Warlick’s reprioritization of education takes into account how new technologies are affecting curriculum while also placing curriculum above how effective a teacher is in the classroom. This is a much more logical progression in my mind where, as he said, “the how and the how well” will fall into place. It gives teachers the opportunity to step back from what they are currently doing, access how they can integrate their classrooms to better suit their students, and utilize the motivating factor that technology has on students.
It appears that teaching student to use what they already know and apply it in the classroom is a much smaller challenge compared to having teachers initially learn how to use new technologies, but once mastered it can be a very powerful tool. The focus then for us, as fledgling educators, is to meld the exploration of virtual education with how the information can be applied to the “basics.” An example would be having an English teacher send a student a link to a site that explains on ever occurring grammatical error so they would correct their mistakes and learning correct usage.
I think that the most important question facing ELA educators is how to teach the both sides to different students in the same classroom. By both sides, I mean the technology (to those who do not have access to it at home) and the course content. I feel that his is of utmost importance because we will all be encountering different types of students from different backgrounds in school districts with various levels of funding.
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4 comments:
I like how you answered the question of the most important question facing ELA educators; it is difficult to teach technology and course content, especially to lower income school districts. I think that the answer to that is to teach course content USING technology. Don't make them two separate entities. As we are learning, there are many opportunities to incorporate technology in existing curriculums. In fact, technology enriches our curriculum and makes it so much easier for students to engage with the course content. I think that as long as we keep our minds open to ways to include technology in our classroom and collaborate with others who want to do the same thing, it will be a very manageble task.
Hey Jo,
I have to agree with you when you say we as teachers need to teach both sides : technology and course content. What really boggles me about all of this technology stuff is that many people are blowing it out of proportion. Of course the advances and search engines are great and EASIER to use, but we were doing fine all along without the technology and who says school us suppossed to be easy? I have no intention of running a classroom where everything is based on technology.
My interest though is what happens to the students that have learning diasabilities? My mother is a special ed teacher and next month she is learning how to use a pod cast in her classroom. She can't help but continue to wonder how she is going to get students who don't even know how to write their names on a piece of paper or how to turn a computer on to use pod casts. Technology is not meant for everyone. What do you think?
Savanna is right: don't make course content and technology two separate entities. I like how that was said.
As we're learning more in this class, it will definitely be easier for us to incorporate course material with a variety of new technology-based learning materials.
Jami
though, I was thinking of both sides as seperate entities. I leaning more towards how, as teachers, we would deligate our class time between helping those students who need help with course content and those who need help interfarcing in the virtual medium. True it will all fall into place for us, but knowing how precious class time is, is what raised the conosern.
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