As I write my posts, I often worry that I have become too negative and cynical. I see, hear, and read about many of the flaws with our current system. On my flight to Mumbai, I began reading Caught in the Middle, which is an extremely depressing read for someone who grew up in the rural Midwest. There are times when I truly wonder if our current system even has the potential to succeed. I wonder if schools will become as irrelevant as land line telephones have become.
Fortunately, I frequently get the chance to visit classrooms in one to one schools and talk with their educators. Although just moving to one to one will not transform a school, it does help open the door for change. On Wednesday I had the opportunity to tour the American School of Bombay. I left that tour with a great deal of excitement about the future of education. Three classrooms in particular stood out as amazing examples of how technology can enhance learning. It is important to mention that these classes didn’t stand out simply because of technology, but because the technology was enhancing learning in their classrooms. Too often, educational leaders believe that by simply purchasing technology, education will magically change. Obviously, that is not reality.
Thoughts on three different classrooms.….
One instructor’s classroom that I visited had a very unique feel to it. Students were very engaged and had real ownership in the classroom. At the beginning of the class the teacher made the comment that, “I even go to the board once in a while and teach”. That statement may explain part of the reason students had such a high sense of ownership in his class. During his class, students solved problems on the board and explained their thinking to the rest of the class. I heard great conversations take place among the students about the best way to solve the problems. These conversations were heavily student centered. Technology was used as a tool to enhance collaboration between students. Google Wave was a tool used by students to collaborate as they worked through their assignments. Students posted comments and feedback to one another outside of class, and even took pictures of formulas on their cell phones to post to Google Wave. That collaboration could not have happened without ubiquitous computer access.
I also observed an elementary teacher who used a blog as a tool for students to collaborate and provide feedback about a book they had read. This allowed students to make comments and even receive feedback outside of the school day. Learning didn’t stop once students left the school building! One fourth grade student that I visited with stated that technology was used throughout the day. It was very apparent that technology was a regular occurrence, as opposed to a special event.
A third classroom that stuck out was a middle school music lesson. Students in the class were given the task of “inventing” their own musical instrument. When we walked in the room, many students were working on their invention while others were working on their computers. The students explained that they had used the computers to compose their own music and to record themselves playing an instrument. Students were able to create in a way that may have been very difficult without technology.
These classrooms are all examples of how instructors used technology to enhance learning in their school. None of their lessons were about technology, but they all used technology. Students in the school were definitely doing work at the upper end of Bloom’s Taxonomy. This tour of the school energized me, and gave me optimism about the future of schools!
