Students Take the Helm

When my parents think of learning, they think of acquiring information from an expert, but what my lesson is aiming for is a type of learning that taps into students' previous knowledge, allowing them to build on what they know and tap into the strengths of their peers (including their teacher). My parents were given information, but I will ask students to build and construct knowledge. 

The secondary English Language Arts lesson I have written is an attempt to give students a chance to become the expert peer in the classroom by presenting information that they have researched, synthesized, and expanded upon the topic of their choice within the perimeters of the class. 

Students will be showing their competency in communicating ideas using technology. Students are creating a PowerPoint that makes the information (that they have learned about their topic) accessible to their peers. Students will be pooling their web-gained knowledge to construct a context for the novel that we will then begin to read as a class. 

Up the Bloom Taxonomy!

It is our responsibility to get students, at every opportunity, to evaluate the knowledge they are creating. The most useful tool any student can learn to wield is the ability to take some new information talk about it, put it in their own language (thus appropriating it as their own constructed knowledge), and then critique/judge/test for holes in this bit of knowledge.

I intend to mostly leave room in lessons for students to be able to first have access to new information and then for them to work out theories, concepts, meanings in groups. Bouncing ideas off of their peers, they will be able to hear the concepts in the language of other students, and challenge others' conceptions as well as have their conceptions be challenged.

As their teacher I will step in before and after group discussion to help them organize the information they are creating and then synthesize their findings - essentially I will nudge them towards the top of Bloom's taxonomy throughout the lesson and by the end of the lesson I will give them space to show/test their skills on their own.

The Way We Move Forward

Although I am as enthusiastic about new educational software as the next English teacher (lol), I do see some issues that suggest that we might be putting the virtual cart before the cyber horse. Jason Szep's article, "Technology Reshapes America's Classrooms," insinuates that classrooms move toward a complete utilization of cyberspace as a replacement for classroom space. To suggest that computers may be able to accurately assess students' needs is, to me, absurd. First of all there is the problem of the human capability of outsmarting a computer, tricking it, underachieving in order to receive easier work, or paying other students to log on and complete assignments. Second of all, there is the problem of the increasing outsourcing of American jobs. 

When technology is integrated with a classroom curriculum there is a far better chance that students will receive the kind of assessment and instruction that they, individually, need. To completely lose ourselves in technology will not alleviate the problems American public school systems are facing. What about all the high need schools that are not receiving these technological advances, the schools that are not being included in this revolution? The gap will widen, the children who are deprived will be left behind. The issue of educational equity needs to be dealt with first and thoroughly. 

Eventually the world will be so intertwined, so porous, that national borders will not matter as much, but as of now, Americans need jobs and any that we can keep, we should. In my opinion the further the student is from the teacher, tutor, classroom, the less likely his or her individual needs will be assessed. This proposal does not seem like a move in the right direction at all.