EdTechTrek

The headline reads: “Colleges spend billions to prep freshman.” The by-line: “High school graduates increasingly unprepared for college work, remediation falls most heavily to community colleges” A study is quoted at reporting that as much as one third of American college students have enrolled in remedial classes. Although this is often done at great expense to colleges, I think the sadder story is that it needs to be done at all for such high percentages of college freshmen. But, to shed some light on a different aspect of the problem, I share the following quotation from the article:

Eric Paris, who earned a 3.8 high school GPA but is finding his freshman year at Virginia Tech much more challenging, says the big difference is “it’s all on my own.” In class, “it’s up to me if I want to sit on Facebook or pay attention.” He, too, wishes he’d taken more challenging high school classes but thought a high GPA was more important.

We lead students to believe that grades are everything, that having a high GPA is critical to getting into a good college (and it is, but it’s not the only determiner), so they then take easy courses to boost their GPAs and end up with this false sense of accomplishment that get stripped away when they are told that they must enroll in remedial writing or remedial math their freshman year. I have had students like this. You wonder how the system has failed them. Actually, I have had graduate students who have never had to write a real research paper. I have had elementary education majors who wanted to teach high school, but could not complete the requisite math courses. They figured since they were not all that good at math that they could at least teach younger students. I want to strangle them at this point of the conversation.

You know, we have a number of highly complex problems that continue to plague American education. This should not be one of them. We desperately need strong math and science teachers at the elementary level. I, myself, am a recovering math disaster, largely due to many of my elementary teachers who did not have a clue as to how to really teach mathematical concepts. Sure, they could teach the rules of regrouping or the definitions of polygons, but all that takes is reading a few statements out of the teacher’s manual. That didn’t meet my needs. Today, I have a much healthier and sound conceptual mathematical understanding and am so thankful for some of my education professors who taught methods of teaching math and remedial math methods. I now reteach my own son when he comes home from school, not understanding the most basic of concepts.

I avoided the hard courses to keep my grades up in high school. I hope that my children do not. I hope that they are both empowered and challenged by their teachers. I hope that their teachers will see areas of need and address those needs ASAP. I hope their teachers will teach to their strenghts and strenthen those areas of weakness. I hope their teachers will value their interests and make learning relevant. I hope that their teachers use all resources and tools at their disposal. I hope that their teachers will fight for resources and tools that they do not have access to and desperately need. I hope that their teachers believe in them.

That’s a lot of hoping, isn’t it.

Should so much at stake be resting in the arms of hope?

What a title, right? Well, I just went through all of those emotions when I read this February 10th article from the Washington Post titled, A School That’s Too High on Gizmos. What can I say… you have to read it to see if you experience the same emotions. In a nutshell, it describes the teachers’ and students’ experiences in a very high-tech school in Alexandria… and most of what is reported is not good. Imagine - a new building, state-of-the art, all of the technologies anyone could want (and it turns out more than most want), and teachers who are disillusioned, turned off, and frustrated. Students who are recognizing technology for technology’s sake. The term used is “administrative technolust” -

“a disorder affecting publicity-obsessed school administrators nationwide that manifests itself in an insatiable need to acquire the latest, fastest, most exotic computer gadgets, whether teachers and students need them or want them.”

Teachers being told that they cannot use more traditional technologies (i.e. overhead projectors, chalkboards…). Technical problems continually interrupting learning. The mourning of face2face socialization and increased depersonalization. I love this one quotation from a student who admits that his favorite teacher

“isn’t into all this computer stuff. All he uses is the board — the whole board. He’s lively, energetic, witty and really knows his math. He forces you to pay attention; you can’t drift off even if you want to.”

I love that. It brings a balance to the conversation about 21st century teaching - that good teaching must precede effective technology use.

Now, there are so many issues to address in all of this - technology before training, unsupported infrastructure, mandated teaching styles, mandated tools, lack of mentorship, technology for technology’s sake, technology as magic bullet, technology diversion, poor leadership, and more… I think this might be the first article that I have read that includes so many illustrations of poor technology implementation. It also brings some insights into the great conversations that happened over on Scott McLeod’s blog Dangerously Irrelevant and Pete Reilly’s blog, Ed Tech Journeys, about whether technology should be mandated or not. And, in all fairness, it is one highly publicized article that I am sure does not capture the situation in a totally unbiased and objective manner.

Anyway, read it for yourself. How did it make you feel? Let me know.