This article presented ideas of digital technology with a focus on computers as transforming our way of learning. It talked about how the computer is a valuable source by how it connects the world. Now and more consistently in the future we can learn from others all over the world with world collaboration projects. One concern the article had was that teaching strategies are not changing, yet computers are. One way to look at computers and learning is to think of them both as expressing our creativity and learning from design and creation. Rather than thinking of receiving information, as we are doing this, we also need to be looking at using them as tools in order to broaden our creative thinking. It also talked about the near future and how it will be important to be fluent with all aspects of the computer. It may become a criteria for future jobs to be somewhat fluent with computing. The article made a strong point in saying: "we need to transform curricula so that they focus less on things to know and more on strategies for learning the things you don't know." Instead of memorizing, learning new ways to learn became a focused priority. It stated that we should also put emphasis and encourage childrens creativity at a young age.
When reading this article it came clear to me that knowing the computer as a means for collecting information is not good enough. In order to be fluent and use the computer in it's entirity as a teacher, I need to know websites I can use to help my teaching. I myself am not very creative but I feel okay about that. The computer is a device that can help me become creative. It enables me to make posters, show videos, and other things that can enhance my teaching. Also I liked the point Resnick made when he said, " Instead of dividing up the curriculum into separate disciplines, we should focus on themes and projects that cut across the disciplines, taking advantage of the rich connections among differnet domains of knowledge." I liked his way of thinking because who is to say what instruction we teach and do not teach children. What if we let students chose what they want to learn and develope their own style of learning? This way students might become more passionate about school and develope into more creative individuals which the article says is what our future is looking like. Resnick says that the work force will be looking for those that are creative versus those that have memorized and are factually knowledgeable.
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What you said does make sense, alot of schools do focus more on memorizing information rather than learning information, which won't help students become successful in this generation because as time goes on people want you to not just know what things are or information about topics but they want you to know how the things work and that you can be creative with are able to come from different angles in a topic.
ReplyDeleteI like seeing all of the different views on this article. I had never thought of digital fluency being more than what we learn in school : how to use programs. We should teach students how to be creative using computers. You, in your reflection, focus more on the fact that we can use computers to encourage creativity. I hadn't considered that we can use it as encouragement, or how important it can be to have creativity. When using computers, a lot of us use formats - letterheads, how to write a paragraphs - that we've been taught in school. But if we teach creativity as well, that can encourage creative skills. Thanks Brittany for making me think about that!
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