." Rather than focusing on content— and developing an appropriate message—the assignments focus on the most basic elements of form: the things that can be counted."
This section of the article jumped out at me, so many teachers spend time making sure students hit the basic requirements of projects, papers, assignments and completely forget how the student grasped an understanding of the topic. Digital literacy, when left open to allow the student to be creative, as the opportunity to show how they really comprehended topics rather than just meeting pointless requirements.
After researching the SAMR model, I feel that many teachers believe they are correctly utilizing technology and truly teaching digital literacy with just a substitution. The SAMR model, I believe reinforces the Hicks reading, showing that teachers truly are using substitution to kill digital literacy. For educators to get more out of their students they need to allow them to us the modification aspects of the SAMR model, which allows the student to be more creative and show that they have a better understanding of the topic.
After exploring some other apps and tools that can be used to help students process and apply information via technology, I am even more firmly rooted in my belief that technology can be valuable in the classroom when used in the correct way. Popplet was a great tool to use which allowed children to create and allow teachers to fallow how the child came to the understanding of the topic. This app agrees with the Hicks article as well as the SAMR model.
Emilia I totally agree with you. Teachers seem to be more concerned with the statistics in their classes and how many students did well on this test or that paper. They are only teaching what they need to know for that specific test, there seems to be no concern with how the children are actually retaining the information they're learning, and more importantly, whether or not they are actually learning to think critically about information. Teachers need to remember that it is just as important, if not more, to teach children to formulate their own ideas by encouraging creativity and critical thinking and not so much how they do on tests.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you, that many students are always trying to meet requirements rather than actually expressing everything they have to say about a certain topic. Many students can right a good paper in 4 pages and the requirement is 8-10. In my opinion and what I have heard from several teachers throughout my college years, quality over quantity. I think technology is very important in classrooms nowadays because we live in a digital age and that's what most kids are used to.
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