Spring Break
Teaching and learning in a tech-savy world
Anne Marie Merline
Issue date: 2/9/09 Section: Opinion
Are you high-tech or low-tech?
Because you have been in school for a time that approximates four years or less, you probably have not asked yourself this question as it pertains to the classroom.
I was in college from 1981 to 1985, in the days that you could indeed get a four-year degree in four years. The technology ranged from a chalkboard to a whiteboard and all the way up to an overhead projector. There were no laptops, no smartboards and no smart classrooms.
One of my most boring professors would come into class, spend a great deal of time writing an outline of the day's material on the chalkboard and spend the class period berating all of the details that the outline contained to us while we leaned on the high geology lab desks, complete with hard-as-sin lab chairs. These were especially a challenge, for me. I literally had to climb onto those chairs.
He lectured, he told boring stories that we smiled at because we felt compelled to but that only he found funny.
As I entered the teaching profession in the latter years of the last millennium, things had not changed much.
But today, teaching seems to be all about the bling.
How well can we instructors keep the attention of the "audience?" It seems that it takes more than one electrical cord, several USB connections and THX sound to keep the attention of the students in our classes.
We teach to what "the industry" (we used to call it higher education) calls the MTV generation.
The students, it seems, have become more accustomed to the short sound bites of the media, in place of the traditional 50-minute lectures.
It is true those who take being a human at the white board seriously have come to appreciate different learning styles. Some of us even endeavor to use different teaching techniques so that students get to experience different learning styles, and for a class or two each semester latch on to the one that they thrive under.
Because you have been in school for a time that approximates four years or less, you probably have not asked yourself this question as it pertains to the classroom.
I was in college from 1981 to 1985, in the days that you could indeed get a four-year degree in four years. The technology ranged from a chalkboard to a whiteboard and all the way up to an overhead projector. There were no laptops, no smartboards and no smart classrooms.
One of my most boring professors would come into class, spend a great deal of time writing an outline of the day's material on the chalkboard and spend the class period berating all of the details that the outline contained to us while we leaned on the high geology lab desks, complete with hard-as-sin lab chairs. These were especially a challenge, for me. I literally had to climb onto those chairs.
He lectured, he told boring stories that we smiled at because we felt compelled to but that only he found funny.
As I entered the teaching profession in the latter years of the last millennium, things had not changed much.
But today, teaching seems to be all about the bling.
How well can we instructors keep the attention of the "audience?" It seems that it takes more than one electrical cord, several USB connections and THX sound to keep the attention of the students in our classes.
We teach to what "the industry" (we used to call it higher education) calls the MTV generation.
The students, it seems, have become more accustomed to the short sound bites of the media, in place of the traditional 50-minute lectures.
It is true those who take being a human at the white board seriously have come to appreciate different learning styles. Some of us even endeavor to use different teaching techniques so that students get to experience different learning styles, and for a class or two each semester latch on to the one that they thrive under.
Viewing Comments 1 - 1 of 1
Sally
posted 2/14/09 @ 6:08 AM MST
I agree with you that there should be multiple modes to students to access the material. Your preference for the Socratic method reminds me that students can also benefit from group work and small-group discussion. (Continued…)
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