That was one of the points of the Summer Spark talk I gave on Thursday: A Marriage of Equals: Supplement, not Replace
I started with the most important thing: why we (should) be teaching what we teach.
- Habits of mind
- Skills
- Content
And definitely in that order. Unless they use them in college, students will remember little of the skills or content we teach them except to the extent they influence the students’ habits of mind.
I supported my own contention in this regard with the following quotes from a talk Einstein gave in 1936:
o The aim [of education] must be the training of independently acting and thinking individuals who, however, see in the service of the community their highest life problem….
o Give into the power of the teacher the fewest possible coercive measures so that the only source of the pupil’s respect for the teacher is the human and intellectual qualities of the latter.
o The most important motive for work in the school and in life is the pleasure in work, pleasure in its results, and the knowledge of the value of the result to the community. In the awakening and strengthening of these psychological forces in the student is the most important task given by the school.
o I have said nothing yet about the choice of subjects for instruction nor about the method of teaching. In my opinion, all this is of secondary importance. ‘Education is what remains if one has forgotten everything he learned in school.’ The development of general ability for independent thinking and judgment should always be placed foremost, not the acquisition of special knowledge.
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My major examples came from Honors Projects from my fall senior English course.
I divided (somewhat arbitrarily) the projects into the following three categories:
Non-tech (traditional) course: The first was just a “regular” paper on an outside reading book, connecting its themes to the course ideas/questions. A small variation on that theme was allowing a student to read a work on French existentialism in French and then write her paper in French. (English teachers who don’t speak French could use the opportunity for some excellent collegial cooperation here!) Important to realize that the widespread (ubiquitous in our school) use of word processors for papers has had significant positive impact on our students’ ability to edit and improve their own work.
Tech-enabled course: I placed into this category work that could be done through more traditional means but that was made easier through use of the internet.
Use of webpages for the course: https://sites.google.com/site/english4dlr/
Posted class notes: https://sites.google.com/site/english4dlr/home/kafka-quotes
Honors projects
- A paper about postmodernism in music (compared to the literary postmodernism that we’d been studying) that used embedded links to YouTube videos for the musical selections
- A paper about Saussure’s use and theory of language that had extensive web research but was otherwise written and presented traditionally
- a paper on Matisse that embedded images discussed in the paper in the text
Tech-enhanced course: I put in this category work that would be far more difficult, if not impossible to do, in a world like those of thirty years ago.
new, visual ways of thinking: wordle of different texts to look for dominant themes
Honors projects
- A discussion of John Cage’s work comparing different pieces to specific modernist and postmodernist works of literature–the visual was a prezi with links to YouTube videos of performances of the musical works, and the commentary/analysis was recorded on a companion CD
- Analyzing word frequency (as well as frequency of phrases of different lengths) in several texts to see if Lotaria’s theory of reading was in any way credible.
Student blog-writing: http://blogs.sjs.org/dlre4evil/
Use of a camera to take pictures of notes on a whiteboard and then post them online
Use of a Promethean board to record notes of class discussion for posting
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I also spoke briefly about how use of tech tools has enhanced my professional environment outside the classroom:
Use of Whipple Hill calendar and assignment software (it runs the school’s website) that has made coordinating due dates with other instructors easier
Use of email and Facebook to apprise students of changes in assignments or additional useful materials
Giving tutorials by Gchat, Facebook chat, or email
Web research of my own:
English 3 Google “race in American literature” Bing: “race in American literature’
Professional blog: sandbox.schoolpress.co/dlr/
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I also spoke briefly about the need actually to check that tech-reliant projects are doing what they purport to do and gave as an example the comparison between student blogs and in-class papers on similar kinds of topics to see if the blog writing really promoted “better” or “more creative” student writing as is often claimed.