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* Technology - Good for Students AND Teachers
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| Posted By: Jerome Schulz on March 8, 2016 |
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One myth about K-12 education is that until now teachers somehow controlled the curriculum. But unlike in higher education, in K-12 the state and the school district has to some extent always developed the curriculum and pushed it down to the classroom level. One aspect of this is the adoption of standard textbooks.
Now, we find that as we study districts that have been successful in bringing about improvement in their schools one theme has been even more energetic efforts to bring about a consistent curriculum. For example, in studying the success of the Union City, NJ schools, David Kirp found in his book "Impossible Scholars" that part of the "essence" of what Union City was doing right was that, "The curriculum is challenging, consistent from school to school, and tied together from one grade to the next."
So to the extent technology can help bring about a more consistent and better curriculum it's kind of hard to see why this is bad.
As for the role of the teacher, we can of course paint a dystopian future where our children are taught by a crew of robots and our teachers are left out of this loop. But if we let that happen that's our own fault. Instead, we're seeing how technology can enable models such as the flipped classroom where if anything teachers have MORE interpersonal group and one-on-one interaction with the students. If you feel teaching is standing in front of the room delivering a lecture then technology is probably bad news for the teacher. But if you consider all of the way that technology can help the teacher help the students learn more effectively then it's hard to have this nostalgia for the good old days. |
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