BP3_2009101_Anti-Teaching

Michael Wesch's article is certainly an interesting view on education, especially the type of education that I and many others received as undergrads in huge lecture halls for intro-to-whatever classes for the fulfillment of some requirement. It's interesting to think about how my experience in these courses might have been different or better of more meaningful if we had been able to use the technology that is currently available to educators and students.

The issue if significance is certainly an interesting one. As I read Wesch's article, I first thought about how much more I could have gotten out of the anthropology couse I took as a freshman in college if I had been able to use technology to work as a group and create a media-based project to demonstrate and share relevant knowledge rather than simply sit in a lecture, take notes, and regurgitate information in a little blue exam book.

So, given that I'm currently teaching high school students, how could course management systems or personal learning environments work to increase the significance or relevance for my students? Well, we know from Howard Gardner that all learners have different strengths and weaknesses in different areas of intelligence, so that seems to be an argument in favor of PLEs. And Eric Jensen's research on brain-based learning would tell us that a student who could jump around to different content in a CMS would be in a more natural learning environment than a student forced into a linear approach to learning.

Clearly Web 2.0 tools have an important place in education. Students in my school are currently using Google Docs to work collaboratively, discussion boards on the district website to share ideas and opinions, and social networking to coordinate all of their communications outside of school. By working to eliminate the literal and figurative firewall between students' uses of technology at home and at school, we're making progress towards becoming more relevant and significant to our digital native students.

I don't know if these uses of technology are the answer to the current problems our school system is facing, but they certainly seem to be a step in the right direction.