{"id":326,"date":"2007-07-02T10:13:18","date_gmt":"2007-07-02T17:13:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.toddseal.com\/rodin\/2007\/07\/its-all-about-the-tools\/"},"modified":"2007-07-09T19:30:40","modified_gmt":"2007-07-10T02:30:40","slug":"its-all-about-the-tools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.toddseal.com\/rodin\/2007\/07\/its-all-about-the-tools\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s All About The Tools"},"content":{"rendered":"

While commenting on a colleague’s blog<\/a>, I stumbled across an idea: maybe School 2.0<\/a> isn’t the use of all these funky new gadgets. Most kids don’t want to use those things for educational ends and are bored when forced to do so.<\/p>\n

Maybe the next generation school is populated by teachers who feel like those funky new gadgets are at their disposal. Maybe it’s teachers who feel like they could use them if they need to. Maybe the next generation simply involves an expanded toolbox.<\/p>\n

Atrophy<\/h4>\n

Any class will “teach” each other only to a certain extent and possibly in error. All the wiki-fied classrooms on the planet will not change that. Wireless connections, PDAs, blogs won’t help the matter any. Giving each student a laptop and an LCD projector won’t, either. Add a student-run discussion board to the mix and you’ll change next-to-nothing if the teacher tries to “get out of the way and let students learn” (I don’t have a source, but I’ve heard that mantra in various forms over the years).<\/p>\n

If the teacher steps back entirely, the end result in June is a bunch of students who can’t write, read, or think much better than they could in August. That peer-directed learning can achieve amazing results when augmented by solid instruction delivered by a good teacher.<\/p>\n

Not A Power Trip<\/h4>\n

Students need teachers. There comes a time when nothing is as effective as teacher feedback, instruction, and direction. Passing on expertise does not have to manifest itself in the form of “I talk and you listen.” That form of instruction, though, is a tool just as much as a podcast is. There may be times when it’s the most appropriate.<\/p>\n

But maybe the next generation of teachers knows that. Maybe they come to the classroom ready to use whatever tool they need to use. The reason they are dubbed “next generation,” though, is that their toolbox has been heavily updated since even I went through the program a short decade ago, let alone those who have been at this for a while.<\/p>\n

There’s a danger here, though. Beware that old adage: “when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” If you’re itching to use a blog, everything will look to you like it’s solved by using a blog. Pick the right tool for the job.<\/p>\n

Here are some of my tools:
\nClass voting<\/a>, blogs<\/a>, online<\/a> research<\/a>, dictionary.com<\/a> (and Google’s “define:[word]<\/a>” feature), think-pair-shares, self evaluations, peer evaluations, peer editing<\/a>, small group work, video presentations<\/a>, panel discussions, thesaurus.com<\/a>, del.icio.us<\/a>, class discussion, message boards, PowerPoint creations, time<\/a>lines<\/a>, lecture, overhead projector, sentence modeling<\/a>, word processing, sustained silent reading (SSR), textbook<\/a> questions<\/a>, study question packets, worksheets, graphic organizers of various sorts<\/a>, essential questions, podcasts (sort of)<\/a>, interviews, music, crude drawings on the whiteboard, com<\/a>edy<\/a>, hand puppets, demonstrations, hypotheticals, movies, OTP (Other Teachers’ Property), PBS<\/a> and NPR<\/a>, history, art.<\/p>\n

What’s in your toolbox? Did you add anything new this year? Did you throw anything away?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While commenting on a colleague’s blog, I stumbled across an idea: maybe School 2.0 isn’t the use of all these funky new gadgets. Most kids don’t want to use those things for educational ends and are bored when forced to do so. Maybe the next generation school is populated by teachers who feel like those […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[23,98,27],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.toddseal.com\/rodin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.toddseal.com\/rodin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.toddseal.com\/rodin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.toddseal.com\/rodin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.toddseal.com\/rodin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.toddseal.com\/rodin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.toddseal.com\/rodin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.toddseal.com\/rodin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.toddseal.com\/rodin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}