Build a Bridge & Get Over IT

I remember hearing once a quote from an editorial piece complaining about how rude and disrespectful today's youth are; how they dress so inappropriately; how they just don't respect authority. After listening to it, I then learned it was written in Plato's time over 1500 years ago.

Similarly, the speaker at the opening session of Denton ISD's TIA called us to think about a time when the ink pen was "new technology". Educators must have had reservations such as:

• "Students shall use them to doeth disruptive things such as poketh each other with them" (King's English added by me - eth)
  
• "How will they ever learn just how much ink to dip on to the quill if we let them use this new gadget"

Well ... you get the idea. However, it really set me to thinking about my own reservations on some technology uses. Don't get me wrong, I am all for it. I think of my self as being ahead of the curve when it comes to adopting new technology. It helps if you aren't afraid that you'll look a fool if it doesn't work.

Still, I face those reservations when I start something new. What if it doesn't work? How will the kids mis-use it? What would happen if they use it to cheat?

So, how do I overcome that? Well, in the words of at least one administrator, "Get over it." That is the simple truth. Technology brings us so many options today that weren't available even a few years ago, it is difficult to quantify. Daily - at least it seems - someone could tell me about a new tool, web site, or application that has possibilities for finding, dissecting, organizing, and reporting information. These are the tools that our students will be using in their personal and more importantly their professional lives a few years from now. As long as we (present company included) look only at the possible negatives, we will never walk in to it on faith.

Certainly, there will be problems along the way. The ways in which it could be turned for no good may be as long as the list of new things coming out each day. However, as educators, I think that we need to take the risks. As someone said today, "embrace the technology and address the problem". Don't suppress the technology out of blind fear.

You may be surprised to find out just how anxious the students are to actually embrace this new knowledge that you have for them and maybe even teach you something about it. If not, we may find that we are in the same place as the buggy whip makers in the age of automobiles.

Of Tuna Fish and Education

So, while I am making tuna fish for our lunch sandwiches one morning, the idea for this post occurred to me. To someone of my generation, home cooking involves simply opening a box and mixing the contents with either water or milk. That, however, was not always the way. Only a generation or two prior, our grandmothers fixed absolutely fabulous meals truly from scratch. In between, people learned to cook by recipes. Great inventions, but something I now believe affected the state of education today.

You see, the recipe was supposed to make it possible for anyone to cook a great meal. One only needed to follow the directions, down to the exact amounts of ingredients to include. Along the way, we came to awe our grandmother's ability to fix meals with no more directions than "a dash of salt" or "a pinch of flour".

So here I am standing in my kitchen making tuna fish for lunch. I'm not saying this to brag, but it was completely without a recipe. I did what I've done many times: mix together the tuna, 2 eggs, "some" mustard and "a little more than some" mayonnaise. If the mixture looked too yellow, I added more mayo. If it was too white, I added a bit more mustard.

That is when it hit me. I was problem solving right there in the kitchen just like I expect my students to learn to do. The era of cooking by recipes and standardized testing (among other things) has ushered in a generation to whom learning is synonymous with memorizing steps. As teachers, we seem to constantly fight to get students to think on their own, but they regularly want to gravitate back to the cookie cutter approach with which they seem to be most comfortable.

I even had a colleague a couple of years back who had a student say, "Don't teach me how to do this problem. Just SHOW me it." Learning to him was memorizing a set of steps to solve a particular problem instead of looking at what was given and creating a solution from what he had available. If the problem changed or was presented in a different manner, then he would have to memorize a completely different set of instructions.

It turns out that my grandmother was one one of the most educated people I would ever encounter, but I never realized it at the time.

As you go about your daily life, look for ways to throw out the recipe. Try something new and creative - especially something that you don't have a recipe for. Sit back and evaluate,or "What would make this better?" or "What is available to me to work with?" Along the way, you just might resurrect the long lost art of problem solving.