Although technology is changing rapidly our schools are not. Instead we use the same school model that dates back more than 150 years to a time when families worked their farms. Short class periods do not lend themselves to engaging technology lessons. Students have little time to discover and explore during these short instructional periods. Furthermore, we usually teach subjects separate from each other. In real-life we all know math problems and history do not arise independently, rather we might have to solve a situation based on prior history of a company or stock. Perhaps the school model with short subject based periods is out of date and needs to be overhauled.
While the school model has not changed, school standards continue to change. More and more standards are added to each grade or pushed to earlier grades, but is this the answer? Does adding more standards help up keep up with the times? With standards based education there seems to be little time for thought provoking problems or discovery. Instead we are forced to teacher procedures that seem irrelevant to real-life. Maybe instead of high stakes standardized test, we should require students to perform authentic tasks that make them use higher level thinking skills.
Overall, I feel that our schools and teaching need to change. However, my question is how? How do we incorporate technology in a meaningful way? How can we incorporate technology with tight time constraints and increasing standards? When and how can we shift from procedural based standards to authentic and engaging problem solving tasks?
I feel teachers want a shift in teaching, but there are many factors still working against this change. We try our best to incorporate the technology we do have, but are still faced with time constraints and high stakes tests. So I ask… How?
