New Athenian Academy

As part of my other job, I peruse a lot of tech centered blogs.  From Some Teachers, Excitement About Classroom Tech by Joshua Brustein on Bits: Business, Innovation, Technology, and Society from the Mew York Times caught my eye the other day.  Also, I have been interested lately how teachers are using technology in their classrooms.  I’ve been following a few blogs that focus on this: The Fischbowl and Kevin’s Meandering Mind.

My experience with education and technology is fairly limited.  I used the Internet for lesson planning, some videos, and of course PowerPoint for my lectures, but that’s about it.  My last school had wifi but not in the modulars (where my classroom was).  Supposedly the metal in the trailers disrupted the wifi.  Sounds like a bunch of phooey.  Whatever the reason, wifi didn’t work.  So I could not hook my computer up to the projector and still be connected to the net.  This limited my use of online based technology.  Other than that, I wasn’t very versed in the many programs out there.  If I had been reading these blogs last year, I’m sure I would have had more ideas of how to integrate the two.  Alas, it was not meant to be.  I stuck with fairly low tech teaching.  But I am very excited to see how other teachers are actually using technology in the classroom in really inventive ways.

Two different quotes from the article really popped out at me.

Some educators and people in the technology industry see this trend as a chance to rethink some of education’s traditional dogmas… like the idea of students spending six hours each day sitting in classrooms where teachers split lessons into 45-minute periods.

I’ve grown more and more disenchanted with the idea of a eight period day where all the subjects are separated and cut off from one another.  Technology could really push us into integration of topics and collaboration that many teachers like but are really unsure of how to do it correctly or don’t get the support from the office.

…tools for online communication, paired with mobile devices, allowed them to offer students different ways of interacting and collaborating on projects. Blogs and social networks make students more likely to be engaged in class material when they are at home, for instance, and software like Skype has revolutionized the traditional idea of the pen pal.

This could really help connect students around the world or even with grading homework and the like.  Instant feedback becomes a reality with online communication and things like cell phones.  We could tell students exactly what they did wrong and right.  They could correct instantly and resubmit.  The possibilities are endless.  I always gave my students my personal cell phone number to call if they needed help on an assignment, direction for studying, or just needed to talk.  That was fairly low tech, but with expanded communication teachers could really be in touch with their students and their needs.

Of course there are many great ideas out there.  And more ideas will constantly be discovered and tested.  But in my mind it all comes down to two things: money and investment.  School systems need money (ether more or a different allocation of existing) to get many of these programs off the ground.  They also need to be invested.  Meaning they need people who know how to use the technology and support those people and teachers who attempt to use.  I have seen many great ideas (hello American literature/U.S. History block) fall the wayside at schools because the office and staff was not invested.  We could revolutionize education now if only we took advantage of what’s already out there.

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Education Process by Tobe