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Students Outpacing Teachers With Online Skills
beaverfever writes: "The Christian Science Monitor ran this commentary by Tom Regan on how students in middle and high school are outpacing their teachers when it comes to understanding the potential of and using the internet for learning and doing research. The article addresses a study, The Digital Disconnect, recently released by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Regarding the study, Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, is quoted: 'Educators have a choice: Either they need to adapt or they will be dragged into a new learning environment.' Both the study and article are about two weeks old, but an interesting read nonetheless."
I've found that most teachers have not entirely adapted to using computers in general. My chemistry teacher awarded twice as many enrichment points for flash animations and posters done with Photoshop than she did for normal posters. For example, she gave a friend of mine two times more enrichment for a poster describing the four states of matter and which had no information we hadn't learned in class than my poster, which was not as visually pleasing, but was on the Bose-Einstein condensate, which she herself had not even heard of.
As a former public school teacher, technology coordinator, and comp sci professor, it's my experience that with the terrible pay and bureaucracy in public education, very little innovative education with technology is being done. Sure, every state and lots of districts can point to a shining example, but those are by far the isolated exception rather than the rule.
When you see sharp kids in public schools who know technology, credit the kid and not the school. In many cases, the sharp kids are bored out of their minds and are discouraged (either directly or indirectly) from pushing the envelope and rocking the boat.
21st Century Teacher applicant addressing the school administration. Let me see if I've got this right. You want me to go into that room with all those kids and fill their every waking moment with a love for learning. Not only that, I'm supposed to instill a sense of pride in their ethnicity, behaviorally modify disruptive behavior, observe them for signs of abuse and T-shirt messages. I am to fight the war on drugs and sexually transmitted diseases, check their backpacks for guns and raise their self-esteem. I'm to teach them patriotism, good citizenship, sportsmanship and fair play, how and where to register to vote, how to balance a checkbook and how to apply for a job. I am to check their heads occasionally for lice, maintain a safe environment, recognize signs of potential antisocial behavior, offer advice, write letters of recommendation for student employment and scholarships, encourage respect for the cultural diversity of others, and, oh yeah, always make sure that I give the girls in my class 50 percent of my attention. I'm required by my contract to be working on! my own time summer and evenings at my own expense toward advance certification and a master's degree; and after school, I am to attend committee and faculty meetings and participate in staff development training to maintain my employment status. I am to be a paragon of virtue larger than life, such that my very presence will awe my students into being obedient and respectful of authority. I am to pledge allegiance to supporting family values, a return to the basics, and to my current administration. I am to incorporate technology into the learning, and monitor all Web sites while providing a personal relationship with each student. I am to decide who might be potentially dangerous and/or liable to commit crimes in school or who is possibly being abused, and I can be sent to jail for not mentioning these suspicions. I am to make sure all students pass the state and federally mandated testing and all classes, whether or not they attend school on a regular basis or complete ! any of the work assigned. Plus, I am expected to make sure that all of the students with handicaps are guaranteed a free and equal education, regardless of their mental or physical handicap. I am to communicate frequently with each student's parent by letter, phone, newsletter and grade card. I'm to do all of this with just a piece of chalk,a computer, a few books, a bulletin board, a 45 minute more-or-less plan time and a big smile, all on a starting salary that qualifies my family for food stamps in many states.
Assigning aim/icq/yahoo accounts to students and "study buddies" is such a brilliant use of the technology. But what I don't get is:
1) How to encourage the buddies to help each other out? (Threat of "Your kid doesn't use his online time productively"? It doesn't always work.)
2) Leaving yourself available to be asked homework questions is a pretty miserable way of eliminaating your life outside of work. Even system administrators only get paged when there is a problem.
3) I can just imagine the spamming that must go on with those messaging clients.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
You obviously don't get it. The point of the writing is that everything listed is all supposed to be of equal importance, which is, all the utmost important. There are, I don't know, 50 things mentioned there?
That's the point. There's too much stuff to do and no better way of organizing it, which I think is beautifully portrayed by this rant.
Thank you.
"even the US Government doesn't offer the kind of guaranteed work for life contract that most school districts provide"
I work for a large public suburban school district and this is just simply not true anymore. Staff are being layed off left and right at nearly every district within 3 states of us.
I do agree with many of your other points though. Parents are relying on schools to provide moral frameworks for their children (which they are certainly not, nor should be, capable of).
And tech. integration is very difficult for public schools. We are NOT a business and we CANNOT function like one. If we could there woulc be no special education (too expensive) no support for ESL (too expensive) , etc. etc. I believe real change has to start from the state and national level. I actually like many of the voucher proposals (which typically aren't very popular ideas in public schools).
Just my 2 cents.
The true, problem with starting teacher salaries is that teachers are required in most states to have a minimum of 2 college degrees and also continue their education (usually on their own time/money) just to keep their jobs and qualify for raises.
...salary: 30-40K starting (in most markets).
Quick comparison: 18-year-old Tech savvy kid with a tech school education and an MCSE
Starting Teacher with a degree in their field and going to graduate school nights/weekends which they have to pay for.
average salary: 27K
This cant be expected to change any time soon unless our society suddenly develops a socialist attitude toward the world and decides that regardless how much revenue teachers generate their pay should be commensurate with their education level and proffesional training.
Further, how can you expect highly trained, highly motivated, highly successful people to choose teaching as a proffesion when they are so inadequately compensated for all they have to do just to be teachers?
For the record, if i wouldnt be taking a 60% pay cut, I'd get certified and start teaching tomorrow (btw, i'm 22 with a comp sci degree and no need to ever step foot in an educational institution to continue on up the pay scale at a rate of not less than 10% a year.)
Just food for thought.