A workshop by
Wesley A. Fryer
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A workshop by
Wesley A. Fryer
Last updated
|
A linked copy of this handout is available on: |
Free Social Bookmarks: http://del.icio.us/ Access instructions for my educational technology updates: |
Workshop Description: Technology has brought dramatic changes to our economy and society, but has it had a signficant impact on your classroom instruction? This session will provide participants an opportunity to experience diverse ways technology can be used to engage and motivate learners, but not become the focus of the lesson. Learn how to use technology to focus student attention on the content of your curriculum (rather than on technology's bells and whistles), develop your students' higher level thinking skills, as well as other authentic literacy and workforce skills employers say they want from our graduates! Learn about trends and strategies to address the growing problem of "digital dishonesty," by putting innovative twists on assignments in your traditional curriculum. Plan to walk away more motivated, empowered, and confident in your use of technology in the classroom after participating in this outstanding workshop!
1. Predominant teaching practices have remained unchanged for generations
Dr Larry Cuban. Oversold and Underused: Computers in the Classroom. Harvard University Press. 2003. ISBN: 0674011090. pages 178-179.
"As for enhanced efficiency in learning and teaching, there have been no advances (measured by higher academic achievement of urban, suburban, or rural students) over the last decade that can be confidently attributed to broader access to computers. No surprise here, as the debate over whether new technologies have increased overall American economic productivity also has had no clear answers. The link between test score improvements and computer availability and use is even more contested.
Nor has a technological revolution in teaching and learning occurred in the vast majority of American classrooms. Teachers have been infrequent and limited users of the new technologies for classroom instruction. If anything, in the midst of the swift spread of computers and the Internet to all facets of American life, "e-learning" in public schools has turned out to be world processing and Internet searches. As important supplements as these have become to many teachers' repertoires, they are far from the project-based teaching and learning that some techno-promoters have sought. Teachers at all levels of schooling have used the new technology basically to continue what they have always done: communciate with parents and administrators, prepare syllabi and lectures, record grades, assign research papers. These unintended effects must be disappointing to those who advocate more computers in schools"
2. Information is exploding out of control: Schools and teachers are ill-equipped to deal with reality and prepare students for their future (note this was written in '93 before the Internet / world-wide web became household words)
Postman, Neil. Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology. Vintage. 1993. ISBN: 0679745408. pages 62-63.
"All of this is worth mentioning because innovations in the format of the machine-made book were an attempt to control the flow of information, to organize it by establishing priorities and by giving it sequence. Very early on, it was understood that the printed book has created an information crisis and that something needed to be done to maintain a measure of control. The altered form of teh book was one means. Another was the modern school, which took shape in the seventeenth century. In 1480, before the information explosion, there were thirty-four schools in all of England. By 1660, there were 444, one school for every twelve square miles. There were several reasons for the rapid growth in the common school, but none was more obvious than that it was a necessary response to the anxieties and confusion aroused by information on the loose. The invention of what is called a curriculum was a logical step toward organizing, limiting, and discriminating among available sources of information. Schools became technocracy's first secular bureaucracies, structures for legitimizing some parts of the flow of information and discrediting other parts. Schools were, in short, a means of governing the ecology of information."
3. More Information Won't Solve our Problems: The Tail is Wagging the Dog
Postman, Neil. Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology. Vintage. 1993. ISBN: 0679745408. pages 60-61.
"The fact is, there are very few political, social, and especially personal problems that arise because of insufficient information. Nonetheless, as incomprehensible problems mount, as the concept of progress fades, as meaning itself becomes suspect, the Technopolist stands firm in believing that what the world needs is yet more information. It is like the joke about the man who complains that the food he is being served in a restaurant is inedible and also that the portions are too small. Attend any conference on telecommunications or computer technology, and you will be attending a celebration of innovative machinery that generates, stores, and distributes more information, more conveniently, at greater speeds than ever before. To the question "What problem does the information solve?' the answer is usually 'How to generate, store, and distribute more information, more conveniently, at greater speeds than ever before.' This is the elevation of information to a metaphysical status: information as both the means and end of human creativity. In Technopoloy, we are driven to fill our lives with the quest to 'access' information. For what puprose or with what limitations, it is not for us to ask; and we are not accustomed to asking, since the problem is unprecedented. The world has never before been confronted with information glut and has hardly had time to reflect on its consequences."
