As a new facilitator in Australian public education, I often feel a little lost for long-term direction – the educational landscape here seems to be changing faster than I can keep up – and often I can only look to the US system to see where I’m headed (for better or worse).
Doug of Borderland posted “Deschooling Revolution” where he was stressing the need for teachers to dialog with those around us – students, parents, other facilitators, administrators, politicians – about the issues we’re facing in education… rather than just vainly waiting for technology to revolutionise education. But having only been in education for two years, I’m only just beginning to grapple with these issues myself…
Doug’s post was partly inspired by Miguel’s post about teachers having no middle ground – teachers who are wanting to help students genuinely learn (using technology as one tool for information-problem-solving) while at the same time trying to fulfil seemingly shallow indicators of learning. Miguel writes:
What, there’s middle ground you say? No, there isn’t…not anymore. We either use computer labs to support information literacy or do online state assessments/test prep. We either train teachers on how to help students learn information-problem-solving strategies or how to help their students maximize scores on tests. We can no longer do both.
What follows is Miguel’s call-to-arms in a war for the survival of his Nation… striving to move education towards Problem Based Learning (PBL) and technology enhanced PBL… perhaps along the same vein as Doug’s push for “critical literacy”… soo much to learn…
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Funny, I’ve been looking to the Australian system to see where I’m heading. :)
This may well be a case of the blind leading the blind. But hey, we might learn something along the way, and make the trip worthwhile! You’re absolutely right; we’re only just beginning.
Strange, I’m not sure why Doug, but I had you pictured in the outback of Western Australia… my mistake!
[...] Michael and Wesley commented on the power of dialog, and I agree completely. Wesley’s comment that “Students today want to be involved in activities that matter, and one of the problems with school is that many students view the things they do there as irrelevant to their lives” is exactly right. Wesley’s question is about how to change attitudes toward technology. But I wonder about whether we can presume to know what will be relevant for everyone, or whether we can say that anything should be relevant to everyone. My neighbor across the road has a small farm. He told me this summer that he has absolutely no interest in the internet. He said, “If I could get on there and find out whether someone has a pile of horse manure to give away, then I might be interested.” Since some people do see the internet as relevant, I suppose our job these days is simply to put people in touch with the piles of horse manure that are out there. Many would say that we should just let people follow their noses. But then we get into a big discussion about internet safety and filtering… [...]