I’ve resigned myself to the fact that i’m never going to be a heavily technical sort of teacher. Well not in a technological sense anyway… I am still an old school believer in establishing fundamental artistic skills as a basis of expression, rather than the sort of expression first b.s. that was dominant during my first round of university. As such my ideal classroom is a nice big high school art room with access to a kiln and (at least) four sweet macs for photoshopping/editing work and (after seeing possiblities emerge during this class) for editing movies. Definitely some of the tools that work for me are blogs (my own and student blogs where they can upload and share their work and their ideas/intent behind whatever it is they’re doing); google docs/forms/presentations/etc for assiting with student interaction; and of course plenty of youtube tutorials (i’m thinking of grade elevens/twelves making videos of techniques learned throughout their time spent in my art class, which could be useful for upcoming grades and other students around the world).
The ability to network with people from everywhere via the internet/web/some-other-less-used-term is a huge plus for any classroom. Doing a unit on Japanese style pen and ink work? Why not try and get in contact with someone in Japan or wherever who could do a better job of teaching some tips and tricks to the students than myself (i’m no painter). And with youtube or skyping being viable options the students will be actually watching and doing the work with instructors from (again) everywhere. Just the interest such an endeavor creates in the students would be well worth the effort.
As far as concepts i want my students to understand… difficult question. I want them to understand that some cliches are stupid (e.g. you’re an individual snowflake) and others are absolutely true (e.g. the world is at your fingertips). Assisting students in developing stronger online identities is a must (whatever my previous posts might suggest i am in no way against developing an online identity – i am just saying we should all still have a choice) and obviously my future students are going to be light years ahead of me in social networking abilities. What i would not do is limit them in utilizing that ability to further their educational development. Of course monitoring blogs (especially when as a teacher you are encouraging interaction between students online) will be a difficult and probably sometimes downright ugly task, given the rise of online-bullying. But i’ll cross that immense hurdle when i slam into it. That said, i don’t think the fear of any online ugliness should dissuade teachers from taking advantage of technology; not to mention the fact that it’s going to happen anyway you look at it so you might as well be aware of how things work and not just bury your head in the sand.
Lastly, i’m definitely going to try and go paperless (textbook-wise) in my classrooms – if you haven’t checked out Michael Kaechele’s student blog you should for the video there. And as he says, going paperless is not about saving paper…
I like how you focus on big ideas rather than specifics. Those will change but the big concepts of identity, connections and communication are timeless. The technology simply enables and amplifies these ideas.
Haha. I loved the video. It’s hard to imagine what it would be like to be a student now, and to have that technological background, and not know what it was like not to have that available to you. I know that this was mocking to prove a point, but could really be the reality for future students.
Oh, and Bert, are you trying to tell me that I’m not an individual snowflake? This hurts.
amber i would never tell you that you are anything less than an individual sliver of ice falling amongst literally billions of other slivers of ice, and that you should somehow take comfort from this fact. you are exactly no more than a particle of substance amongst billions of trillions past and present on a snowy canadian landscape…. though i’m not big on those little winky faces, you can imagine i was smiling and had one finger laying against the side of my nose when i wrote that.