New Tech High School
Q.
What's an example of a school that is using educational technology in an
admirable way?
You should be seeing technology used as a tool to build
reasoning skills and knowledge bases. Instead of using simple cut-and-paste
techniques to build a biography of a famous person, students who know how to
use technology properly might use "mind-mapping software" to get to the heart
of what made that person famous.
Instead of a boring report on an incident in history, the
students learn quality research skills using the "Deep Internet" to write
papers that compare and contrast the choices of history with the choices we
have today.
Instead of parroting back a barrage of statistics, they are
able to properly interpret and apply numbers from climate data, economic data,
research findings and so forth.
Good tech programs in high schools are integrated into the
daily life of the school, and go 'way, 'way beyond "googling," "blogging" and
playing video games while the teacher's not watching.
Here's a sampling of what's going on at an impressive model,
the New Technology High School in Napa, Calif.:
http://www.fno.org/dec03/napa.html
Note that the 2003 book, The
Flickering Mind, by Todd Oppenheimer, pointed out a disturbing number of
problems with the use and abuse of educational technology in the nation's
schools. But the writer of this educational technology blog, From Now On, takes
him to task:
http://www.fno.org/dec03/flickering.html
By Susan Darst Williams • www.GoBigEd.com • Arithmetic,
Etc. 106 • © 2006
