Future Schooling

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Permalink Reply by Durff on March 28, 2008 at 7:22pm

I see Web2.0 tools as the main way to access all content. Textbooks, composition tools, audio tools, video tools, collaboration tools, connection tools, & communication tools will be access via the internet in all schools.
The thought of individuals passing paper & pencil tests while cellphones & iPods are confiscated by authoritarian teachers will become foreign to educators.
We will instead facilitate collaboration on answers where cheating is impossible, connection to personal learning networks encouraged, & communication via modes other than f2f contact increases. We after all preparing the k12 learners in our classrooms right now for such a world. The better able their are to collaborate, connect, & communicate now, the more employable they will become.
No longer will one teacher per class hold all the correct answers. It is our job to teach these k12 learners where to find the answers on their own.

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Permalink Reply by indigo196 on March 28, 2008 at 7:40pm

"No longer will one teacher per class hold all the correct answers. It is our job to teach these k12 learners where to find the answers on their own."

Teachers and professors never did.

I will give you an example from my college days (1985). I was taking a Soviet Foreign Policy class and the final exam was to write a policy paper. The teacher gave us a hypothetical scenario involving the US response to Libyan/American tensions in mid 1980s. Our 'job' was to give the President advice on how to respond to a Libyan terrorist attack from the perspective of how the Soviet Union would react. My recommendation was for a bombing mission that would leave from England. I wrote that a refuel would be necessary due to the French and Spanish denying the US the right to fly over their airspace. I also said that the Soviet Union would protest and condemn the action in the UN Security Council, but they would take no military action. I turned the paper in on December 21st 1985 and my teacher gave me a B- with the explanation that my advice was not sound and I was under estimating the Soviet response. She also took issue with the Spanish and French denying the use of their airspace.

On April 16th she had me come to her office (this was the next semester) and she told me that she had clearly been wrong and she was having my final grade in her course changed to an A and my paper was being marked A+. I was impressed that she was able to admit that her previous critique had been wrong; it left an impression on me that no matter how much of an expert we think we are... that we are not.

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Permalink Reply by Derek Brandow on March 28, 2008 at 11:35pm

If you could be paid 2-3 times what you are now to do what you are speaking of in this conversation, if you had access to all the technology your students needed, if you had time and resources to enrich your own learning, if testing as we see it now was gone, etc, etc. what would you say? What if your voice made a difference.

Public Education is too big of an institution to change it's ways in time for any of this to matter for the kids of this country, even if PE "got it".

What if there was an opportunity to build the ideal learning environment to develop kids for the world they will graduate to now (not factory jobs anymore). Would you investigate? Or would you continue to push full steam ahead with Public Education and the bureaucracies that are so stifling?

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Permalink Reply by indigo196 on March 29, 2008 at 5:53am

Derek:

I would investigate it, but more for the following than for the money:
- access to technology
- resources to enrich my own learning
- my voice makes a difference

My point about 2-3 time the salary was that big money jobs attract all sorts of people and many for the wrong reason. If you started paying teachers between 120K and 300K I think you would attract the good ones, but also alot of 'money seekers'.

To me the key for salary is the removal of tenor and an annual 'bonus' system that pays for performance. Teachers should also have to learn how the skills they are teaching apply in the real world; my thought was to have them work the two 'summer' months outside of academia to obtain that knowledge. Working during the summer and getting paid for it would take care of most of the salary issues; in most cases teachers are being paid the same or higher daily wage than comparable professionals (note: I would still like to see a bonus system that rewards the best teachers)

Also, please note that I am a System Administrator not a teacher.

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