A prophesy, of sorts

After reading Ch. 10 in Adolescent Literacy and then reading John's blog about the chapter, I really started to think about how technology could potentially propel a class. I do think a lot of the ways we currently use technology are modernized versions of the ways we've done them before. But I think that the crazy technology flux of today creates the potential to do more things than we even know what to do.

I was strangely reminded of this time that I saw Nobel Prize winner Eric Cornell talk about Bose-Einstein Condensate. He told us about this new form of matter that they had created. (He also told us about accidentally head-butting the king of Sweden when he accepted the award.) And after he finished I had two thoughts: 1. This guy is so much smarter than anyone else in this room. and 2. That is really cool, but why? And I asked my boyfriend of the time (a physicist) my 2nd question because I was too afraid of Cornell's awesome brain to raise it. He told me that even if they can't do anything with it now, it raises the potential. It's a new form of matter, people will study it, things will be discovered. He told me it was kind of like the first trip to the moon. After you do it, then you go, "okay, now what can I learn from this".

I think technology is like this. It has advanced more rapidly than our ability to use it. I think in the future, especially as this new group of students emerges who have been immersed in it, the sky will be the limit.

The Measure of Success

I hear the outcry, daily, about No Child Left Behind. I hear it in my cross cultural competency class when we talk about the inherent biases against groups and schools in the test. I hear it from my fellow teachers. My professors quietly dismiss it under their breath in class. With all the debate, our jobs can require that we not only follow it, but that our children do well on the standardized tests.

Like Ms. Beers, I think it is tragic that a student can improve in a subject as much as Derek (page 2, Adolescent Literacky) did and still be told he's not doing enough. I think it's time we apply another thing we are taught in our education classes, that we need to get to know students as individuals. If we look at students and how the progress, we can better ideas about how much we've learned than numbers and figures can ever tell us. And the things that will reap the greatest student improvement are things that go on in classrooms, not just what happens in Washington and Frankfort.