Tech Coach Reflective Journal
Let's face it: students need to increasingly be able to live in a virtual, paperless world in order to be successful. And as nostalgic as we want to get about the good old days of paper and pencil, the flipping of pages, bookmarks, and the smell (or stench) of books, the fact that the world is moving away from paper is not going to change. We also have to be honest about the fact that this is a good thing.
The capabilities afforded by technology far surpass those of a paper world. Resources are far more readily available. Communication is enhanced and immediate. Information is at our fingertips. Most importantly, a wealth educational opportunity is one Google search away. These are also good things.
Living in an online world, however, requires a very different skill set of students. Whereas 20 years ago scanning a document meant you were looking for a word or phrase, today CTRL-F does the trick...in 1/100th the time. Taking notes almost always involved reading, listening, copying, summarizing, and cramped hands. Nowadays, this involves a simple screen grab. Fine-motor abilities included writing in cursive. Now, it is far more important for students to be able to use a keyboard and click-and-drag effectively. Education itself used to equal access to information. It doesn't mean the same thing anymore. Many of the skills that were required for a successful student just a couple decades ago are no longer even necessary. This is a very good thing, not just because things are a little easier, but because we now have more time to engage in critical thinking, to analyze information, and to create new information and technologies.
New skills are required. These skills are the new selective pressures in our free market economy, favoring those who are proficient and dooming those who are not. The bad news for students and schools is that the selection isn't going to wait to begin until they graduate. While students wallow in classrooms modeled after those in which their teachers were successful, others are building an academic digital identity that will set them ahead. Every learning opportunity for which technology would be a suitable enhancement and it is not, is an opportunity others are taking advantage of in other places.
During the past week, I've had the pleasure to work with several teachers to introduce them to Mahara. As I spend time preparing to present the concept to them, I am struck by the power of the tool and the educational experiences it opens up for students. Admittedly, Mahara is not easy to use, much less is it intuitive. Yet the benefits for students far outweigh the costs.
As we continue to introduce teachers to Mahara, there we have become aware of some needs that have emerged. One of these needs is for an outline of a general workflow for teachers to get students started. As we presented to the staff at Oakman this past week, it became obvious that clicking back and forth, into and out of edit mode on a page edit screen was created a much less desirable experience for teachers. As Chris Kenniburg suggested, it is perhaps easier for teachers and students to focus first on uploading materials, then on the creation of a page once everything is uploaded. This requires a little bit of prior planning of the page, and at some points it may not work best since a page's construction and the need for materials does not necessarily follow a linear timeline. But in general, this seems like the best course of action--especially as we issue recommendations for teachers who are just getting started.