Patrick Riccards thoughtfully reflects on the recent interactive whiteboard “uneveness” piece in Education Week. His post is an important one, especially as educational technology is finally moving from cult to culture. He writes,
From Manzo’s piece and from tales of good education technology across the nation, we know that teachers who effectively integrate technology into the wants and needs of both students and society are the ones who succeed. To put a finer point on it, it isn’t what we teach, but rather how we teach it. Putting Chaucer’s or Dickens’ greatest works on a Kindle does not teach handheld technologies. It uses handheld technology to deliver some of the greatest literature the world has ever read. It provides content in a way that many of today’s students are better used to dealing with, opening their minds with great tech so we can feed them time-tested technology.In far too many schools, we still “de-skill” students, unplugging them from the mediums they are most comfortable with to teach through methods contemporary to the buggy whip. We unplug our students, believing that laptops, iPods, cellphones, and even whiteboards have no real place in teaching the three Rs. As a result, students fail to see the relevance of their education as they judge the delivery and not the content. In our quest to boost high school graduation numbers and build a more educated workforce, we should be doing everything and anything we can to better connect students to those learning and opportunity pathways. That not only means technology, but it means well-integrated tech.
Well put. Definitely check out the entire post.