4. Yet we believe more information is what we all need. A few recent current events dramatize the relevance and importance of these topics:
5. If technology is so great for education, where are the results?
Oppenheimer, Todd. The Flickering Mind: The False Promise of Technology in the Classroom and How Learning Can Be Saved. Random House. 2003. ISBN: 1400060443. page 396.
"When confronted with criticisms of this sort, technology promoters incessantly point out that it doesn't have to be this way, that all kinds of sophisticated uses of the computer are possible, if only schools would pursue them. Those pursuits involve sufficient funding, proper teacher training, sufficient classroom control-- the list goes one and one. In theory, the technovangels are right. But as we have seen, they have been making this case for years-- for decades, in fact. At a certain point, everyone-- teachers and taxpayers, parents and policy makers-- has the right to stop and invoke the famous ad line "Where's the beef?' If computers are so great, why aren't we seeing great things by now in our schools?"
Why have all Federal Title II, Subchapter D funds been cut from the proposed FY 2006 budget? Short answer: Schools have lots of technology. Where are the results?
6. We MUST get out of our answer-centered mindset/paradign and provide TIME and OPPORTUNITIES for critical thinking
Holt, John. How Children Fail. Perseus Publishing. 1958. ISBN: 0201484021. pages 154-155
""Practically everything we do in school tends to make children answer-centered. In the first place, right answers pay off. Schools are a kind of temple of worship for "right answers." and the way to get ahead is to lay plenty of them on the altar. In the second place, the chances are good that teachers themselves are answer centered, certainly in mathematics, but by no means only there. What they do, they do because this is what they were or are told to do, or what the book says to do, or what they have always done. In the third place, even those teachers who are not themselves answer-centered will probably not see, as for many years I did not, the distinction between answer-centerness and problem-centeredness, far less understand its importance..…Thus their ways of teaching children, and, above all, the sheer volume of work they give them, will force children into answer-directed strategies, if only because there isn't time for anything else. I have noticed many times that when the workload of the class is light, kids are willing to do some thinking, to take time to figure things out: when the workload is heavy, the "I-don't-get-it" begins to sound, the thinking stops, they expect us to show them everything. Thus one ironical consequence of the drive for so-called higher standards in schools is that the children are too busy to think."
7. Plagiarism has never been easier
.....and who makes the assignment? THE TEACHER! So really educational excellence, quality and value is all about the TEACHER, NOT about the test, the technology, the curriculum, etc.
What do you believe teaching and learning to be?
How do you know what your students know?
David Warlick: We cannot merely ask students to "demonstrate their knowledge."
"Ken Komoski, the longtime director of EPIE, the educational-products watchdog group, puts it this way: When a boy turns in a paper today, he asks, 'How would you know if he knows anything until you talk?"
Quoted on page 395 in Todd Oppenheimer's book The Flickering Mind: The False Promise of Technology in the Classroom and How Learning Can Be Saved. Random House. 2003. ISBN: 1400060443.
Wesley Fryer: "We must regularly invite students to engage in meaningful activities involving authentic communication and literacy development to remain relevant and 'succeed' in the educational enterprise."
Inspiration Brainstorm Demo Activity:
Authentic Literacy Experiences
My Tools for the TEKS Internet Safety page (www.wtvi.com/teks/tools/safety.html) and InternetSafety social bookmarks (http://del.icio.us/wfryer/InternetSafety).
For Works Cited / Bibliographies:
Copyright:
Digital Dishonesty:
Tools and Techniques from my "Tools for the TEKS: Integrating Technology in the Classroom" website - www.wtvi.com/teks/tools
David Warlick's Landmarks for Schools Project - www.landmark-project.com
My Blogs - www.wesfryer.com/blog
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