Keeping with the revolution that led to web revolution (where the web went from something you just watched or surfed to something you actually contributed to and interacted with), which resulted in the term "web 2.0," Don Tapscott, in his great book Grown Up Digital, suggests schools need an upgrade too.
Here are this seven suggestions for educators to help improve their classes and to better engage their students.
1. Don't throw technology into the classroom and hope for good things.
Tapscott suggests the emphasis in school 2.0 should not be on technology but pedagogy. I have discovered this with my Keynote presentations. Initially, this program was a great way to take all my boring old overhead presentations and to liven them up with music, videos, and images. However, students have grown accustom to these presentations. Tapscott notes that such presentations don't allow for authentic interaction.
That is why I've learned to shorten my Keynote slideshows and to turn students loose to develop their own slideshows or blogs or podcasts or videos. Technology helps, but if we don't teach better (or imbed the technology meaningfully in our curriculum), then what's the use. Bad teaching is bad teaching, even with technology.
This too is one reason I'm seriously considering 'flipping' my classroom. I can easily upload my Keynotes to slideshare and have students watch them at home, on their iPods or iPhones. They don't have to endure the presentation in my class.
2. Cut back on lecturing.
I recall my first year teaching where I used lecture as a way to gain control of my class. I even graded them on their notes. I tailored the tests to their notes. But what was I really teaching them?
I was teaching them how to transcribe information, commit it to short-term memory, and then regurgitate it on a test.
Where in the real world will students ever use those skills?
I bet no students from that class can recall how Finny, in A Separate Peace, works as a Jesus Christ figure and the tree symbolizes the cross. Yet, we spent a lot of time taking notes on that.
The only thing lectures were good for then was showing off to the kids how much I knew about that book.
Yet, how did I learn so much about that book? I can tell you it sure wasn't through lecturing. It was through my own research (something I have my kids now do a lot of) and reading the teacher's guide to the novel (funny, how we discourage students from CliffNotes or SparkNotes, yet they are the same thing as a teacher's guide).
The lecture, I have come to believe, is great for showing how much the teacher knows and for making it seem like the students are learning. But just because students sit still and write down notes, it does not mean they are learning anything.
As Tapscott notes, these kids weren't raised on passive TV, like the two generations before them. These millennials are used to the internet, which is interactive. He notes that even TV has become more interactive than it was 25 years ago.
I like this quote: "Lecture is the best way to get information from the teacher's board to the student's tablets without touching the brain of either."
Every teacher should have to commit that to memory.
3. Empower students to collaborate.
When students have technology implemented properly in their classes, this is easy. It's a no-brainer. And students are totally adept at doing this. Just look at all the collaboration they use in the real world: Twitter (I bet I read several hundred tweets about the choir kids in New York. It was like I was right there with them), Facebook (kids are far more connected because of this. When I grew up, I knew Mr. Zutz from playing summer baseball together. But during the school year, though he was just 16 miles to the north of my hometown, he might as well have been in another country. That is a joke today. Kids can connect so easily because of Facebook), Youtube (kids can take clips from one video and remix it with another or add their music to it), and so on.
Now the proponents of this hear the word "collaborate" and think of "group work." We all cringe with that latter term because typically in group work, in say a group of five students, one person does a majority of the work and three kids help out a bit and one student never shows up or does anything constructive.
But the term is "collaborate" not "group work." That means a student could write an essay, yet collaborate with a college professor via email, or they could collaborate with an older sibling who is in college via texting or Facebook, or they could collaborate with a professional writer via Twitter.
4. Focus on lifelong learning, not teaching to the test.
It's been said so often that what these kids learn now will be outdated by the time they graduate college, that it really doesn't need to be stated.
So teaching students not only how to learn but to enjoy learning is vital.
And it all starts with us, teachers. How many teachers are working on their craft over the summer and getting better? How many are reading? How many are tweaking curriculum? How many are learning about their profession? Or how many are on summer vacation and not going to think about school until August?
That scares me.
5. Use technology to get to know each student.
This is vital. These millennials don't learn like my generation did. Nor do they look at the world the way my generation did. When I was in school, school began at 8:30 and ended at 2:59. I did my homework - when I had it - isolated in my room either at my desk or in front of my typewriter. Outside of a radio station, I was disconnected from the world.
I will admit there is some nostalgia for those moments, but to expect that this generation work like that is an exercise in futility.
Today when I come home from school, I'll get a text from a student at 4 wondering about an assignment because they were gone for golf. Then at 6 I'll get another text from a student wondering if I could check my email and get back to them on a draft they sent me. Then at 9 I'll have several more texts from kids asking for feedback or clarification because they just got home from work and are about to begin writing. Then when my son wakes up at midnight, I'll grab my phone and see a Tweet from a student complaining about how I didn't explain something well enough. So I send a text to them clarifying the assignment.
Likewise, because I follow them on their social media sites (notice I said 'follow' and not 'friend' them - friending is not the right term) I get a window into their lives and worlds that I use constantly.
The next day when they arrive to class, I comment on a student and encourage them after they vented about a tough shift at work or I joke with another about the episode of The Office they tweeted about watching for the first time.
The importance is that I'm constructing a relationship with them. And this is why I can get so much out of them. They know I care. They return that feeling and devotion and care. I wouldn't want it any other way.
6. Design educational programs according to their 8 norms.
Here are my thoughts on those.
7. Reinvent yourself as a teacher, professor, or educator.
Amen, amen, amen. I can think back to my rookie year when I had to reinvent myself as a teacher in order to survive. Then I went to grad school where I underwent another reinvention. Still, a few years after that, when I began to teach my college in the high school courses, I had to reinvent myself yet again. Then when cell phones and web 2.0 became so predominant, I had to again reinvent myself. But that's the fun of teaching . . . and of learning.
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