Education Week 3-17-2011 Reflection

Schools Use Digital Tools to Customize Education:  One of the things that I question about this article is the fact that, in a way, moving away from a one-size-fits-all method of teaching into a more personalized way is in fact pandering to students.  It is not to the degree that Vikram Savkar suggests when he says the pandering is complete and total personalization.  The reality of it is that when you change your curriculum to include a variety of different learning styles is that the teacher is pandering to students.  Admittedly, the teacher is not going out of his/her way to personalize assignments for each of thirty students, but moving from a lecture based lesson to one in which the students are interacting with each other and sharing their knowledge is pandering to those students who work better that way.  One of the most interesting things about the entire article is when it brings up programs that allow kids to work at their own pace and tailor their lessons around the subjects which they are least comfortable and not quite as good.  I, personally, would not fare very well in that program because I wouldn't want to spend very much time on the things that I am not good at!  Math would be a subject in which I would continually try to avoid doing the hard parts of it as much as possible because I am not good at it at all.  It is very comforting to know that Savkar knows about the challenges that teachers face and that we as teachers have to rise to the occasion if we are going to be successful in the world of education as it currently is and in the ways that it is changing.  He is completely correct when he says that more talented teachers are going to be required to teach students in the coming years because they will have to incorporate all of these new technologies.  Old teachers could very well be left in the dust (pun intended).  Older teachers must be able to push themselves as well.  It does not take very much talent to be able to create a lecture based classroom, or as this article would call it, a one size fits all classroom.  "All" the teacher has to do is get up there and talk and the students have to listen.  That isn't belittling those teachers, because yes it does take quite a bit of effort to do that.  Even more effort is going to be required if they are going to help the future students of this country succeed in the ways in which this article has pointed out.  One of the things that this article mentions is 1 to 1 laptop initiatives and I would be very much interested in learning more about those.  I love having a laptop for my personal use, but I'm not sure if I would be particularly successful as a student if I were to have one with me at all times as a student growing up and in high school.  It's the same way with cell phones.  I didn't get one until I was 16 years old, and even by many of today's standards that is very late for a kid to get a cell phone!  Would I have been as successful as I was as a student if I had one as a 7th grader?  I'm inclined to guess that I wouldn't have been.