Has The Way You Do Things Changed in the Last Decade?
by Sandee Crowther, President, PDK International
We have just completed the “Aughts” (2000-2009) and for many of us a great deal has changed! Some things many of us were using are beginning to disappear or even become obsolete! How many of you still use dial up internet, cameras with film, state and city maps to locate something, email accounts that you have to pay for, public pay phones, PDAs, VCRs, calling 411, movie rental stores?? You may still use some of these things but many of them are becoming obsolete. Some newspapers and magazines are going out of business, some people no longer have a landline, even phone books, dictionaries, encyclopedias, and record stores may disappear.
Some of these things are disappearing because we buy, use, and love the new gadgets: iPhones, iPods, flatscreen TVs, GPSs, TiVo DVRs, USB thumb drives, and Kindles. Think about how this is changing how we do things and what we use and need to have with us. Yes, I even got rid of my old Palm Pilot and older version cell phone and shifted to an iPhone and love having everything I need in one product and using intuitive touch rather than a bunch of buttons.
But the bigger questions for educators is what does this mean for those we are NOW educating or will be educating in the near future? What might become obsolete in education by the end of this new decade? Some possibilities: desks, homework, fear of Wikipedia, lockers, typical cafeteria food, outsourced webmastering (use the students instead), paperbacks, language labs, education classes that don’t teach or model the use of technology, the role of standardized tests in college admissions, even paper????
We need to prepare our students for this century with the skills they need: communication and collaboration, critical thinking and problem solving, information, communications, and technology literacy, leadership and responsibility. At the same time we need to let them use the tools they already know how to use as a part of their learning process.
So “What’s on Your Mind” as we figure out how to provide the best education possible for our students?
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Dear PDK Family and Administrators,
It is obvious if you are sending a reauthorization of the NCLB bill as is , you have had very little contact with secondary and elementary school professionals. I can testify the under funded , over-hyped retoric that came from the districts and school trying to make Anual Yearly Process data to come under the wire. Then, all the data in NYC under Mayoral control, was based only on 4 years. Many of the at risk population need 5 to 7 years to get a High school diploma. This research based fact is completeely ignored in the light of NCLB.
Now, in NYC, I see the dismanteling of pubic education, especially comprehensive high school . These high school are usally the only place that special needs and ELL’s can get state and federally mandated services. Chater have not taken these high risk student and worked with them to get the necessary background and skills to pass State test.
Your lack of a informed decision is clearly evident to me in your support of NCLB. I ask what private or public corporation is benefiting from these federal dollars? Obiously, you support them and not the mess that NCLB has left public education and its “accountability” with disagrigated data? Sincerely, Joan P Craffey, EdD