Comments on: Un-Common(s) Value

By: Carrye DeCrane

Carrye DeCrane — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 18:48:49 +0000

During my student teaching experience I was in a classroom where the only technology available was chalk! I was working on an article activity from the NY Times with the class. I kept hitting a wall because there were too many words in the piece which were unfamiliar to the students. Without a dictionary in sight and nothing to gain by stopping to define words myself for the hour, I improvised. Much to my mentor’s horror, I asked for a show of hands of students with internet access on their cell phones. The students took turns looking up words on dictionary.com. I’m sure they had never considered the phone as a resource for anything besides looking up show times at the movie theater. Sure, they claimed to need to look up a few extra words, but we found a way to get through the article and used their technology to get there. I don’t think my mentor ever recovered from the shock. I’m not even sure he owned a cell phone himself. I smile just remembering that day, feeling the connection with the class who was so excited to be using a tool they didn’t know they had.

By: DSJ

DSJ — Thu, 07 May 2009 12:37:58 +0000

Kristy: we are making our wireless available to students this coming Monday. We have just finished our policy on this, email me at dsjakes@gmail.com and I can provide more specifics about how we are implementing wireless for kids.

By: Kristi Shaw

Kristi Shaw — Tue, 05 May 2009 14:54:17 +0000

I teach at a private 4K-8th grade school in central WI. While I was at the Tech Forum a couple weeks ago, one of my middle school students got into our wireless network. I still don’t know how but that is besides the point, the student was, at the time, using the Internet and her iPod Touch to do research. Here is my question: At what point do we make our school’s wireless available to all students? What policies would need to be in place to do so? Any thoughts?

By: Amy Balling

Amy Balling — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 23:15:22 +0000

I agree with you…but too many teachers expect to be that “Sage on a stage.” They are afraid to break out of their comfort zone. You’ve seen this. They don’t want to let the kids know that they don’t know everything. They can’t show any weakness.
Teaching and learning in America needs to change. I have to ask myself: if I’m only giving my students the content that they could learn from a book then am I doing my job?
We are here to inspire, not enough teachers feel that way.