Have you ever...

Have you ever tossed something in the trash, only to realize that you need it? (No, I don’t mean half a hoagie – I mean something important.) You glance around to make sure no one is looking, and then you start rooting. At what point do you give up? I guess that depends on how bad you need whatever it is you’ve lost. Which is why I am here: as I search through millions of bits of garbage for information on my presentation topic, I am inspired to blog instead! (There’s something to be said about those three books in the library that just give the information I need so I can get on with it!)

In yesterday’s class we had a guest speaker who presented on Literacy with ICT. I was quit engaged, more so as he ramped up, left the bicycle analogy out on the road, and got into the nitty-gritty: students and the their use of technology.

The common zinger nowadays is that in terms of technology, the students are smarter than the teachers. This is not true: students may be better users of tech, but they are still in the earlier stages of developing critical and creative thinking that leads to better use of tech.

The presenter noted that once upon a time there were classes in typing and word processing…well, in fact those classes still exist so maybe he was speaking from the not-too-distant-future… but I think the point is that they are indeed very quickly becoming obsolete. It leaves me wondering why children have taken it upon themselves to learn these technologies without the schools help – why be fast typists and pros at point-and-clicking and touch-screen waggling ? Is this a skill/desire just inherent in technology and the generation, or is there an underlying something that we are missing? Is there is something that, were we to discover it, would inspire kids to learn math in the same way – in just the same way they are now inspired to master linking things to Facebook or creating YouTube videos? Wow, what if they just wanted to learn math or science on their own!

The presenter also mentioned sexting. He said that 1 in 4 girls/women aged 15-24 have sent nude images on their phones/emails. Yikes! In MacLean’s December 27, 2010 issue, McLaren quoted a British article that stated “the Internet and text messaging are fuelling a practice which involves unprotected sex with strangers in public parks.” Yikes again! Thank goodness this is only a British problem – it’s cold outside (and when it's not cold, it's slushy). My point: I believe we as future teachers need to really think hard about the importance of certain technologies in the public, grade-school classroom. If in fact most all kids will have these technologies in the years to come, then why not ban them from the classroom? The kids will learn, explore and exploit (inappropriately) these techs on their own time, and we can get back to basic – that is, not teaching grade 5 kids how to do a PowerPoint, but teaching them to read, write and mind their Ps and Qs! Thoughts?

To bring this back to how I started: my sister-in-law’s grandmother lost her wedding ring many years ago. She searched everywhere for it, but eventually went on with life. Some twenty years later her toilet broke. So she called in a plumber, who got down on his knees, exposed the mark of his trade, clanked around a bit, and pulled out of the pipe her wedding ring. (Not the cause of the clog – it wasn’t that big of a diamond – just a lucky coincidence.) When she tells this story, which she does a lot, she always ends with, “It was shinier then when I first got it!” The moral is that though there is a lot of crap out there (I’m talking about on-line information now, not literal crap), it’s this ‘crap’ that makes the good stuff shine. So I return to Google in hopes of finding that elusive presentation material…