Educational Facelift?

While searching for articles intended to support the ideas for my first post, I came across something in the New York Times that struck me. I found this to be extremely relevant and rather interesting, so I will likely save my other idea for a later post. It's a slightly lengthy magazine article (but well worth the read, in my opinion) that summarizes a new educational program called 'Quest to Learn,' only developed last year. The article can be found here.

Of course, we're used to the traditional 'copy down what's on the chalkboard into your marble notebook' method of learning, but this could very well be the way our children or grandchildren will be learning in some years to come. I imagine some parents will be skeptical about sending their child off to school to play video games all day, but according to the article, the program was approved by New York City's school chancellor Joel Klein, so there has to be some legitimacy to it. It could also be difficult because up until now, there's more to technology in school than computer lab class. I remember learning about floppy-disk drives in computer lab during junior high school, but if I was a student in junior high now, I might have an iPad in front of me. It's almost mind-blowing. We're accustomed to simple technology in the classroom, but it's growing to be more complex. Preparing students for the increasingly digital and technological world we live in should be something for education officials to think about. Since it's only running in its second year, the effectiveness is too early to tell, but we're seeing technology in the classroom bloom up here and there more often. iPad's are being made available to such Long Island schools as Mineola, so I can see the use of technology in the classroom snowballing from here. I see the program as a way of blending what students do at home with what they're doing at school. Let's face it, we see younger and younger children each day walking around with smart phones, so the relation between a technologically savvy student and a digital classroom is speculated to lead to success.




This video sort of summarizes what the program is about, but one point she brings up that particularly interests me is creating a need-to-know plan. Granted, there are want-to-know education ideas in the form of elective classes but as any college student close to graduation will tell you, there were definitely classes that he or she took that were of no interest whatsoever to them. Need-to-know education focuses on imperative skills that will aid the student in the real world. I had to go through the depths of Calculus for my degree in Aviation Management maybe because it's a science degree, but I really can't see a managing job's description including "applicant must know derivatives and logarithms."

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