I attended the Three Rivers Educational Technology Conference here in Pittsburgh hosted by the Pittsburgh Technology Council today, and it was a refreshing and insightful day. As well as getting my geek and wing chow on, I had the experience to witness how education right now is in a complete frenzy to adapt new technology methods and means to teach the same material, but in a better way.
Now, to say that technology wasn't the bastard-child of education before would be, at best, a lie. Much like music education, technology has been given a stigma that you can't teach and need to be Bill Gates to understand it. Basically, it goes like this:
If you don't utilize technology in school, you are wrong
I couldn't agree more! We as a country have fallen in the trap of standards. Standardized tests, standardized methods, lesson plans, etc. What we need is innovation, and technology definitely is the perfect vehicle for that. I saw teachers in different districts figure out ways to do this.
The first class I attended was a demo of how Fox Chapel schools now utilize iPads in the classroom. Whats interesting about this is the iPad was never intended to do what they are doing with it, and Apple actually had to reinvent it's strategy to figure how to best suite the needs of education. Because of this, volume licensing of apps is now available. They showed how they use the internal features of the iPad that are already there, as well as a developing strategies to teach certain things in a certain way on the platform. What really interested me, as a geek, was how they are now able to deploy iPads much like laptops, and how most of the books in their library are now available to the platform. To add to the list of tricks, the iPad in their district has now replaced a communication machine for autism that was much worse, and much more expensive (~$8000) with a $200 iPad app for Autism.
A teacher from New Brighton High School built a website and utilized Skype in the Classroom to collaborate with teachers across the country and the world. One in particular was a teacher in Japan that he exchange informational videos about culture of the schools. He also informed us that teachers are now in foreign language class are using this to openly communicate with schools in the countries in which they speak the language they are learning. I can't think of a better way to learn than from the horses mouth, no insult or pun intended. I took 6 years of German throughout middle and high school, and struggled with many parts of it, as it is one of the harder languages to master (mainly because they have 16 forms of "the"). If I was able to have that technology to talk to a german in german live like that I doubt I would of struggled.
You can check out his website here, where he posts his classes projects and such:
http://www.mrpasquale.com/Mr._Pasquale/Home_Page.html
Finally, to wrap my geek learning session, we attended a class on Office 365. Microsoft actually came to the event, and demonstrated the new, all web based technologies that will make the installed office suite obsolete. Everything is now web, or "cloud based". I think Microsoft is really hitting a home run here, because not only are all your documents available on any browser anywhere you have a web connection, but it works on all platforms, to include Mac OSX, iPad and iPhone, Android and even Linux. As an IT professional, I would love it, as it's one less thing to troubleshoot and manage, and allows a completely transparent and flexbile platform to do things. This software really opens the idea of using an iPad or Android tablet as a laptop equivalent. All you need is a weblink to get working! You can check it out here for free if you have a Hotmail or Windows Live account (it's called SkyDrive, and doesn't have a few things):
https://login.live.com/login.srf?wa=wsignin1.0&rpsnv=11&ct=1321484137&rver=6.1.6206.0&wp=MBI_SSL_SHARED&wreply=https:%2F%2Fskydrive.live.com%2F&lc=1033&id=250206&mkt=en-US&cbcxt=sky
Finally, to end the event, we had a closing speech about the Gen Y generation and the needs to change the style of teaching. Heading this was MK Haley, who is the Associate Executive Producer of CMU's Entertainment Technology Center. This section of CMU put the new methods that may be in schools of how to teach this new generation into practice. Typical practices of this are to constantly pair students together on different projects over the courses. These can range from designing a virtual world to developing a new means of expression and communication. What really interested me was they typically have a group of people with completely different backgrounds. One group that stood out to me was the "Random Awesomeness Group" which is 20% of their class, which consists of anyone who excels in a certain field, whether that may be accounting, theater or english.
To sum up her speech in words, she debunks the current method of teaching, which I lightly call "Sit down and shut up", where kids are read to and expected to learn. The differences of the Gen Y group make it so most people in my age bracket learn in completely different ways. We are disadvantaged as most older generations may think, in fact, we have the ability to solve complex and difficult issues that were before possible. Gen Y needs more collaboration, more exposure to actual relevance to what we are learning, and we can teach ourselves anything that we assume is possible. Our generation isn't full of people who refuse to learn how to open a word document in Microsoft Word (Ahem, baby boomers!). Gen Y folks want to learn, not get talked to and remember useless information.
What makes technology so vital to education is exactly why music education is, it forces you to completely dissect and problem solve. I posted a comment about how growing up, the things that interested me in my education were surrounded by technology, as well as music. Music and technology are very similar in how they are taught and understood, and how they compliment anything else in school. Kids with music education are much better students, and have been statistically proven to perform better in subjects like Math and Science. Music forces you to take apart and put something back together, developing critical thinking skills just like learning about technology. I was in hog heaven when I took music technology in school, because it was something I could teach myself and master. It brought aspects of my tech background, as well as my love for music, in a good mix.
Technology is going to lead our culture in the future. To stay competitive, and teach our children, we need to embrace it, not shun it away. Our old methods of teaching are no longer good. Endless tests aren't going to prove anything, we are leaving our children behind.
