What are we teaching?

In fact, one of the saddest but most common conditions in elementary school computer labs (when they exist in the developing world), is the children are being trained to use Word, Excel and PowerPoint. I consider that criminal, because children should be making things, communicating, exploring, sharing,not running office automation tools."

---Nicholas Negroponte, Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab (2007)

I'm glad to see others have seen this and it's not just me - and it is still going on.

My question is

How do we stop teachers using "computer time" to write up the good copy of their story and moving them to the student to creating a multimedia storybook/glog/video.

All these kids know more about computers than me....

minia..." style="border: medium none ; display: block;" height="101" width="150">Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Ummm... actually no they don't.

Sometimes I hear teachers say this in my presentations or in the staff room. To many teachers they assume from past experience that all their students can blog, make music, edit video, create websites, and work any electronic gizmo that they face. While it is true that the geek is slowly inheriting the earth, there is a huge number of students coming through who just barely know how to set up a facebook profile and use email, and you can just forget about editing video or working a spreadsheet.

While there are some great teachers of technology around sometimes it is best that they learn from their peers. This is where fresh brain fills the gap and could even help a few of us teachers.

Based around the fast moving "missed curriculum" this site helps students do the things that us adults think they are doing... making you tube videos and facebook applications.

For more formal training in application you could try Atomic Learning for paid tutorials or Nortel's Learn IT site which is free.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]">

High-School Science Teacher Takes Fun And Excitement Out Of Science

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Have a read of this satire from the Onion and see how many people you have in your school that are just like this. The Onion is a great place to get kids to think about a topic outside of the box - from that skewed angle that makes them question why things are the way thay are. Unfortunately most kids would see the above article as fact not satire.



For a PodCast of a radio interview of how some science teachers are changing the way the teach (scientifically of course) have a listen to this.