Response to “Backup Education?”, by Marc Prensky.
I have to be honest and say my first response to reading Prensky’s article Backup Education was to cringe. Which side of the divide am I on? I slept on it for a night and have to admit that my advocacy lies much closer to the teachers he described at the beginning wondering when things will break down. I spent the night feeling ashamed of my feelings but have started the day with a few new thoughts.
Firstly, of course new technology should be used and introduced to student’s as much as possible not just as educational hype but as a tool to further their learning. I strongly believe that, and believe that a teachers competence in using the technology appropriately will translate directly into student achievement of the same. That is why I am in this course.
However we have to be realistic about the teaching world in which we live and have to operate daily. Each board, school and classroom will have its own story of the limitations the technology has placed on the learning environment. Just last year our board changed the server that operated the system at my school. Prior to the first week of school not one teacher could access saved files on the server, school email or the internet. This brings to mind Prensky’s thoughts when he said “Of course technology will break down. And of course some people may not know what to do until it’s fixed.” The problem is our computer issues did not stop at the first week prior to school. There was no access for the first 2 months and then very sporadic access until at least January. Who was left out in the cold, teachers like myself who had spend countless hours creating SMARTnotebook lessons and transferring all lessons to Interactive PowerPoint presentations, teachers that relied on blogs and wiki’s for their class activities. This was not a minor inconvenience but a 5 month disruption. The reality is that lack of funding and lack of training of board personal create a real technology sink hole in many boards. Our school has 2 functioning computer labs and one laptop cart. Our cart wasn’t operational until March of last year (due to the same blunders that caused the initial upset) and when it was no more than 11 machines work. Is this functional with 30 plus applied level students? Not so much.
I have been fortunate enough to be employed at a Canadian International school in Hong Kong. This was 6 years ago and at that time each student in my class had a laptop with wireless hook up. I had a PC on my desk with direct hook up to a projector as well as a wireless tablet PC that was also wirelessly connected to my projector. The projector faced a wall that had a full wall whiteboard. There was no chalk and no chalkboard, no overhead and an unbelievably small amount of paper and pens. Then I moved home and had to relearn how to teach without these resources. The reality is that our system is publicly funded and small boards are making due with out of date equipment.
Finally I have to strongly say that I am an advocate of learning the basics. Call it Backwards Education if you want, I call it the building blocks of higher education. This brings to mind another real life example I would (shamefully) like to share. Just this year I was at the local grocery store with a $1.00 off coupon and a past student as a cashier. Mistakenly the cashier typed in $0.10 as the discount. She called her supervisor over to deal with the problem. The supervisor replied to her quite logically to just discount the difference. The girl was confused and next discounted my bill the initial $1.00, upon which the supervisor explained it was too much and that I had to have monies added to my bill. The girl then manually charged me another $0.90 which was the wrong amount again. This is not rocket science math, but basic skills that any primary aged child should be able to do. Shockingly, with the aid of technology this student successfully completed her required math courses in high school. Have we done her a disservice? Absolutely!
The basics are needed; there is a place for drill and kill arithmetic, phonics and memorizing the periodic table. The most successful students have those skills and have access to the newest technology.
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