A Question of Balance

It is a fascinating time to be an educator. I am very much looking forward to going back to being an Eighth Grade history teacher, after a two year hiatus to focus on building and fundraising for our wonderful new Dahod Center for Community and Creative Learning. As I prepared to re-enter the classroom, a number of ideas came to my attention that were quite thought provoking.

The front page of The Boston Globe recently told of the decision of Cushing Academy to remove all the books from its library. The Head of Cushing, James Tracy, said, “When I look at books, I see an outdated technology, like scrolls before books.” Flat screen TVs, laptop-friendly study carrels, Kindle electronic readers, and a coffee shop will replace the books in Cushing’s library. While I have no doubt that children in the future may not be quite as connected to books and be more connected to their computers for reading than we are, I believe books will not be going away anytime soon. It has been my experience that, as with many educational innovations, the wisest course is neither to ignore new innovations nor to decide that the latest trend invalidates all that came before. For instance, when whole language instruction came along, many advocates said we should no longer teach phonics. We have learned in the intervening years that our children benefit from having both phonics and whole language instruction.

Getting the balance right is always the big challenge. At our first history department meeting of the year, we had a fascinating conversation about the impact of technology on our students and on our teaching, which raised many interesting questions. For years, I have printed out articles related to our curriculum and asked the children to keep them filed in order in a binder I provide them. For some, this can be quite a challenge. I could put these documents in an online file for the children, which would provide them access in an easily organized format. It would mean they would never be missing a document (which has often been a problem), as well as cutting down on our use of paper. However, it would mean less practice for the students in how to be organized. Also, some of us prefer to read hard copy, as opposed to seeing it on a screen. The same issue came to the fore as we discussed whether we should post assignments online in the future or put them on the board and ask students to enter the information in their plan books. There were people on both sides of the question, all with good reasons.

Professor Craig Watkins of the University of Texas at Austin says about today’s students: “They’re really the first generation of teenagers who grew up with the household computer and the Internet as a kind of everyday technology. So they’re used to a much more active way of engaging their environment, a much more active way of gauging the information landscape.” As teachers in the age of Google, we spend less time looking for information (most facts can be instantaneously retrieved on Google) and more time helping our students gain true knowledge from the facts that seem so accessible. Our students are much more active participants in their education than I was, listening to lectures and trying to memorize dates, names, formulas and the like. As teachers we are working hard to hang on to some of the tried and true methods we have used successfully over the years, while being open to the fact that other methods may not be as relevant or effective with today’s students. As a faculty, we are examining new technologies (i.e. Voicethread, Moodle, edublogs, wikis, and more) and deciding what to embrace and what to leave behind. I will finish as I began; it is a fascinating time to be an educator.

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Read more thoughts from Muddy at his blog site