Rethinking Ch2

From reading chapter 2, one of the biggest concepts I came away with was stated in this quote, “Enthusiasts argue that trying to prepare students for the 21^st century with 19^th-century technology is like teaching people to fly a rocket ship by having them ride bicycles.”  Although I still have many uncertainties about integrating technology into the educational system, we need to keep in mind that we are going through the Knowledge Revolution and life will be different for students in the future.  With this said, I contemplate what material should be taught in schools.  I said before that I think as educators, we need to teach students different skills that can enhance their creativity, critical thinking, and problem solving, so that they can adapt to new technologies and way of life in the future.  The book calls this just-in-time learning and I think this will be crucial.  If we teach students facts that they won’t need to know for everyday life they aren’t going to remember it and they will get into the tendency to just look information up online when they may need.  This could also free up space to teach more about technology in the classrooms.  There would be many benefits to including this during or for lessons because it would engage the students more, allows everyone to interact, provides feedback and scaffolding.  I think it would be great if students could get constructive feedback and scaffolding because the teacher can’t help every single student at once.  If this would become an efficient way of providing different teaching styles to students and accurately assess them, I begin to wonder if there will even be a need for teaching in the future.  All parents would have to do is set their child in front of a computer and let them learn.

                As a future teacher, I don’t think setting students in front of a screen is the way for them to learn.  They miss out on so many other social and hands-on interactions.  I think that we should avoid having students memorize facts and implement technology more, but it should be done in a correct manner.  How great would it be if we allowed students to complete community service projects through the use of technology to better their surrounding environment, such as planning and constructing bike paths, as the book stated?  This would insure they are still using advanced learning, but at the same time allowing them to develop a healthy relationship with community members and friends.  Going back to the idea of teaching traditional subjects or not, I feel that along with completing engaging projects with technology, students still need to be taught proper writing techniques and reading.  If we are going to blogging and etc. all the time, we need to ensure that students can express their ideas in way that others can understand.  It will be important to use a little bit of both the traditional and advanced approaches to teaching.