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."

Comments

it's called "free time"

[Sebastopol]

teachers spend 8-12 hours a day in the classroom, then go home and try to relax. free time? hah. like any adult, it's just the weekends.

students spend 6 hours in the classroom, and if they don't have extracurricular activities or a job, they get to surf until the wee hours of the morning.

not a big surprise.

Re:it's called "free time"

[Frums]

As an ex-teacher, I have found this rant (not written by myself, i don't know the author) to be the most accurate listing of problems facing teachers - and as the parent to this mentions, it directly effects technology.

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.

hire professionals

[Apreche]

When I was in high school I knew more about computers than anyone else in the building. I knew more than the net admins too. Their security consisted of removing icons from desktop and start menu. By pressing F3 getting find files and folders, then right clicking to get windows explorer, I was able to run nwadmin.exe and change anything. I was really tempted to change the mayor's password.

Anyway there is only one way to get quality tech education in high school/middle school. You have to hire a professional. I wont go into detail about how completely awesome that would be. If my high school had a full time employee who knew more about computers than anyone else there it would have been great. I wouldn't have to deal with stupid teachers thinking I'm "hackign the schools network" when I'm installing Macromedia flash player.
The problem is that no non-university will pay a salary as good as what you could get working for a real IT firm. Even college professors work "real" jobs in the summer because they make so much more money that way.
A big problem is that attitude that you just have to have the computers in the school and everythign else will follow. I see these public schools with labs and labs full of too-powerful computers that are only used for MS-Office. I ask why they have GForce2s, they don't know they're never ever going to run any application that has a scrath of OpenGL or Direct3D in it. If they spent that money more wisely they could have hired a pro to work for them full time, maybe even teach, and help them make better buying decisions. But they didn't hire a person before buying, so now they can't afford to hire anyone.
I don't think they can afford a real IT salary anyway. At least not a public school. But if they did you can expect the face of computer education to change greatly.

I'm seeing a freshman year of high school class required for all students in which they learn how a computer works (what are the parts, what do they do) and how to build one and set it up. BIOS OS. Windows, Linux, Mac. Once you know that much, everything else falls into place, unless you are a techie. The problem is people just learn "click, click, type, click".

So, this is to all you schools out there. Hire people like us, we will help you! You just have to pay us what we're worth.

Intro to Comps for Nursing

[rosewood]

My fiance is in a computer class for nursing students. She would skip it, but she wants the easy 3 hours of 4.0 to boost the GPA. She has had one class and already she is ready to shoot the lady. Some key phrases:

Once you switch to Cox [High Speed Internet] you will never go back to the Internet!

The reason all these computers [windows boxes] are slow is because they all run off one CPU!

She told me there were more, but she was busy trying to electrocute herself to get out of class...

I dunno

[Otter]

...94 percent of that number had used the Internet as a major research source for a recent major school project.

I find this more disturbing than encouraging. Web searches are great for looking up facts or getting a quick overview of a topic. But except for very recent topics or technological subjects, Internet research is going to be far, far inferior to what you can do in even a realtively poor library.

Web searches are easy, fast and don't involve going anywhere. But when I've been dragged in to help teenage relatives and neighbors with papers and seen the stack of printouts they're working from, I always wind up telling them they're going to need to visit the library.

Need competent admins and advisors.

[aengblom]

My mom is starting her first full-time job as a teacher on Tuesday. She's, umm, middle aged and was a stay-at-home'er. But she took a couple classes over the years and learning Windows 3.1/95 and office. In her previous private school part-time jobs, she typed every one of her lessons. So she STILL HAS THEM. She uses Power Point (I'm actually not a big fan in the classroom), but to spice up her Latin for these high school kids she used a Smart Board. This is essentially and interactive chalk board. At her new full-time job, the school (where money is tight) bought her one. She asks me questions a lot. I try to answer them. She is in no way an expert, but she achieved competent user level.

She is so far advanced tech wise for most teachers it is incredible (sad that is) and she's pretty sure it's the reason she got hired for a job that will be a stretch for her first year.

The saddest part? Her new school's admin seems so technologically inept, it's going to be quite difficult. They make her use an iBook (she knows Windows. She's trying to concentrate on learning Latin 4 this summer. Not Mac OS 9.1). It has a (broken) CD-R, but the admin doesn't believe her. (It says so in the Hardware and it screws up cd-r disks. Try to do that with a regular cd-rom) He says e-mail your files to yourself, but if she updates 10 files, she has to e-mail ten files. Not very efficient. It reads her files poorly and transferring them was a nightmare.

