Monday, May 16, 2005

Powering Up again…after about six weeks

After about six weeks off from blogging about instructional technology, I’m willing to ‘power things back up’ again! Life was pretty hectic with my graduate class, and it just became too much to try and write something meaningful each day. So here goes…

This second semester, I have been spending much of my time working with a group of six teachers in our new ‘technology-enhanced’ classrooms. Our focus has generally been on changing how we do business - turning the classroom into a more student-centered, project based envirionment.

In our various monthly conversations, a theme that comes up frequently is student reactions to this constructivist type learning. Now keep in mind, these are high school students, most probably happy and willing to be given the information for the test, the facts, and to spit it out on cue. Many of these teachers have commented on how some students are resistent, at least at first. They just want to know the answer, or don’t want to work things out in order to come up with their own solutions to problems. Ironically, it seems like the ‘smarter’ kids, the AP kids, really push this. Probably because they have become pros with the paper/pencil tests.

In Powering Up, there is a quote that applies:

Constructivist, computer-using teachers find themselves overseeing multiple strands of activity and many different tasks. They must cultivate independent work habits in their students, as well as the confidence to generate new ideas.

Students today, outside of a constructivist classroom, likely do not have the opportunity to ‘cultivate independent work habits’ because they are told exactly what to do, how to do it, when to do it, etc. When they are given a goal and some options on getting there, they may not be used to thinking about how to get there. And they certainly aren’t encourage to think about new ideas. If it doesn’t fit into the ‘fact/test’ environment, most teachers don’t want to hear anything about it.

So what does this mean? Teachers who are attempting to use technology in a constructivist way in their classrooms have to consider what their students are bringing to this new way of doing business. It will not be easy to ‘retrain’ our students. But once they get a taste of independent, creative thinking, our students will never want to go back to the old spoon-feed techniques of the industrial-age classroom

Posted by Randy on 05/16 at 04:44 PM
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