The world is changing around us and according to Mike Wesch
this calls us to question, “What are basic literacy skills today and how will
students best learn them?” As culture and technology are changing, schools are
not necessarily keeping up to meet the needs of our 21st century
kids. Wesch compares today’s society with a post Vietnam War era, a time when
there’s a struggling economy making it difficult to implement large-scale
change. However, he points out that many of the resources available to us are
free and right at our fingertips.
Wesch makes a valid point about the changing needs of kids
and the need to implement new technology and approaches in today’s schools. Although
teachers face many constraints in the classroom, it is important to try to integrate
as much of this as possible. Knowing that our students are “digital natives” we
need to make that connection to make learning more meaningful in the classroom. Unfortunately, we may not see a large-scale change in our schools in the near future, but as teachers we must be advocates and do what we can to supplement the curriculum with technology.
Hi Allie. You're comment about making education more meaningful in the classroom is one that I hear a lot. It reminds me of the idea of enlightenment. I find myself one step ahead of my students most often so there is little room for them to investigate and discover meaning and value in my lessons because they know if they wait long enough I can just tell them the answer. In other words, it feels like I am enlightened with respect to mathematics and my students are not yet, and throughout the entire school year this will remain constant. If you can't tell this is something that I've wrestled with before, but I do think that we could fight it by giving students time to struggle with an idea, but time is one of those commodities that I don't feel I have enough of and I relinquish it so resiliently. Am I making any sense? I hope so. And I hope it was obvious but I agreed with your sentiments.
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