EDLD 5364: Week 5 Part 1

People these days can be taught through technology to succeed in today’s world. Schools can stress collaborative work and innovation with learned tools. Games are a way to have fun and learn at the same time. Games don’t separate learning and assessment, but are constantly giving assessment throughout the game. Students can use games for educational purposes and not even realize they are having fun and learning at the same time. Games give language just in time. It gives you the language you will use in the next few actions to accomplish a task. Rather than reading a textbook and trying to learn the information, games are able to prompt and give feedback while the student is learning. Modern kids see all the modern media converging at the same time rather than one media at a time. This is creating a cross platform for kids to use multiple skills at one time. Games also create passion communities that students find common interests among other people. If students are interested and engaged, they will want to learn more and at a deeper level of understanding.

Teachers need to be given the opportunities to learn and use technology with their students. Students probably know a lot more that the teachers do, and creating an environment where the students and teachers could both learn at the same time would open up a new level of collaboration. Textbooks, politicians, and tests have driven the curriculum for many years, but using digital tools and technology should allow the teachers and students to step out of the box by exploring and learning together rather than teaching to a test. Our economy is technology driven and we are not preparing our students to be productive adults if we are keeping them from using technology in school. Many schools require students to “power down” when they walk through the school doors. That’s as bad as handing them a worksheet to finish rather than giving them a computer and letting them learn interactively. Our schools have to be prepared to change with the times rather than getting stuck in the past. A long as we teach to the curriculum, we will not be able to integrate and use technology to its fullest. We are cemented into the concept that we must teach to a test and that all the standards implemented by our states must be taught and learned by our students. If we are so concentrated on the test and standards then we are missing out on helping our students become amazing, unique adults that can think for themselves and problem solve. Life is not a multiple choice test and all students do not learn in the same way. Get to know your students. Some of them just might amaze you.