Response to a teacher letter

Thanks, Moni!  It's so nice to hear someone talk about learning environments and
about students getting inspired to learn and about students participating and
thinking about the relevance of their learning.  It's what Montessorians have been
doing for over a century -- though at a much more low tech level.  His world
simulation is like a lot of activities that I've done with students on a smaller
scale -- like when DC and I taught The Colonizer and the Colonized class together
and the students played a complicated game in which they were trying to colonize
the world and had to deal with all kinds of issues of resources and rebellions and
wars.  It is very like the original vision of Great River -- though of course we
struggled with students not using the technology properly and then, of course, you
need a really good financial base to be able to do this -- as well as more freedom
than the public school system gives.  Thanks for sharing! Sara


In this day and age cost of technology is no longer the issue in
question, since there are so many online schools that provide computers
to each and every student, and these are not small suburban or exurban
schools, but urban and rural schools attempting to attract today's
students who are pushed out of other schools.

As for the use of the technology which isn't directly discussed in the
video, it is no longer a question of appropriate use as in are they not
using it when they should and what are they doing with it when they
should, but rather a question of looking at what technologies that are
out there are being use and in what capacity. Twitter is a method of
communication same as the texting students do in school, walking down
the street, sitting in bed. We tend to see this like other "out of the
box" behavior as inappropriate, rather than trying to understand the
technology and find a level of use in the class for it so it is no
longer disruptive but rather helpful.

The new iphones are a prime example of this since they can do most
anything. We assume that the children don't learn from the use of
"facebook" or the "internets" in general, but talk to anyone of your
kids or students and ask them to tell you about the most recent thing
they looked up on youtube, chances are they wanted to learn something
and then just went and found out about it. The true value of technology
here is teaching them that is is so more than just a toy, that it is a
tool that helps you get further than ever before. Technology has so
changed media, the music industry, the library, the political arena
that when we fail to use it in schools regularly we are leaving kids
out of the loop in so many ways especially those who may not have
access to in an outside of school setting.