As teachers, we need to redefine the role of education and the teacher and
use technology when possible to deliver information and use technology to
help students learn to mimic rudimentary skills. Then students can spend
much of the classroom situation drawing conclusions from the skills and
knowledge they have obtained. In order to stay viable as teachers we must
redefine education so that what we value is synthesis and analysis, not just
knowledge and mimicking. "Monkey See Monkey Do" education is effectively
delivered through packaged technology. What if instead of judging success
in History on how many dates, battles, and generals a student could name, we
judge success on how well a student could answer the question, "Where would
we be today if the South had won the Civil War?" Similarly in math, what if
we judged a student's success by how well he/she could transfer concepts
learned to an unfamiliar situation, rather than on how well he/she solves
equations, graphs simple lines, factors polynomials, calculates an integral,
or solves a word problem that looks like one he/she has been trained to
work? This might, however, make grading more difficult. A student may need
more time than one hour to synthesize and analyse more difficult, thought
producing questions, and we would have to devise ways to check whether the
student understands what she/he said.
True education takes a teacher. But teachers need to redefine education.
Martha
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