After 35 years in the classroom

This is my 35th year of teaching social studied in York, Pennsylvania. The last fifteen years I've been teaching Advanced Placement U.S. history. I've seen educational reforms come and go, and none of them have changed much if anything in teaching and learning. It seems now that the reform will be from the bottom up. With the web 2.0 tools becoming available at an increasing rate, the way teachers teach and the way students learn are beginning to change for the first time in my career. Kids are doing everything differently, and we need to respond to that change. I'm glad that I'm still teaching so that I can experience and help implement this change before my retirement.

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Comment by Steve Hargadon on April 2, 2007 at 7:10pm: Dave:

I'm most interested in your perspective here. You up for a little more dialog on this? I think many in ed tech are worried that this is just another fad. You seem to feel otherwise, and i think that will be encouraging.

Comment by Dave Ehrhart on April 3, 2007 at 3:01am: I'd be glad to develop a dialog on any aspect of this subject. Is there a particular direction in which you would like to go? Our district is a leader in our area in the implementation of technology, and I've been fortunate to be part of the program. I teach 2 classes, Current Events and Issues and AP US history. The Current Events class is no problem with the use of technology. I have come to believe that the AP program and the whole change to the web 2.0 are on a bit of a collision course. AP is very content based with the AP exam at the end of the course. I have the students working on a wiki and I am in the process of starting a class blog. I do various projects using technology in the AP classes, however I am very selective in dedicating time to any project. We have a lot of tech support and instructional support to help with anything we want to try. I like the collaborative documents, I use Google, and they have real potential in getting students to work together. Our philosophy for integrating technology is to use it to do things that you couldn't do without it. In other words, we don't use it for the sake of using technology alone, it's all about the teaching and learning. I'd love to continue a dialog, this is a subject that interests me and one that is vital to the education of our kids. Let me know a direction you'd like to pursue.

Comment by Durff on April 9, 2007 at 7:26pm: I recommend Classblogmeister for your class blog! I gave our History teacher a MP3 player to wear around his neck during lectures so he can podcast them. That sort of review may help those preparing for those AP exams. I still remember how gruesome mine were. Thank God I did not do history!