“When you step away from the prepackaged
structure of traditional education, you’ll discover that there are many more
ways to learn outside school than within.”
- Kio Start
Pulkit reminisces about how school was in
my generation. When we needed to know how to spell a word, we looked it up in a
dictionary. When we did research, we went to the library and used encyclopedias.
One of my most used high school graduation gifts was a box set of a dictionary
and thesaurus. Our media was on paper and we communicated face to face. We were
expected to memorize all sorts of facts and other information. Ah the good old
days! But if we as educators stay stuck
in that mold and do not adapt to the new days of technology and social media,
we will lose our role of being the cultivators of curiosity for our students.
(Pulkit, 2014)
Our students live in world with information
at their fingertips. My daughters hate
it when we tell them to look up words in the dictionary. As Pulkit writes, “Students today are more
connected to the outside world than how much we were at their age. If they have
a question today, they will not wait for another day to go to the school and
ask teacher. They will access the information on their smartphone in a matter
of few seconds.” He goes on to write, “Social Media has bridged the gap between
students and the highest quality study material they need for learning.”
I have been in several different schools
and math classrooms in the last couple of years. There is so much data to
support the need for teachers need to embrace the social media word our
students are a part of and we need to change our role from the givers of
knowledge to “the validator & applier of knowledge.” (Pulkit, 2014) Yet in
the schools and classrooms I have been in, I believe this is not happening. I
see math being taught much the same as it was when I was in school. But from experiences I have had, I wonder who
is resisting the change more teachers or students?
Pulkit 2014.“The Barriers To Using Social Media In Education (Part 1 of 2)” retrieved June 5 from http://www.edudemic.com/author/pulkit/
No comments:
Post a Comment