Teaching Generation.com

Abstract

In one fell swoop, the revolution may accomplish what 10 years of education reform could not, the authors predict. The preparation that we have traditionally provided for teachers no longer allows them to maintain the status of with any credibility, because they cannot know as much as the Internet can make available to their students. HERE ARE THREE scenes that might well strike a fa-miliar note with Kappan readers. After you've read them, ask yourselves, What's wrong with these pictures? Scene 1. Private individuals and businesses, eager to keep their technological edge, frequently upgrade their technological equipment. They often donate used or broken computer equipment to schools and receive tax deductions. A few male teachers at a local school, who for idiosyncratic reasons are semiskilled computer users, are drafted into the role of school computer technicians. A district committee forms whose members are largely confused nonexperts who are assigned the task of creating yet another boring document: the district's plan. The world is changing fast, and, once again, these educators know they are playing catch-up. While talk among education policy makers moves from how computers can influence subject-matter instruction to establishing principles for distance learning, the teachers are spending fruitless hours trying to get odd bits of equipment to network, using old modems to access the Internet, and coaxing decrepit printers to print. In the end, skeptical veteran teachers at the school have even reason to believe that integrating technology into their lessons is going to be a waste of their time. Scene 2. One Saturday morning in the spring, a group of middle-grade teachers from the region gather on a campus of the University of California for a series of workshops on ways to teach sixth-graders about the ancient world. The first presenter has planned to demonstrate how her students do research on ancient Rome via Internet sites, but frustrated university staff members can't figure out how to get the room's network to access the Internet. A campuswide default setting that searches all modems for an open net connection is not yet in place in all classrooms. In the end, the harried presenter keeps her audience waiting while she photocopies the home pages of various sites and settles for describing the process to the group. Teachers leave the campus with an uncomfortable realization: not even the University of California can make this stuff work for teachers. Scene 3. About the same time in the spring, a major conference is held at Stanford University that is specifically designed for teacher leaders in technology. During a plenary session, computer guru Alan November describes the future: economically advantaged students and their parents will have access to up-to-date and exciting information on almost any subject via the Internet than most teachers or schools will be able to provide. A bewildered coordinator from a leading high school sees the implications and raises her hand to ask, Why will kids come to school? * * * At least since the Carnegie Commission's 1986 report, A Nation Prepared, education reformers and policy makers have been campaigning for a changing role for teachers - but for reasons other than the impact of and computer use. Teachers have been encouraged to become a guide on the side rather than the traditional sage on the stage. Shortly thereafter, in 1988, Kathleen Devaney and Gary Sykes described a new conception of teaching that emphasizes the continual and changing interplay between thought and action, based on close observation and reflection about the encounter or 'match' between students and subject matter, so that teaching would be more than skilled transmission but would become principled action.1 In one fell swoop, the revolution may accomplish what 10 years of education reform could not. …