קטגוריה: סטנדרטים

We change the Course of Study about every ten years. But the truth is that ten years is too short a time to change classroom education. If we greatly changed the Course of Study every ten years, teachers would be turning their heads this way and that so often that their necks would break. So we make major changes in the Course of Study only every twenty years or so, and in between it’s just fine tuning.

The changes made to these documents (about once a decade) are often brief, abstract descriptions of new goals: “autonomy,” “initiative”, “desire to learn” “problem-solving capacity”. Although I initially found these vague goals – provided without accompanying concrete examples – frustrating, they may reflect an underlying assumption that policymakers cannot define good classroom practice.

In their view art education should be championed for its own sake, not because of a wishful sentiment that classes in painting, dance and music improve pupils’ math and reading skills and standardized test scores.

We feel we need to change the conversation about the arts in this country. … These instrumental arguments are going to doom the arts to failure, because any superintendent is going to say, ‘If the only reason I’m having art is to improve math, let’s just have more math.’ …

Do we want to therefore say, ‘No singing,’ because singing didn’t lead to spatial improvement? … You get yourself in a bind there. The arts need to be valued for their own intrinsic reasons. Let’s figure out what the arts really do teach.

The researchers found that the visual arts classes did have broad indirect benefits, even if they were not directly related to quantifiable performance in other subjects. “Students who study the arts seriously are taught to see better, to envision, to persist, to be playful and learn from mistakes, to make critical judgments and justify such judgments,” the authors conclude.

The report says one of the reasons for the greater gains in primary schools may be that there was more scope for flexibility in the curriculum.

“There was a pattern of inspectors disregarding the use of ICT as an integral part of learning across the curriculum and, in some cases, not accepting evidence presented through ICT,” the report said.

“Clearly, in ICT-rich schools ICT is no longer ‘merely’ a curriculum subject but a vehicle for learning across the whole curriculum and this needs to be built into inspection criteria.”

Students use technology to …

In the beginning, there was technology — and there was the urge to teach how to do technology. Possibly this came out of our own lack of confidence with the new information and communication tools, but a set of standards that itemized and specified machine-oriented skills was what we got, and it’s what we needed. They were clear, and it was easy to imagine teaching children how to boot up a computer and access the Web.

The problem that’s been scratching at my nerves is “What does this look like in the classroom?”… Well, picturing some of this in the classroom is not difficult. But some of it is hard. It sounds too big!

I, too, have been referencing the new standards and also feel that they are difficult to digest. I have spent time with the draft version, trying to note in the things we are currently doing with kids so they’ll make more sense to teachers. I have my fingers crossed that ISTE will be releasing grade level indicators for the refreshed standards, as were available with the previous version.

With all due respect, why are you looking to an anonymous committee to tell you what to teach, especially at grade levels? Do you really require such granularity?

Any such proclamation is bound to be deliberately vague (to work everywhere) and arbitrary. If some set of standards says that digital video is a 6th grade activity does that mean that kindergarteners cannot make movies prior to learning to write, despite the evidence that it may be a beneficial tool for storytelling?

It’s time for us to take responsibility for what we teach without depending on buying random lists of stuff from others.

• Exposing the value of information is very closely aligned with Information Fluency.
• Employing information requires the creative use of information tools, inventing solutions to new problems, and thencritically examining the results.
• Expressing ideas is entirely about communication.
• Ethics is responsibility, and, in my mind, that’s what digital citizenship should be about – learning to use information responsibly.

None of this happens without the tools. They are not the outcome, but the avenue, and the avenue is constantly changing.

One of the issues in contention there is a course called Computer Applications, where students learn to use the Microsoft Office suite (sans Access, thank goodness) and keyboarding. The question that nags at me this morning, as I get ready to catch my ride over to the school, is this, “Are computer applications something that should be taught in a class, or something that should be learned by the students, independent of a class curriculum?“ I guess what keeps tugging at my thoughts is the idea that anyone who can figure out how to play World of Warcraft or The SIMS can probably figure out how to use a word processor. They probably will not learn all of the features that they might be taught in a class, but if you can figure out the basics, then any other specific feature is only as far away as a little time at figuring it out.

רכישת מיומנויות מחשב תוך כדי עיסוק בתכנים רלוונטיים ומשמעותיים לילדים, יחד עם הוראתן הישירה בעת הצורך

How to use computer classes bore me to tears. Technology is a tool we use to acquire, process, and communicate knowledge. It can’t be taught in isolation.

This portrait of a digital native is particular to the year 2007. It is not what we would have seen 10 years ago, and it’s definitely not likely to resemble what we’ll be seeing a decade down the line. So when we, as adults, bandy about the concept of technology literacy, inherent within that is the knowledge that technology and the digital native are constantly evolving.

to “collaborate, publish, and interact with peers, experts, and other audiences,” and “use a variety of media and formats to communicate information and ideas effectively to multiple audiences”

creativity and innovation now top the chart of standards identified as essential for students and that cultural understanding and global awareness have also been elevated to crucial skills.

But to be honest, the whole TIVO thing has been a bummer on one level in that I find myself watching more television, which is something I really don’t want to do. I mean, this is the Age of Participation, right?

It’s easier to procrastinate now than ever before. We have so many more temptations…. It’s never been harder to be self-disciplined in all of history than it is now.

The other day I was up at the farm watching my daughter ride her pony, and also in the ring was an older girl who was atop her horse, walking slowly, all the time texting messages into her cell phone. I found that to be a pretty unsettling sight. I mean, the whole zen of participation takes on a totally different meaning in that respect.

על המורה לדאוג שהתלמיד יבין כי:
  *  המחשב הוא מכשיר טכנולוגי שנבנה בידי האדם, אשר ממשיך לפתחו ולשדרגו לצרכיו, ולכן הפונקציות שלו מתפתחות, משתנות ומתעדכנות כל הזמן.
  *  קיימים צרכים שעליהם המחשב מסוגל לתת מענה וצרכים שעליהם המחשב אינו נותן מענה. שימוש מושכל במחשב מבוסס, בין היתר, על היכולת להבחין בין המצבים הללו.