Obtained from: http://www.spinedu.com/obsolete-teacher/#.VgZvP9JViko
Hello internet,
So am I obsolete?? Or more accurately is the style of teaching that was part of my teaching training 4 years ago obsolete?
Obtained from: http://www.anseo.net/sunday-fun-my-favourite-cartoon/
A couple of things have triggered this blog this week. Firstly an incident in my classroom- we were learning about latitude and longitude an finding the latitude and longitude of cities. At the moment the tech level in my class is about 8 devices as part of BYOD prgoramme (it has only started but I am expecting most children to have a device soon). Anyway we were using atlas to find the longitude and latitude and one of the children said “Can I not just find it on my iPad?” My initial reaction was no but why did I feel that way? Did I think they were taking the “easy” way out and relying on technology to find the answer and not learn the skills (use maps, graphs, scales etc.) or was that the caveman in me!! I mean, if you asked me to find the longitude and latitude of a city I wouldn’t go to my trusty atlas, I would go to my trusty friend google!
Secondly I reviewed the COETAIL rubric for our final project for course 1. In the integration of technology if “Technology is integral to the success of the Unit Plan” it would exceed expectations but if “Technology is important, but not integral to the Unit Plan” it would meet expectations. I didn’t know if I agreed with this as I would have been of the opinion that if the technology is integral to the learning but then the technology doesn’t work, you have a problem! This has made me think about my teaching in general and whether I still have that mental block on using technology as an integral part of learning when I should be because technology is an integral part of life.
I then read the Mindshift article on 21 things that will be obsolete in 2020 (scarily only 5 years away!!) and the ingvihrannar article on 14 things that are obsolete in a modern classroom. This clamed my nerves a bit as thankfully I agreed with the majority of the statements made but it has shown me how different my job will be in 5 years and hopefully I can be prepared for the changes and adapt accordingly. It was also a relief to see that a lot of the things that are under my control (i.e classroom based not a school wide or curriculum issue) I am already doing and I am hopefully building the skills where I will be able to incorporate technology more effectively to “tick” the remaining boxes. This week has definitely made me realise how much the teaching that I started my career with has already changed and how much it is going to change in the future. I suppose I had better just learn to dance!
The final point I would like to make and would love to hear people’s views on is one I first heard in this Ken Robinson talk
Click here to view the embedded video.
And was repeated in the MIndshift article mentioned above.This is the idea that children should not be put through school in “batches” according to age. I think this is an idea that definitely makes sense educationally as children can be grouped according to interests, ability and progress. However I feel there would be a lot of issues in the practicality of this as well as the social aspect. As a primary teacher I can see the massive difference in maturity that there can be between the youngest and oldest child in the class. I have thought classes where a child is a year younger than everyone else and have seen how this can affect their ability to make friends and form strong social relationships. I do feel like this social element is a major advantage of the current “batch” system. I do also wonder how parents would feel at secondary school level when their 12 or 13 year old is placed with 16 year old’s and is exposed to their level of mature talk and social interests. It would be interesting to hear if anyone has experience of schools that have experimented with a different system and how that has gone.
Cheers,
Paul
Check out the Mindshift school day of the future series for more ideas of how teaching is going to change.