technology: A starting point.

After reading the latest exert from Clarence Fisher’s blog, ‘School of Everything’, I began to think about what we almost/kind of/began to touch on in discussion in class monday.  We began to talk about the needs/development of technology within classrooms, and what some of the pros/cons/challenges were.  Well, as someone mentioned(Alec maybe??) maybe, it’s not time for us to tell students what they need…its time for us to listen.  The School of Everything details an alternative educational setting, where, additional to the core subjects, students are able to come up with ideas for classes that they are interested in.  From these ideas, teachers are found, and classes are developed at a variance of length and difficulty.  This I thought was a great idea!  I know with some of my own assignments given in my pre-internship classes, I found that those in which the students could develop to suit their own interests and needs went over a lot better then some of the generic ones I gave.  When the students were interested and had control over what they spent their time on, they were in class, with a higher degree of participation and learning going on, and their were almost no behavioral issues!  I can only imagine what that would be like for an entire course!  A few other good alternative educational settings that I have heard about are:  Bishop Carol in Calgary, or even Cochrane in Regina.  With the demographics of our students changing, as well as their attitutes towards schools/ing(because of the lack of parrallels to our students real lives??), our rigid education system that exists is no longer serving the purpose for the betterment of society.  A capitalistic society, maybe.  One which focuses on giving some students, that ones that the system is built to fit(white, middle-upperclass), a chance for a bright future, and gives those who struggle to fit in, no opportunities at all.  So what needs to change within our education system??  Well, I think this depends on your teaching philosophies, and own experiences and preferences.  For some, the time lines, homework, and rows of desks work.  But for some students, it doesn’t at all…and these numbers are the ones that are unfortunatly rising higher and higher.  We need to start examining where there are struggles, why and what we can do about it.  And although this may be difficult for us(who are a testimony to the system working…we are all in a third year university class…), don’t we owe it to our students and future students to put ourselves and comfort zones out on a limb?  Instead of always making our students conform…maybe it’s time for us to…