My point I guess? A major failure here is the need competent people to help teachers along. Most teachers were running the classrooms. Not taking computer classes. Computers make things much harder, unless you know a good way to set things up. I'll tech my mom to use FTP, get her a zip drive, find a copy of DAVE client or figure out something else to make her life possible.

The school gave her a partially broken computer that makes things nearly impossible to back up or move. Their advice as she picked up her new computer was "It's a Mac. You'll love it."

Oh and if you're interested in the Christian Science Monitor. (As in why should I read a "Christian" newspaper.... go here before you complain about this news source.

What the hell are these people doing?

[CaptainCarrot]

This just supports something I've been saying for a long time. We do not need to teach computers to children in the schools! The kids are outpacing their teachers for a reason: They're growing up surrounded by this technology; they're saturated with it; it's far more familiar to them than it is to their teachers. My grandmother grew up with crank telephones and party lines, where you had to listen to the ring pattern to tell whether a call was for you or one of your neighbors. She was utterly baffled in her later years by a cordless phone; she had never even used a touch-tone telephone before. A modern kid, surrounded with CD players, video games and ATMs just isn't going to find a general-purpose PC very intimidating. This overcomes the main barrier to computer use right from the start. How many of us have tried to get a parent online, and one of the main problems we had was getting them to but their hands on the keyboard and mouse in the first place?

Teaching students programming or other truly complex or specialized skills related to computers is a good thing, of course, as these subjects are ones that actually require some instruction to acquire in many cases, although not all cases by any means. But basic use of the Internet? Playing games for cryin' out loud? This is a waste of time and resources, especially when American students are falling behind in essential academic subjects like reading and mathematics. You see schools cutting back on subjects deemed "non-essential" simply because they do nothing more than enrich the students physically or culturally, like phys ed and the arts, but making all-out efforts to put computers in every classroom and to string cat5 all over the buildings.

Even in impoverished areas where it cannot be assumed that the students have access to a computer at home, I would argue that we would be better off exposing these kids to music, drama, or the plastic arts rather than putting computers in their classrooms. The Internet -- and especially the part of it most people see, the Web -- is very easy to learn with modern tools, and any moderately intelligent kid can pick it up in a week or so. This is not a "life skill" we need to spend very much time on. And when the students arrive knowing more than the teacher, there's no point in even trying.

Fundamental flaws in American K-12 education

[Infonaut]

Warning: Rant follows

1) Teachers suffer from low pay and low respect in most of the country. I blame much of this on the power of the NEA, which is a classic example of a bureaucracy that exists to perpetuate its own existence. If the NEA advocated in favor of more rigorous screening, performance reviews, and salaries based not on seniority but on parent reviews, student reviews, peer reviews, and testing performance, teachers might have a chance. But as it is, the NEA aggressively fights to "protect" teachers. Of course all this does is perpetuate stereotypes about teachers being slackers who want to work 9 months out of the year. Try being a full-time teacher in the US without also being a member of the NEA - it doesn't happen.

2) District-based funding, coupled with per-seat attendance rules mean that schooling is about cramming as many students into the classrooms as possible. School districts, be they rural or urban, rich or poor, almost always suffer from bloated bureaucratic structures and mismanagement. An atmosphere of entitlement ("We dedicate our lives to helping children, so you can forgive our mistakes") permeates these organizations. This of course stems from antiquated concepts of tenure and lifetime employment in the education system. Hell, even the US Government doesn't offer the kind of guaranteed work for life contract that most school districts provide.

3) Ultimately, American K-12 education is more about socialization and keeping children out of trouble than it is about truly educating them. Because family structures have fallen apart, teachers are expected to be caretakers first, and educators second. How on earth can teachers focus on using technology effectively when they barely even get the opportunity to teach?

I've done technology volunteer work for schools in places all over the country, and one consistent trend I see is that charter schools make far better use of the money they have, and leverage technology better than traditional public schools. Too many Americans are content with the status quo, because they figure the NEA and the national political parties know best. They're afraid of changing the system for fear of ruining American K-12 education. The thing is, it's already screwed up, and the time for change is now.

Schools slow to catch on

[octalgirl]

'Educators have a choice: Either they need to adapt or they will be dragged into a new learning environment.'

I left the commercial world to work for IT in school systems 7 years ago. This statement was true then and unfortunately it still is. Some teachers, given the proper training, are up to it, and have come a long way. Others still don't know how to turn their computers on. This is one of the reasons for the continual attempt for things like the Childrens Online Protection Act. Schools won't get federal funding for technology if they won't install a Internet filter. I am against such strong-arm tactics, but I do know that there are many teachers who do not pay attention while kids as young as ten are giggling at p0rn. And if a student simply minimizes the browser, the teacher is lost.