Saturday, April 21, 2012

Week #4: Blog 2: PBS Digital Media



The PBS documentary on Digital Media had me thinking a lot about how schools are structured.  The industrial model of school structure – 42 minute periods, sitting in rows, obediently listening as the teacher distills knowledge – must be revolutionized for students to be partners in producing content making deeper learning than being simply a consumer of what the teacher is selling.  I’m reminded of Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligences.  Schools cater to the linguistic and logical-mathematical learner, which doesn’t meet the needs of many other learners, such as the musical, kinesthetic, visual, spatial, and inter/intrapersonal learners.  Integrating technology into the classroom is one way of meeting many learning style affinities for many students at the same time.  There were many examples in the PBS video of how several schools are teaching on edge of digital media education and making it work!



When educators consider these different style learners, all of which have their own various passions, and then use technology in ways to foster these passions – education POPS!  Students become engaged, active learners who are able to produce knowledge through creativity, collaboration, and problem solving.  Examples of this from the PBS video would be the Smithsonian’s scavenger hunt using cell phones and the video productions created by students at the media arts school in Chicago.  

Teachers need to recognize and embrace the changes in teaching pedagogy that is required for teaching twenty-first century learners.  The Partnership for 21st Century Skills has a great visual graphic encompassing both student outcomes and teacher supports.  Crucial teaching today is to promote a "quest to learn".  I enjoyed the conversation about children being addicted to tech gadgets.  This 'addiction', used for things many educators don't value, yet could be valuable for children in their lives.  Growing up digital isn't all bad.  



2 comments:

  1. I love the rainbow shaped visual from The Partnership for 21st Century Skills. When you look at a real rainbow the colors next to each other don't change suddenly, they flow together and gradually change. The same can be said of their model with the skills from the 3r's flowing into the skills above.

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  2. "When educators consider these different style learners, all of which have their own various passions, and then use technology in ways to foster these passions – education POPS! Students become engaged, active learners who are able to produce knowledge through creativity, collaboration, and problem solving." Using technology in the classroom offers varied opportunities for all learning styles to show what they know.

    It is required by the Department of Education that we integrate technology into the classroom. The problem is, they do not offer the help we need to do so. So we are forced to figure it out on our stretched budgets, which becomes so frustrating. Starting small is one way to do this. I am happy you wrote: "Teachers need to recognize and embrace the changes in teaching pedagogy that is required for teaching twenty-first century learners. The Partnership for 21st Century Skills has a great visual graphic encompassing both student outcomes and teacher supports." Digital literacy is so important to our students and we can help them discern information from the internet as true or what to do when something comes up on the screen that might be inappropriate or considered bullying. Teaching those skills to my middle school students is one of my favorite lessons to teach. It encourages discussion and gets them to think about things they may not have considered previously.

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