Sebastian Thrun speaks up/out on innovation in education in
The Guardian.
"The biggest principle is to go at your own speed – eliminate this very strong synchronicity. It is the main obstacle for technology, to overcome the belief that a teacher and group of students have to go through the same thing at the same time," he said. "Education should learn from the positive side of gaming – reward, accomplishment and fun. An online environment would be able to use data about students' performance to more scientifically assess their progress, and how successfully a certain course is engaging students."
I like his take on the interaction between teachers and technology.
In writing education especially, the arguments always seem to pit teachers against technology. That's likely going to hold us back as a profession.
Thrun's critique of current testing models goes a long way towards explaining the reasons for the adversarial relationship between writing teachers and technology.
But if we take control of the tools (rather than passively hand control over to testing incorporated), I believe our discipline could move forward fast.
2 comments:
At my daughter's school this year all of the third, fourth, and fifth graders (about 300 children) have been given laptops and they are working toward a "paperless" classroom environment. While I don't think this is currently the norm in elementary schools, I think it speaks to the huge shifts that are happening in teaching and learning. They are learning, lots, but the atmosphere of her classroom feels a lot more like collaborative play than what we normally think of as school. Some parents and teachers are really struggling with the change. Her teacher, in particular, seems to be finding good ways to make the technology enhance instruction and he's not afraid to let the children be the teachers when they know how to do something better than he does - it's amazing how much this happens, even in third grade.
THESE student, students who have been raised with very personal technology, will need some different things when they get to college, no?
Totally agree, Kelsey. The way we interact with information has shifted radically. It changes what it means to "have" knowledge.
For teachers it means we have to rethink how our students develop and (IMHO, more importantly) how we assess knowledge.
It is an exciting, but challenging time to be in education.
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