Schools across the U.S. are starting to rethink the abundance of digital devices in classrooms. After pouring billions of dollars into laptops, tablets and learning apps, a growing number of schools say it is time to scale back.
Bingo. Not a tech issue, it is a pedagogical issue. The way we teach hasn’t changed in 50 years. The problem is systemic. Teachers are taught to develop lesson plans in antiquated ways. Teachers aren’t encouraged or empowered to innovate. Funding is insufficient. Testing takes priority over learning because funding is tied to scores. Then you’ve got big tech lobbying to suckle at the teet of taxpayer dollars influencing decisions being made where the interest of children and learning is secondary.
With things like learning long division or cursive handwriting I think we frequently run into the doorman fallacy. There is so much value in teaching people to think and teaching people to learn that we get distracted by everything having to be a useful skill for future employment.
Bingo. Not a tech issue, it is a pedagogical issue. The way we teach hasn’t changed in 50 years. The problem is systemic. Teachers are taught to develop lesson plans in antiquated ways. Teachers aren’t encouraged or empowered to innovate. Funding is insufficient. Testing takes priority over learning because funding is tied to scores. Then you’ve got big tech lobbying to suckle at the teet of taxpayer dollars influencing decisions being made where the interest of children and learning is secondary.
With things like learning long division or cursive handwriting I think we frequently run into the doorman fallacy. There is so much value in teaching people to think and teaching people to learn that we get distracted by everything having to be a useful skill for future employment.