teach?
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=How+should+we+teach+technology%3F
It's a good resource for teaching students (or anyone) to be "generally
adaptive thinkers/users of technology" or at least not be lazy when the
world is at their fingertips. And its amazing how many people actually
don't know how to do it, or perhaps can't be bothered to.
With information being more and more accessible, the question isn't "Should
we teach skills?" The question is "How do we facilitate a student's
learning of skills?" Teachers are more facilitators now than gatekeepers of
knowledge. Perhaps for some students, facilitating involves providing
examples and baselines. Perhaps for others, it means giving them the above
link.
Maybe we also have a responsibility to model behavior that we'd like to see
students develop. Students don't learn to teach each other without some
models of good practice. Perhaps a secondary question is whether we are
models of good practice, and where did we learn it?
Also, what population of students are we talking about? Those with greater
resources will be better at figuring things out than those with fewer
resources. Unless your school caters only to the children of well-educated
parents, socio-economic conditions should be a factor in deciding how to
facilitate learning. Whether learning takes place outside of the classroom
depends on a number of different factors, most of which depend on access to
resources (technology and people).
I come from working class parents, but if they hadn't gotten us that Vic-20
way back when, I think I'd be a different person. They couldn't teach me
how to use it, but at least I had access to a computer.
On Sun, Feb 15, 2009 at 10:51 PM, Keith E Gatling <keith@gatling.us> wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 15, 2009 at 5:15 PM, Ernest Koe <ernestkoe@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Great discussion so far. This is a topic close to my heart. To further
> > clarify my thoughts from before, let me offer the following ideas (aka,
> How
> > To Think Like a Geek).
> >
> > It seems to me that...
> >
> > 1. It is not about having skills in specific software programs, it is
> > about having generally adaptive thinkers/users of technology
>
>
> But as I said, once you have the skills in even WordStar, figuring out how
> to do the same thing OpenOffice becomes that much easier.
>
> >
> > 2. it is not 'general software skills' vs 'specific programs'. We need
> to
> > stop thinking of software as requiring skills. There is nothing skilled
> > about being good Microsoft Word user.
> > 1. Incidentally, if I get resumes that list software programs as
> > skills, they go into 'filed' bin
>
>
> That's *you*. There are some employers who need people with those specific
> software skills because they don't want to have to spend the time
> [re]training them. Don't assume that your needs are everyone's needs. The
> resume you "file" may well be the exact one I'm looking for.
>
> 4. It's not about being a good Excel/Word/Powerpoint user, it is about
> > knowing how to communicate ideas with these stuff
>
>
> Or about being the expert user who can help someone else communicate the
> ideas with it. One could say that it's not about being a good animator, but
> about being able to communicate a good story. But the animator works
> hand-in-hand with the story person. And if you can be *both*, well, that's
> even better. Walt Disney said that Ub Iwerks was the world's greatest
> animator. But he wasn't a good story person, and the studio he set up when
> he left Disney floundered because of it. Walt was a passable animator, but
> an excellent story person, who knew how to get the animators to communicate
> his story. Both are important.
>
> As far as Excel/Word/PowerPoint goes, as far as I'm concerned, knowing how
> to communicate with those tools involves knowing how to use them properly,
> and especially so as not to give your audience a headache when they look at
> your presentation.
>
> 7. All specific software 'skills' can be taught by showing someone how to
> > find the 'help' button or how to search google.
>
>
> So are you saying that all I have to do now when a student asks a question
> is to say, "Look it up yourself?" Don't we have some obligation to at least
> show them the basics before we cast them adrift and make them fend for
> themselves?
>
>
> > 9. Our 'standards' about style, format and form are diminishing in value
> > everyday. Insisting on having a Microsoft Word processed 'essay' will
> > seem
> > like asking for a type-written essay.
>
>
> Um...it's the same thing. It's typed output on paper. What has changed over
> the past 30 years is the number of people who will accept handwritten
> essays. Even when I was a freshman in college, back in the 70s, the
> typewriter was a relative rarity among students, and many short papers were
> handwritten.
>
>
> > 12. but the Remix generation is already here (Lesig's term, not mine) -
> > and if we don't get with the program, we'll be the ones taking classes
> > about
> > how to use Flickr circa 2020
>
>
> And what is the remix generation remixing? Things that were done the old
> way.
>
> 15. Nurture the internal geek or be ruled by them.
>
>
> But the geeks often misunderstand what regular humans want and need.
> --
>
> keg
>
> ========================================
> Keith E Gatling
> mailto:keith@gatling.us
> http://www.gatling.us/keith
> The fact that I'm open-minded doesn't mean that I have to agree with you.
> ========================================
>
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