Ironically I had this very situation come up for me this week. My son who is in grade 7, has always struggled in math ,particularly computation ,and he was very painfully doing his homework. Many frustrating moments went by when I finally said, just use the calculator! He informed me that he was not supposed to, now don't get me wrong I do believe in knowing the basics, but is it not our job to teach students the most effective method in obtaining a desirable result? My son knew how to complete the question but was getting caught up in the computation of it. Today we all use calculators because we can, they are invented and they are the most convenient, effective means to find the answer.
Prensky in my opinion is right, we can not hold on to the beliefs or understandings of the past. We use what we have learned historically to guide us towards the future. Avoiding or dismissing what our children are faced with today would be doing them a great disservice. We need to keep up and in so doing teach them how to navigate and manipulate the new tools at their disposal today. I realize that "new" is sometimes scary but teaching is all about finding new ways, new paths and inspiring youth not dismissing them.
On a side note, an EA in our school came into the library and asked me if TL's still taught the Dewey decimal system. A conversation about how times are changing and that how out school collections of non-fiction just can not keep up ensued. Dewey is not relevant to the students today because they have a wealth of information at their fingertips. Kids want to learn what is relevant to them, life is about them, so I think we need to focus on their needs. No matter how daunting it is for us to forge into the unknown we must do so in order to best guide our learners be it students or teachers or parents.
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Thanks, Anita. I agree that I think teachers are not doing their students any favours by 'banning' the use of tools that will make students' lives easier. And isn't the kind of technological literacy they need in order to use the calculator/computer/etc. important for their future, too?
ReplyDeleteI am curious about your comments about the Dewey Decimal system...I would disagree that Dewey is not relevant (or perhaps, students don't see it as relevant, but I think it still has a great deal of relevance). All information is organized in different ways and I think kids (and adults) need to have some basic understanding of how these organizational systems work. Teaching them how to find information in your school library will benefit them when they turn to academic (college or university) libraries in their future or even electronic sources of information. I think there are ways to teach kids about how libraries work and make it relevant to their lives today!
Perhaps in retrospect,I agree that the Dewey decimal system is a useful tool, however it is difficult to hook the kids and convince them of its relevance. That being said they would much rather sit at the computer because it is faster, easier and for them more fun to gather their information in this manner. Will they need to know the Dewey decimal system later? Perhaps, depending on their future goals. Will they remember what we taught them in elementary school? Probably not. I, myself, only understood the set up and organization of a library much later,I would say probably in later high school, college and possibly not completely until university.
ReplyDeleteSo in the end the question remains, do we teach this strategy? Of course. Will elementary students use it or even remember what it is? Who knows, time will tell, but we can't not teach something for the fear that it will only be forgotten.
I think that the challenge is coming up with interesting, captivating lessons that show the continued relevance of the Dewey decimal system in our instant information "Google" generation