Have you ever been searching the Internet or browsing a social media site and come across a great article and wonder how to retrace your steps? Whenever I stumble across a fantastic read, I always find it difficult to uncover the original source or where all the rest are hiding. Especially in the realm of education, I struggle to understand which blogs are the best to follow or which resources will prove the most useful. Thankfully, I have recently been introduced to the GOOD Magazine education blog site, a hub of informational articles for teachers and administrators. As both a masters student and future elementary school teacher, this website has been an outlet from graduate school assignments: seeing the real world application of many of the strategies and theories I have learned about throughout my educational journey. While exploring the education sector of GOOD, I came across an interesting article that reminded me of some of the research currently being done at Virginia Tech (my alma mater) and I was happy to take a look. Written by Tod Perry, Everyone Wins When Senior Care and Child Care Combine is a well constructed summary of the Present Perfect film, currently being made by Evan Briggs. In short, this upcoming documentary dictates the benefits of an Intergenerational Learning Center: the combination of both senior and child care to benefit the well-being and happiness of both generations. The reason I was so attracted to this article, film trailer, and subsequent research is because of work I have seen my professors do within the Child Development Center for Learning and Research at Virginia Tech. The Adult Day Services Center at the university opened in 1992 as a research based organization, dedicated to exploring the relationship between young children and senior citizens. The results of this partnership have been incredible and my professors and peers have been working to extend this research data across the country. Therefore, when I was able to connect this GOOD education article with the actual adults and children I have worked with as an undergrad, I was beyond enthusiastic. The connection of my past and my own experiences to the broader professional realm of education makes me excited for the positive impact I can and will have on the world. Seeing something so simple as the relationship between one generation to another, the friendship between someone young and someone old, makes me believe that the world is not too far gone, or too complex for me to be a part of.
Month: July 2015
Educational Equity
Access to Internet, the capacity to virtually communicate, and the automaticity of information have transformed into an innate human right. Technology, without boundaries or limitations, has become the sixth sense of human capacity, engulfing all aspects of modern life. However, unlike the senses and personal freedoms we are born in to, the ability to connect and communicate has created an unequal divide. Just as we are faced with the many inequalities of personal rights, the idea that Internet should and can be provided to everyone regardless of socioeconomic status, race, age or gender is ideal and attainable overtime, but not ensured automatically. The debate on equity encompasses many aspects of society and human nature: productivity, empowerment, communication, etc. However, for the sake of this particular argument, I am going to focus on the digital divide as it applies to the teaching profession and the dynamics of classroom lesson planning.
More frequently and more aggressively, teachers are being encouraged to incorporate technology in the classroom. If our students are digital natives, crave the information available via the Internet, and understand how to use new resources, why would they not take the chance to implement something new? I believe there are three answers to this question. First, teachers are catching up. Unlike the Millennial Generation, educators and administrators were not born into a world of iPads and Applications, figuring out how to bridge the generation gap and pinpointing the correct educational resources is taking time. Second, not all teachers can guarantee that their flipped classroom, daily emails, or discussion boards will be available to their students at home. As unfortunate as it remains, access to Internet is not a human right and children are often left unable to connect. If some students are unable to finish their homework, study for tests, or watch flipped classroom lectures, is it fair for teachers to incorporate those aspects of learning into the lesson plan in the first place? Thirdly, what if it turns out that access to a computer is not really the foundational problem? In his article, Free Computers Don’t Close the Rich-Poor Education Gap, Gregory Ferenstein publicizes the surprising results of a California school study. Simply put, the research found that although low-income students were given computers to use at home, their short-term learning outcomes did not change. The time they spent playing games and chatting on social media was offsetting the total time they were using the Internet for the purpose of school work.
The Digital Divide poses multiple questions and answers that lead to further questioning and extensive research. There is not, and will not be one simple solution to the many challenges technology and the Internet has placed upon our society. However, in his ISTE Ignite speech in 2013, Michael Mills suggests the SAMR model of bridging the divide, a process of pairing ridged instructional objectives with flexible processes and products to students in the classroom. The steps: (S)ubstitution, (A)ugmentation, (M)odification, and (R)edefinition, are set in place to provide students access to the Internet, the opportunity to redefine productivity, and the ability for teachers to actually instruct students on how to use the technology they have wisely. The SAMR model begins to simplify the many questions and answers that technology as a resource in education poses by creating a foundation for the future. Instead of leaping forward, overwhelming students and overestimating the application of technological devices, educators need to stop, think about the goals of the lesson, unit, or semester, modify their expectations, and redefine the limits of student learning.
Tech Teacher 