This millennial generation business sells a lot of books and creates a lot of consulting opportunities for "experts."
There are so many books and consultants out there that are starting to jump into this. Is it real? Is it an imagined crisis? I think there are some real differences between the current generation in college and mine. I don't know if the reading and writing that students do digitally is making up for the reading and writing we did in books and on paper. I still love books - they are my favorite thing. I'm trying not to pass judgment, to keep an open mind that digital media can open up new ways of learning and appeal to the multiple intelligences... yet I have a strong bias that real knowledge and thinking comes from sitting along, struggling with a text. Now, if you're reading that online through Project Guttenberg, or something to that effect, I think it can have a democratizing effect.
But if thinking and struggling through texts isn't happening... I don't know. It doesn't seem like learning to me.
Showing posts with label learning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label learning. Show all posts
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
"Americans iz Dum" is Everywhere!
Lots of others are blogging about Jacoby's new book and her editorial in the Post. Open Culture, one of my favorite blogs, has a favorable commentary and compares it to other recent books including Al Gore's Assault on Reason (out in paperback in April).
Joanne Jacobs, another educational blogger, uses the article to decry the criticisms of teachers "teaching to the test" and lambaste rote learning, which as I recall from my days as a French teacher, actually works quite well to get students speaking the language. Makes me feel like saying "Darn Liberal Bloggers" until I remember, oh yeah, aren't I a Hillary Clinton supporter? Guess that makes me a liberal blogger too.
Joanne Jacobs, another educational blogger, uses the article to decry the criticisms of teachers "teaching to the test" and lambaste rote learning, which as I recall from my days as a French teacher, actually works quite well to get students speaking the language. Makes me feel like saying "Darn Liberal Bloggers" until I remember, oh yeah, aren't I a Hillary Clinton supporter? Guess that makes me a liberal blogger too.
I'm not the only snob
A good friend just sent me the link to this editorial, written by Susan Jacoby, author of The Age of American Unreason.
I agree with a lot of what she says, but I do think we need to be cautious that reading online is still reading. I encounter a lot of students who are incredibly intelligent every day who rarely read a book. Does it bother me that the literary lions I read in college now seem obsolete? Sure... but I don't think that by forcing people read on paper is the way to get them there. We have to draw a line between preserving the good in the classical canon and throwing out the useful in the current one.
"The Dumbing of America." (Jacoby, S. The Washington Post. 2/17/08.)
I agree with a lot of what she says, but I do think we need to be cautious that reading online is still reading. I encounter a lot of students who are incredibly intelligent every day who rarely read a book. Does it bother me that the literary lions I read in college now seem obsolete? Sure... but I don't think that by forcing people read on paper is the way to get them there. We have to draw a line between preserving the good in the classical canon and throwing out the useful in the current one.
"The Dumbing of America." (Jacoby, S. The Washington Post. 2/17/08.)
Friday, February 15, 2008
Pedagogy and Learning
First, just to clarify...
pedagogy, n. The art, occupation, or practice of teaching. Also: the theory or principles of education; a method of teaching based on such a theory. (From OED, 2005)
learning, vbl, n. 1. The action of the vb. LEARN. a. The action of receiving instruction or acquiring knowledge; spec. in Psychol., a process which leads to the modification of behaviour or the acquisition of new abilities or responses, and which is additional to natural development by growth or maturation; (freq. opp. insight).
So. There we are. The question is, how to we update learning? And is our desire to have the theory of how people learn getting in the way of how people actually learn? I watched one of my students stand in front of the classroom yesterday and ask if the rest of the class remembered 2nd grade, when they were excited about learning. She held up a textbook as an example of the irrelevancy of current education practices to their lives, and said, "Let's get back to 2nd grade." It was inspiring, to say the least.
And then I come across these two items in other blogs. It's a movement, people!
This from 2¢ Worth. "Our efforts should not be to integrate technology into the classroom, but to define and facilitate a new platform on which the classroom operates. When the platform is confined by classroom walls, and learning experiences spring from static textbooks and labored-over white boards, and the learning is highly prescribed, then pedagogy is required."
"Podcast: With Dean Shareski on _Natural_ Global Collaboration and Networked Learning." (Burell, C. Beyond School. 2/13/08)
"Is Pedagogy Getting in the Way of Learning?" (Warlick, D. 2¢ Worth. No idea of date.)
pedagogy, n. The art, occupation, or practice of teaching. Also: the theory or principles of education; a method of teaching based on such a theory. (From OED, 2005)
learning, vbl, n. 1. The action of the vb. LEARN. a. The action of receiving instruction or acquiring knowledge; spec. in Psychol., a process which leads to the modification of behaviour or the acquisition of new abilities or responses, and which is additional to natural development by growth or maturation; (freq. opp. insight).
So. There we are. The question is, how to we update learning? And is our desire to have the theory of how people learn getting in the way of how people actually learn? I watched one of my students stand in front of the classroom yesterday and ask if the rest of the class remembered 2nd grade, when they were excited about learning. She held up a textbook as an example of the irrelevancy of current education practices to their lives, and said, "Let's get back to 2nd grade." It was inspiring, to say the least.
And then I come across these two items in other blogs. It's a movement, people!
This from 2¢ Worth. "Our efforts should not be to integrate technology into the classroom, but to define and facilitate a new platform on which the classroom operates. When the platform is confined by classroom walls, and learning experiences spring from static textbooks and labored-over white boards, and the learning is highly prescribed, then pedagogy is required."
"Podcast: With Dean Shareski on _Natural_ Global Collaboration and Networked Learning." (Burell, C. Beyond School. 2/13/08)
"Is Pedagogy Getting in the Way of Learning?" (Warlick, D. 2¢ Worth. No idea of date.)
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