I just attended a 3-day conference on educational technology (the Georgia Educational Technology Conference - GaETC). Three days, 3600 participants, all focused on using technology in education, or 3600 educational nerds (like me) in one place. I loved it, but I know a lot of other folks would rather have a root canal without anesthetic! But why is this growing? Why are so many educators trying to use technology (specifically computers and computing devices) in the classroom? Is it just another fad? Are we trying to just make our kids little robots, sitting there staring at computer screens all day long?
In the last post I mentioned the value of active learning. That is, students learn much more effectively when they are actively at work in their learning than when they are passively sitting and receiving information. Teachers have always known this, but it has been difficult to implement in the past. Sure, teachers could send their students down the hall to the library, or ask them to visit the public library after school, but that was limited. Not all students could get to a public library after school; the school library was limited in its resources, and students could only go there at certain times during the day.
But think about the situation with personal technology. Let's say the economics teacher poses a question such as, "How do entry-level wages for high school graduates in 2011 compare with those in 1961?" Students immediately look up that information on their tablets or laptops. The teacher then helps the students convert their findings to constant dollars. Then the class has a discussion on the possible reasons for the difference, digging into issues such as the increase in college attendance, the decrease in manufacturing jobs, etc. The fact that the students have had to search out that information on their own does two things:
The goal of educational technology is not for students to have computers - the goal is to enhance and extend student learning. The technology is a tool, not a goal. Think about other tools. When someone is learning how to be a cabinet maker, he naturally has to learn how to work a router, a joiner, and other tools. But the real goal is not to be able to use a router - he really wants to make cabinets. The router is just a tool to enable him to do that more effectively.
So it is with educational technology. While we do have to spend some time teaching students how to use the tools (how to look up things on Google, how to work the word processing app, etc.), what we are really after is that the students then use those tools to learn more than they could without the tools.
In my next post, I want to look at four stages or levels of growth in the use of technology in the classroom - the SAMR model.
In the last post I mentioned the value of active learning. That is, students learn much more effectively when they are actively at work in their learning than when they are passively sitting and receiving information. Teachers have always known this, but it has been difficult to implement in the past. Sure, teachers could send their students down the hall to the library, or ask them to visit the public library after school, but that was limited. Not all students could get to a public library after school; the school library was limited in its resources, and students could only go there at certain times during the day.
But think about the situation with personal technology. Let's say the economics teacher poses a question such as, "How do entry-level wages for high school graduates in 2011 compare with those in 1961?" Students immediately look up that information on their tablets or laptops. The teacher then helps the students convert their findings to constant dollars. Then the class has a discussion on the possible reasons for the difference, digging into issues such as the increase in college attendance, the decrease in manufacturing jobs, etc. The fact that the students have had to search out that information on their own does two things:
- It frees the teacher from having to give them that information to begin with, so she can spend more class time on discussion of the underlying issues than on the data itself.
- It drives the students to look at data as something that can point them to more important questions. After all, the point here is not for students to know what the wages were in 1961 and in 2011; the point is that they get into the underlying cultural changes at work that brought about the difference in wages.
The goal of educational technology is not for students to have computers - the goal is to enhance and extend student learning. The technology is a tool, not a goal. Think about other tools. When someone is learning how to be a cabinet maker, he naturally has to learn how to work a router, a joiner, and other tools. But the real goal is not to be able to use a router - he really wants to make cabinets. The router is just a tool to enable him to do that more effectively.
So it is with educational technology. While we do have to spend some time teaching students how to use the tools (how to look up things on Google, how to work the word processing app, etc.), what we are really after is that the students then use those tools to learn more than they could without the tools.
In my next post, I want to look at four stages or levels of growth in the use of technology in the classroom - the SAMR model.