This past week
Eric Zeiberg, a 7th grader at my school, was featured in both the Hartford
Courant:
and FoxCT Now:
where they detail
how Eric created an app that helps the speech disabled. Eric was inspired by
his older special-needs sister, and with a little help from his dad, created
the first app of its kind that converts handwriting to speech.
I had Eric as a
student last year and was not overly surprised to hear about this as he is a
whip-smart, compassionate and curious kid. But I couldn't help thinking that
most likely nothing he learned in my class had anything to do with his amazing
app. Not that I wish I personally, or my class, got any credit for its development but I
wondered how many other apps, or ideas for apps, could have been generated as a
result of a unit based on studying and developing them.
You would be hard
pressed to find a middle schooler who doesn't use apps on a daily basis. And
it’s not just middle schoolers, it’s younger children as well. It used to be
that a child’s first language was English or Spanish or Mandarin or some other
spoken language. These days it’s technology. Even before my oldest son could
cobble together a few words to form a rudimentary sentence he could take a
smart phone or tablet, swipe it open, navigate to a desired app and begin to
use it. He’s no power user, or child prodigy, just one of a generation whose
native tongue happens to be technology. Yet I am pretty sure that the word "app" does not appear
anywhere in my curriculum. This is a missed opportunity as these are the kind
of 21st Century skills and real world applications that we educators
are always talking and hearing about these days and looking to incorporate into our teaching.
So what am I
teaching? In one of my classes last week we covered part of my curriculum that deals
with something called the Universal Systems Model. The USM is a diagram that
can be used to analyze how a technology produces a result or output. Is the USM
technology itself? No. Does it relate to the Engineering or Design process? A
little bit I guess. Is it something that my students can use to improve their learning
or increase their digital literacy/citizenship? Not really. Is it something that they
can use to impact their daily life or any other area of learning? I’d say
probably not and would wager that most forget it entirely a few weeks after we
have moved on to a new topic.
To be fair there
are many things which we do that does provide tangible, research supported,
benefits for learners and has nothing to do with social media/learning or
digital literacy. That being primarily the hands on work of designing, creating
and testing real (non-virtual) things such as scale model bridges or co2
powered vehicles. This is a topic I’ll have to save for another post but here
is a compelling article on the subject by philosopher turned motorcycle
mechanic Matthew Crawford:
NPR story and interview
with the same author:
When computers
first came on to the school scene, Tech Ed (known as Industrial Arts at the
time) to its credit was at the forefront of that movement. Even today, apart
from a library or dedicated computer lab, there are few non-Tech Ed classrooms
that have a full compliment of computers in most middle schools. The mass
adoption and use of computers has revolutionized our world. The next revolution
is underfoot and I am worried that if my discipline does not act quickly we are
going to miss the boat on this one and greatly disservice our students.
My department in the process of preparing for a top to bottom curriculum rewrite
next year and I hope to play a role in convincing my colleagues and supervisors
that we need to rethink everything that we are currently teaching and make sure
we are fully equipping students for success in a digital world as they will need this fluency regardless of
what career they end up pursuing.
