It occurred to me as I was listening to David yesterday that not only is this the first time in a long time (maybe ever) that we don’t have a real clear picture of what your kids’ futures look like (from a professional standpoint), this may also be the first time in history that our kids bring serious knowledge to the classroom that their teachers don’t have. And I mean that on a couple of levels.
First, from a technology standpoint, there is no question that most (not all) kids are more comfortable and facile with computers and the Read/Write tools than most (not all) teachers are. What that sets up is an opportunity for teachers to let their students teach, not only the teacher but each other as well.
Second, one of the most significant changes in the classroom today is the fact that teachers (or schools) no longer know most (not all) of the relevant sources of information for the topics that they teach. Think about it…when I was in high school, I doubt that I used too many sources for my research and my work that my teachers didn’t have knowledge of or at least had a clear understanding of. Today, that’s no longer the case. I hear teachers all the time relate the fact that they are “scrambling” to keep up with both the types of sources and the sources themselves that their students are using. Again, I think this is an opportunity for teachers to learn from their students in some meaningful ways.
What this means is that we need to start looking at our students more as resources instead of recepticles. We need to be able to let go of some of those traditional roles and, as David so rightly said yesterday, focus more on teaching and showing students how to manage their own learning. We need to push our kids to go beyond our curriculum and help us expand our classrooms because, let’s face it, they can now.
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I couldn’t help thinking, as I was reading this post, that blogs offer an excellent solution to the “problem” of teachers verifying student resources.
If students do all their writing in blogs then, instead of including footnotes or end notes which teachers may have to hunt down and verify, ask the kids to link to their sources. Teachers can easiliy verify sources by clicking on the link. This also entails that students become MORE responsible for using appropriate references. They can’t hide behind the hope that the teacher wont check because it’s so easy for the teacher to do so.
As I was reading this I was struck by the feeling that this is something that most of us as teachers have probably thought on more than one occasion, but have been reluctant to admit or articulate. Thanks to you Will for stating the reality in such succinct terms. And thanks to Darren for a great suggestion in having students create links to their research sources in order to create accountability.
I don’t understand what “now” is in this post, and I don’t mean that to be a smart ass. Is now the last year, last decade, century, what? And who is “we?” More precisely, which social class is “we?” What class of jobs are (or were) we preparing our students for?
What do you mean when you say “we don’t have a real clear picture of what your kids’ futures look like?” The range of possibilities isn’t *that* wide. We don’t know what percentage of your students will work as free agents, possibly at home, possibly as part of an international team of people they never meet, possibly doing the information age equivalent of piece work, but I think that pretty much describes as far as things can go in one direction. Another alternative is that all energy costs climb dramatically and we have to grow more food and manufacture more things locally, but we’ve done that before. Perhaps all our brains will just be plugged into the Matrix, and we’ll just lie in jelly-filled pods, but I don’t think that’s where you’re driving. Are we talking about making some fundamental changes to how money and power are distributed in society? If that’s what we’re talking about, it seems less likely to happen now than it did in much of the 20th century, or at least no moreso. Probably what has changed is that there is more uncertainty for children of the professional classes who attend your school. Being an accountant or laywer or college professor isn’t a safe bet for 2050, but that is no more uncertainty the working classes endured throughout the 20th century.
When you say that kids are coming to class with more knowledge of computers than their teachers, hasn’t that always been the case, for the past 20 years at least? Is this news? Is this trend increasing or decreasing? And again, this varies based on class.
Your second point, however, is the right one. Emphasize that one.
That comment makes absolutely no sense, Tom.
Just kidding. (I couldn’t resist…) It may be that kids have known more about computers for 20 years, but not as many kids and not as much as they know now. And the fact that they have the sum of human knowledge (almost) at their fingertips is certainly a scary proposition for a system that is used to methodically handing out knowledge in a very calculated and deliberate way. The hounds are being set loose.
The class issue is an important one, and I thank you for reminding me (once again) that I work in Disneyland when it comes to public education. We have to work to give these same opportunities to kids in poorer districts who have much less to learn with.
I am not sure we have ever had a clear picture of what our kids’ futures will look like. Isn’t that the crux of the problem that faces us in education? We design our education system to reflect our societal needs as we see them, and we use tools we know best rather than tools students know well. The result is a increasingly disenchanted student body who would rather be somewhere other than school. Even the social importance of schooling will be lessened by places such as myspace.com.
You are right in suggesting that we may be more effective if we can view students as resources. You suggest that teachers’ roles will be to help students manage their own learning. Maybe the teachers’ job will be not to teach management but to inspire and hone interest among our youth. Certainly there may be “nothing new under the sun” with the internet in front of the child, but the value of reframing the knowledge into something interesting may be the real mission of education. Our positive reaction to the information that a student brings to class is what inspires him to stay engaged.