the cognitive value or impact on creativity of a kid holding a Hotwheels car and saying, “Vroom Vroom,” over and over again for hours at a time. We value that activity, right? Do we have any evidence that it is more beneficial than a toy with batteries or Internet connection? Does a wooden toy increase creativity more than one made of plastic? If drawing with a crayon is better than drawing with your finger on a screen, why is it so? How do we know? Is drawing with a crayon better for childhood development than drawing with chalk?

What role are parents playing in the overregulation of children’s play through overprotection and over-scheduling? What is the impact of homework on play? What has silent lunch and the end of recess done to children’s creative development?

How can having the ability to answer any question you wonder about instantly be bad for children? If you make simple things easy to do, you make complexity possible.

Researchers who have tracked children’s creativity for 50 years are seeing a significant decrease in creativity among children for the first time, especially younger children from kindergarten through sixth grade. This decline in creativity is thought to be due at least in part to the decline of play.

The main findings of this study were that there was no evidence of change in some aspects of children's pretend play and improvements in other areas. There has been no evidence of change in children's pretend play, from 1985 through 2008, in terms of organization of the play story and amount and range of affect expression. Imagination has increased in recent play samples as has comfort engaging in the play task. It is encouraging that these cognitive and affective processes in play have remained the same or improved, given the decline in unstructured time for children.

It is also possible that the complexities and challenges of modern culture require creative problem-solving and imagination to function from day to day.

Google+ is where Twitter was in 2007. We the users are trying to figure out its best use. We ended up using Twitter in a way that the founders never thought we would. It took people playing with the site, playing with the features, and in the end, we the users defined how it would be used and once that happened it went mainstream.

And here's the scary thing. Unlike most of the young teachers here on staff, I don't really have much of a life outside my professional interests. I don't go to sporting events or watch TV. I don't have a young family that demands my attention. I don't have hobbies like woodworking or car restoring or cross-dressing. (Just wanted to see if you were paying attention.) I enjoy technology and learning new things, but for me this is all becoming overwhelming.

My thought is that when any pundit recommends a new tool, they be required to suggest a tool that is no longer useful.

Not every teacher needs to be using every tool. But every teacher should be exposing students to the social-networking tools of their discipline. ....

Not every teacher needs to be using every tool, but every teacher should be using some tool.

Much like the video talks about above, I think all these things, online social-networks and our offline life, are melding together to become…..life. What we need to be teaching students is how it all fits together.

a prototype for our nation's schools in the decades to come

I left School of One feeling a bit funny. It seemed like there were some good things about it. Certainly a computer sorting students into ability groups does make it easier for a teacher. Also computers grading work is helpful. But the major flaw that I considered a missed opportunity was that in the design it seemed that their main ‘goal’ was ‘test prep.’ If I were to use millions of dollars to ‘re-invent’ the math classroom, I would want to develop a better vision of what the goal of studying math was. As they were clearly focused on test prep, the entire enterprise, in my opinion, was limited.

More and more in this nation, we are moving towards two different school systems: one for the wealthy, who insist on proven reforms including small classes for their children. The other highly experimental model, for disadvantaged and even middle class kids, will increasingly deliver so-called “personalized” instruction via a machine, causing struggling students to fall even further behind. Is this the future we want for our kids?

Even if they got results, I wouldn’t be impressed because it looked like all they were learning how to do was do better on a standardized test.

מהפכה יסודית: בוטלו המבחנים בכיתות א'

כל מפגש בין מורה לתלמידיו מספק למורה מידע העשוי לתרום לקבלת ההחלטות שלו באשר להוראה וללמידה ולדרכים לקידומם של התלמידים. בבחירת הכלי להערכה ואופן השימוש בו יש לוודא שהכלי יתאים למטרות ההערכה ולמטרות הלמידה וכן למאפייני התלמידים, לגילם ולצורכיהם. את הישגי התלמידים אפשר להעריך הן באמצעות פעולות לימודיות שוטפות והן באמצעות כלי הערכה מובנים, ביניהם מבחנים.

חשוב להתאים את המבחן לעקרונות האלה:

   -  הכנת מבחן תקף והערכתו המהימנה בעבודה שיתופית של צוות מורי המקצוע
   -  קיום רפלקציה על ידי צוות המורים ועל ידי התלמידים בעקבות המבחן
   -  שיתוף התלמידים בתהליך ההערכה
   -  עיצוב ההוראה בעקבות ניתוח התוצאות של המבחן.