Every week, I read at least one article I'd like to share with other teachers who are fed up with all the pronouncements about teaching and schools, usually made by people who don't know much about either.
So, to get started in my sharing project, here is a particularly good essay (courtesy of Audrey Watters' fabulous blog Hack Education) about the history of America's high schools. Only in this case, the author hasn't invented the history in order to better sell some technological quick fix. Instead, he recounts how high schools and teaching have evolved in order to suggest that while changes need to be made, SCHOOL IS NOT BROKEN.
Has anyone sampled the free resources on Amazon Inspire?
While members of the tech world seem thrilled by Amazon's new launch, those actually working in education are, thankfully, not so ready to assume that Amazon Inspire is solely an altruistic move on the company's part. If you look, you can find a few actual educators taking a wait and see approach, which seems wise.
More on Amazon Inspire and on a subject dear to my heart, respecting copyright, or in this case, ignoring it.
I don't know about you, but I'm really anxious about the growing ed tech emphasis on teaching to the job market. I'm all for working to help students develop marketable skills. I know you have to pay the bills.
But I'm not at all sure that I want employers dictating those skills and thereby abandoning the notion of what used to be called "on the job training." I also don't want to abandon the notion that school gives people access to, or should give access to, art, music, literature, and speculative thought, all the things that will help them survive when the world knocks them down hard as it invariably will at some point in their lives.
The man has been dead for more than a decade, but, he was dead-on accurate about the claims that would be made for technology and the ensuing problems that would be blissfully ignored. The man died way too soon.
Although I have read Postman for years, this particular article is courtesy of Hack Education, the education blog I have already mentioned, which respects the value of technology without getting caught up in the hopelessly overblown hype.
Last change made to this page: July 21, 2016