 |
|
|
|
by John Snyder
"...but for a great leader, when his aims are accomplished and his purposes fulfilled, the people will say 'We have done this ourselves!'"
It was like looking at one of those 3D pictures. One moment it's a meaningless jumble of specks, and the next it is a three-dimensional mother and child.
For years I had been wondering how to integrate job skills and attitudes with subject matter in the classroom. For years I had been looking for ways to communicate ethics and responsibility and consideration for others to my students without neglecting the curriculum of the course. For years I had been trying to decide how (and if) technology could make a difference in education. Then, at the 1998 Nevada Milken Educators' conference, it all came into focus.
One of the speakers was bringing us up to speed on the current state of education technology research. Unpretentiously, almost as a throwaway line, he made a simple announcement:
"To adults, computers are something to marvel at. To kids, they're just a part of the fabric of their lives."
The fabric of their lives, I remember thinking, "that's it!" Suddenly the universe opened up, as if I had just grasped the point of a Zen koan: rather than debating which goal we should be trying to accomplish, perhaps it would be more productive to see if we can come up with a strategy which would accomplish them all.
|
|
| "To adults, computers are something to marvel at. To kids, they're just a part of the fabric of their lives." | |
|
|
|
Unfortunately, education is commonly perceived as something to be transmitted from The Wise to The Ignorant. Something outside of ourselves, that can be achieved or absorbed or collected. Or avoided--not because you didn't want it, but because your head was one of the few things you still had control of. They can make you sit there, but they can't make you learn.
The only way we are going to resolve the debates about what we should be accomplishing is to transform the educational process from what it has become to what it should be. Education, like technology, should be a part of the fabric of their lives. The trick is how to make the transformation: perhaps a practical example or two might be in order.
Social studies: Suppose we start examining what is happening right here, right now. Suppose we start writing down, as fast as we can, any information that comes in through any sense. The clock hands indicate 10:31 AM. Someone sniffles at the back of the room. The fluorescent light flickers slightly. In another classroom somewhere, someone laughs. A student leans over and picks up a pencil. Having written these brief notes down, we talk about how the same kinds of things are probably going on in every classroom in school. And in every school in town. And in every town in the state, and so on. Before long it will become apparent that in order to make sense out of all this, we will need to select which facts (of the gazillions of possibilities) we will pay attention to. That selection will affect the version of the "history" of this moment. Then we speculate what might have been happening the morning of December 7, 1941, in the same detail. And through a series of extensions, we connect that moment to this moment through time and space. And slowly a light begins to go on, illuminating an event in that world that's directly connected to this one, and the version we know of that moment will be as arbitrary as the one we just created of the present.
Computer science: Suppose we start with one of those word puzzles, which start with one word and transform it letter by letter to another word in a series of steps. If we were going to transform "hate" to "love", one sequence would be hate-have-wave-wove-dove-love. One letter changed at each step. Then we could present a Web site maintenance class or a multimedia class with the following assignment: choose any item anywhere in time and space and connect it in a similar step-by-step manner to you, right here, right now. And only one thing could change at each step: who, what, where, when, or why. Everything else must remain constant at a given step. The transformation could be implemented as a series of Web pages or as a series of slides in a presentation. For the innovative student, there may be more than one track from here to here.
|
|
| "Unfortunately, education is commonly perceived as something to be transmitted from The Wise to The Ignorant. Something outside of ourselves, that can be achieved or absorbed or collected." | |
|
|
|
A dreadful over-simplification, obviously. But the point is that once we make the connection, once we internalize that discovery, the edges of who we are extend out a little further. We take a little more pride in what we are and a little more care of what we find. After all, whatever's a part of us is like family, and we take care of family. We do what's necessary to do what's right.
It's a discovery from within, rather than a requirement from without.
So we tried it. Three projects were implemented, all having to do with forming tacit links with one's surroundings. How did each of us start where we started and end up here with the rest of us? Starting right here and right now, what happens when we change some of the answers to who, what, when, where and why? A selection of the results is now on our server. If you'd like to examine them, take a look at http://atech.org/connex/.
The fact that students need to acquire technology skills does not mean that they must sacrifice other skills. The fact that we need to help students learn to act ethically and kindly and responsibly does not mean that we need to neglect other areas. Good teaching is still good teaching, and kids are still the focus. If we can use technology to shape their assumptions about connections to the community, we will have given them treasure that will be measured in lives, transformed by insight.
| |
|
