Here is yet another entry in the saga of vendor resource presentations for Social Studies. Another accomplished professional representing a prominent, internationally recognized publishing company revealing an ignorance of the current environment of educational technology. In a elementary school library, festooned with the posters, charts, maps, and logo-ridden ephemera of a complete curriculum program, about twenty teachers patiently sat through a presentation of materials offered for piloting in the new K-5 Social Studies curriculum. The books were bright, beautiful and superbly organized. Introducing the program with a media presentation on-screen, the sales representatives raced through their program because they heard about our intentions and wanted to show us that their program was “loaded with tech”.
One of the “loaded with tech” examples was a cd with a collection of flash games aligned with the textbook. Enamored by the sights and sounds of crates of tea flying into Boston Harbor in an American Revolution game, the sales representative smiled in pride when he correctly answered the questions. I took about thirty seconds and found the following by searching “Social Studies Flash”
- http://www.historyglobe.com/flash.html
- http://www.uen.org/3-6interactives/social_studies.shtml
- http://www.jc-schools.net/tutorials/interactive.htm
- http://www.teachervision.fen.com/social-studies/activity/5835.html
Why buy a set of social studies flash games when there are hundreds of them already on the web?
Unfortunately for this company and many others, “loaded with tech” translates into “our textbook is online”. Although this particular online version has a neat future that helps students of different reading abilities by pulling out and enlarging the text, it is not essentially different than the paper textbook. The “tech” provides no benefit of technology.
It isn’t that those of us committed to future focused learning don’t like textbooks, it’s that we see them only providing basic content, not driving the curriculum. This is painfully obvious when we are told that our technology needs will be satisfied by a textbook program because we can “print out the worksheets”.
Those of us committed to the new environment of communication and information tools aren’t not as enamored of the tech tools as we are convinced that the traditional “read a passage and answer the questions” treadmill is so dated an unhelpful to students, it’s practically criminal. To foist such mindless activities masquerading as critical thinking and reading comprehension exercises on our children destroys their creativity and convinces them that memorization is learning. If most of them were going to grow up and work on assembly lines or in corporations where they would be performing essentially the same task using essentially the same tools for their entire career that would make sense. But where is that world now?
Unfortunately, the footprint of that world is still pressed on education publishing companies.
In a conversation with one of the representatives after the presentation, I was trying to make sense by explaining the intended direction of our new curriculum. Giving examples of creative, project-based collaborate lessons, I suggested that content is not as important as lesson ideas. Perhaps we can look into a textbook, replete with their excellent graphics, photos and presentation, but entirely editable. Let the kids grab text, pictures and graphics and rearrange them – making a textbook that they can understand. Let them create with their knowledge, sort of like Wikipedia.
Looking puzzled, the rep asked me “What’s Wikipedia”?
I am really curious to know your response.
None really, for a couple of seconds at least. I did not want to roll my eyes with the “I can’t believe you don’t know what Wikipedia is” reply because there is no more impolite reply to ignorance. So I took her to a machine and showed her Wikipedia and then told her about her compition, Wikibooks.
I remember those days in class when you couldn’t believe something and you had the “….what…are you english or retarded?” look on your face. Good times. Yea wikipedia is what most of us use for our in class case studies. We have an MDCONSULT subscription (only school in the nation who does) but its difficulty in use and frequent nonsense make it worthless. If we need a citation we’ll use it, but google and wikipedia, the med schools of the future.
Now that scares me. I often suggest that students start at wikipedia (which many teachers avoid at all costs). But I always tell them to verify the information, just like you would any other source. I often joke that I trust wikipedia and think it is a great tool, but I hope my doctor doesn’t have to use it!
Seriously though, I would think that doctors have a tough time with the new nature of information, because with just a little reading, anyone could sound like an expert. When my mother was in the hospital last year and the doctors told us about increases rates certain enzymes in her blood stream I had no idea what he was talking about. But the next day, I thought I knew enough to make treatment suggestions. He did not appreciate my input.