Our teacher-librarian (thanks Cecile!) posted this link on Twitter and circulated it to staff as well as a conversation-starter re: the future of education. Some very interesting points, although I don't agree with them all.
My personal faves are #6 (differentiated instruction) and #14 (integration of social media)... hopefully we're all past #7 (wikipedia fear) already?
Take a look and see if any of these might start conversations in your school.
Read this a few days ago, and had an interesting conversation with one of our English teachers about paperbacks. The one thing that I forget sometimes is that the computers of today will be lining the landfills in 4-5 years, whereas we have paperbacks that have been around for 30-40 years. The environmental cost of a biodegradable paperback book versus that of a plastic case of a monitor or laptop is substantially less.
ReplyDeleteJust a different thought about something that we take for granted that will happen.
Here is an interesting article on the use of iPads in classes at schools in the US:
ReplyDeletehttp://bit.ly/erY1wr
Interesting comment at the end of the article, further to your comment above, Cale, re: the eco-friendliness of technology:
"In sixth grade my backpack was 27 pounds," [Sophie] said. "Ohhhh, my back! It was so sore. This [meaning being issued an iPad] would definitely lighten it. And it would be way more eco-friendly."
I couldn't agree less. But I do think the benefits to education of technology integration in classrooms with kids outweighs the ecological disadvantages. :)
Also some interesting uses of iPads are described in the article, and some differing opinions re: policy and how the technology is integrated from school to school.