Direction of Education

[Gary Latman]

Ever since I realized that I could move information around, add and delete, and continually edit my writing with a word processing program, which I could never do with a typewriter, I knew that technology could greatly assist me as an educator and classroom teacher. So I embraced technology, and began to infuse it in my lessons and spread its gospel. But I recognize that it does not replace good classroom management and knowledge of the subject one is teaching. It's the third component. Yet many of my colleagues, even the younger ones, still don't embrace it as that third component to successfully engaging today's students. Am I mistaken or are many educators still stuck in the 20th Century? What is the direction of middle school and secondary education? Why isn't technology integration one of the cornerstones in the education curriculum? Anyone who is reading this is already using technology to expand their pedagogical knowledge base, but what about many of our colleagues?

[Christina Jenkins]

I'm a tech coach at a fairly large middle school in the Bronx (850 kids, 6-8th grades, 70 teachers), and it's taken us almost two full school years, but we've managed to integrate technology into every aspect of teaching and learning at our school. We're using Google Apps for Ed to support school-wide systems, and every teacher is using Google Apps in some way to support their practice. Here's a link to an event we're hosting in June - if you click through, you'll find more info about our school. Dot-to-Dot attempts to engage educators in a conversation about exactly your question - what's the future of education?

Christina