November 20, 2008 Class Meeting
16 years ago
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Reflection on Digital Learning Session
There seems to be some hesitancy in embracing digital learning. It was interesting to see the concern come up tonight about children not learning the basics of good, well thought out, in-depth writing if all they are doing is blogging tidbits. This reminds me of when our school district adopted the whole language approach to teaching language arts and all the basics of phonics went out the window and was replaced by Writer's Workshop, Dear Time, and Literature Circles. When test scores revealed too many failing students, the district then adopted a curriculum based solely on phonics. Educators are realizing that there needs to be a balance of both and that language arts needs to be taught systemically and really scaffolded for students. This goes the same for digital learning. If technology is taught in a systemic way and learning is scaffolded for students, they should not have to give up the basics by being digital learners.
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3 comments:
Thanks for you comment. Its reassuring, as this issue is very big for me, and i want to believe that the basic skills will always be important, no matter where they are applied. After class, I had to remind myself that there are so many trends in education and fads come and go. When I was in school they decided geography wasn't really that important, much to my horrified mother's dismay, i always lacked the geography knowledge that had inspired her to become a City Planner.
We have to remind ourselves that "tools" are tools, not the content knowledge we are after. However, tools can help learners to understand, create, communicate what they learned more creative ways. Sometimes when we are among ourselves (technology people), we tend to talk about tools more. Gadgets are always more flash and sexy to get hold of one's attention, I think.
This is why I stress to our ITEC students to learn really well the principles of instructional design, and learn about how people learn.
We all know we learn from other people, therefore tools that link people easily (like blogs and wikis)will be very useful tool. As a teacher, our focus should be on how we create a learning environment where people have an opportunity to share and learn from each other with or without technologies. Please keep remind yourself and also the class about the core of the curriculum should be.
I think this issue will come up more often, especially for those of us who work in K-12 education. The new tools that are available are great in the sense that they "hook" our students into learning and motivate them to complete their projects and assignments. However, as I watched the Berkeley High Wiki project, I was reminded of the fact that as exciting as this project was, the content could be improved.
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