YouTube - Learning to Change

Learning to Change - Changing to Learn

"The US Department of Commerce conducted a study of fifty-five sectors on the level of IT intensiveness.  Education came in dead last - below coal mining."  Thus begins this video about how education needs to change the way it does things.  The video makes the point that technology just isn't a choice any more.  It must be used in the way we educate children.  I found myself strongly agreeing with this video even though I struggle, very much, to move past the introduction of keyboarding and word processing in my classroom.  With a curriculum packed with knowledge necessary to appease NCLB it is a struggle to decide what goes in order to accommodate the extra front time needed for kids to learn and use the technology.  I understand that it is an investment, but while the discussion remains about test results and percentage of kids that met the growth goal, it is hard to make the paradigm shift necessary to change the way things are done.

In the video it is pointed out the we need "a narrative that sustains twenty-first century learning."  Unfortunately, we don't have one yet.  We know that literacy is changing and that technological literacy is an important aspect of education, yet we don't quite know how to this well and consistently yet.  The argument is that literacy now means how find information, how to validate it, how to synthesize it, how to leverage it, how to communicate it, how to collaborate with it, and how to problem solve with it.  I can absolutely agree with this 100 %, I just don't yet know how to do it.  While I'm not a memorize and spit it back to me teacher, I feel I do a lot of critical thinking and problem solving in my room, I don't do it using technology.  This is an area I'm excited to try.  I want to be sure, though, that I'm using technology because it is the tool that make sense and not simply because I can. 

One of the experts on the video stated that if NCLB would fade away that it would allow for creativity.  We can only hope it does and that he is right.