Model Teaching

In my own life, I have often rebelled against hypocrisy very strongly, to the point where if I received good advice which was not being followed by the person giving the advice, I would disregard it. And I know I am not alone. Nothing creates antagonism and taints a student-teacher relationship more. I cannot count the number of times I’ve seen teachers instantly turn entire classes against them by doing things such as forcefully and vehemently demanding that we should know such and such information while he/she (the teacher) has made it very obvious that they only know the information because they have the teacher’s edition and are reading from it. Teaching starts with modeling the behaviors you want to see in your students.

What kinds of things do we want to see in students? Collaboration, kindness, encouraging each other, etc… To obtain these goals, we must ourselves be collaborative, kind, and encouraging. We cannot remain in isolation, yelling at our students in a solitary classroom to “do better” and “pay attention and learn.”

If you are having difficulty breaking out of this traditional mold of antagonistic teaching, I would like to direct you to Anne Davis. Anne is a model teacher. Not only did she take the time to be one of many guest lecturers for my Education Technology class (not to slight the other guests in any way), but she recently posted this blog in which she linked to all of my and my classmates blogs and encouraged others to read and comment on our blogs, in addition to commenting on all of the blogs herself. I cannot imagine how fortunate her students are to have her as a teacher when she has reached out so much to those of us who are not even in her class.

So for all of you pre-service teachers, take notes. For all of you current teachers, here is a good example to improve what I am sure is already excellent teaching. And for all of you looking to hand out awards for excellence in teaching, Anne has my vote.

(P.S., did anyone else get a kick out of me linking to Anne linking to me?)

Reflection on Tapped-In

For my educational technology class we were required to use Tapped-In as a way to meet and communicate with professionals in the educational field who are savvy technology users.  Pre-service teachers such as myself posted questions, comments, links, and ideas about all things teaching.

Using Tapped-In was an interesting experience.  The pros are obvious: access to a pool of professionals at the top of the field and the cutting edge of educational technology.  We were able to read each others responses and learn how other pre-service teachers felt about teaching issues and we were able to see how professionals interact and what they had to contribute.    In terms of access, resources, and learning Tapped-In was an excellent tool.  And the forum was private to prevent any naivety coming back to haunt us.  Another perk was that when people responded to threads in folders the threads move to the top of the folder for easy finding.

Cons: interface.  Tapped-In required several links to get to the discussion board and there were a massive amount of folders and links cluttering up the page.  There was a real time chat feature which took up the bottom half of the screen and operated independently of the forum and links.  To sign out of chat you had to scroll down through all the text at the top (which could be quite a bit of scrolling) and find the small “disable chat” button in the bottom left.  Talk about unintuitive.  This removes the chat box and gives you the entire screen.  There is an option to essentially unhinge the chat box but all this does is create a new window and leave what amounts to a stain where it used to be and doesn’t increase usability (in fact it made things more difficult).

What does all of this mean?  It means I was less inclined to use it.  It was like finding needles in haystacks in terms of getting to threads and finding ones that were relevant to me.   This is a great resource which is cumbersome and inhibitive and I would be interested to see if there are better options around.

Reflections on Education in the Digital Age

Will Richardson recently wrote a blog discussing what he has read so far in Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder and he presented a quote which I felt deserved “insight from the front lines” as it were. Here is the the quote reprinted:

The implicit lesson is unmistakable: Knowing is something done by individuals. It is something that happens inside of your brain. The mark of knowing is being able to fill in a paper with the right answers. Knowledge could not get any less social. In fact, in those circumstances when knowledge is social we call it cheating.

Nor could the disconnect get much wider between the official state view of education and how our children are learning. In most American households, the computer on which students do their homework is likely to be connected to the Net. Even if their teachers let them use only approved sources on the Web, chances are good that any particular student, including your son or daughter, has four or five instant messaging sessions open as he or she does homework. They have their friends with them as they learn…

One thing is for sure: When our kids become teachers, they’re not going to be administering tests to students sitting in a neat grid of separated desks with the shades down.

I am not sure he is going to be right, at least in terms of current children growing up and changing the system. As Sylvia Martinez pointed out in a comment, education is a hard and unchanging concept in our society. But I think it is more than that. Students are taught that IM and group work are not learning, they are distractions and cheating, which causes disassociation. IM and the internet become antithetical to learning, they are fun and anyone who has ever been through a public education system knows that learning is anything but fun (not to say that it shouldn’t be, it’s just not). In order for students to change the system, they have to learn that there are multiple ways of teaching and learning and not just The Lecture. There are teachers and educators out there right now who are working to change this (Will Richardson being one of them), but until they are able to convert the entire education system to new ways of teaching the majority of teachers will continue with the old ways.

Time and effort are not the only barriers to a new generation of technologically enhanced learning (to borrow phrasing from Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach). Why would students who are interested in collaboration and technology go into the teaching sector where standardized testing puts a damper on creativity, hours are long, pay is minimal, and technology often is little more than the ability to connect to the school website because it is the only unblocked site? Why not just go straight into computer science or the business world where collaboration and technology and creativity are valued and well paid? Take my college for example. I attend the College of William and Mary, a prestigious public school which has an education program which is tied for 50th in the United States. Out of 5-6000 undergrads, there are less than 100 elementary education majors (secondary education is comparable, and I am probably being generous with these numbers). Within my technology class of around 16 students, 1-3 of them knew that Wikipedia was a wiki, though considerably more than that are familiar and use Wikipedia fairly frequently. I am by no means trying to disparage my classmates, and Professor Nussbaum-Beach and the numerous guest lecturers have educated everyone on wikis, rather I am pointing out that knowledge of available technology was minimal going into the program at a top rated college. And can a course which only meets twice a week for 50 minutes during one semester really change practices? My fingers are crossed but my doubts remain.

My cynicism says it won’t happen (at least not in the near future) but my idealism says it should happen. So for all of you reading this, join the increasing numbers of edu-bloggers and start petitioning your friends, your neighbors, your representatives, and your teachers current and past to start moving education forward instead of further entrenching our schools in a model which has never effectively worked. Fund education and praise the teaching profession even if you recognize not all teachers are excellent. And tell your children that IM is not just for fun, but for social learning.