Reflections: "Young Minds, Fast Times" by Marc Prensky

Reflections on Young Minds, Fast Times by Marc Prensky:

Prensky's main argument is that students are given little or no voice in the structure and organization of their own education. He depicts teachers as "old folk", who don't listen to their students, primarily teach via lectures, and don't try other creative ways to engage their students. This is insulting to the many hardworking teachers who spend hours preparing lessons to excite and motivate their students.

The shift from the "Sage on the Stage" to the "Guide on the Side" has been taking place for some time. A quick walk through most schools would show many creative and interesting activities taking place in classrooms. A quick internet search would find a tremendous number and variety of ways that teachers are using technology to engage the "ikids" in today's classrooms.

The quotes that Prensky gives from students are almost all negative. There are not, however, any concrete examples of changes students want to see. Tim Ridgway, a high school chemistry teacher, commenting on the article said, "Yes students like talking about themselves. Chemical bonds, not so much. Comparing the panel discussion and having to learn about chemical bonds, whatever the methodology, is comparing apples to oranges."

John Larkin, a secondary school teacher who lives in New South Wales, Australia, has an excellent rebuttal on his blog entitled Classroom mobs, mayhem and murder.

Yes, it is important to listen to our students. I think most teachers understand this. It is, however, the teacher who is ultimately held accountable for what happens in the classroom and who must answer to the results of today's high stakes testing.

Welcome to my blog!

I’m starting my 36th year at Silver Lake Middle School in Kingston, Massachusetts. I taught 7th & 8th grade Mathematics for the first 11 years of my career. In 1985 I started a computer class which I have taught ever since. Needless to say technology has changed tremendously since the computer class was started. It has been a wonderful journey because the landscape is constantly changing.

We started with Radio Shack TRS-80s & Commodore Pets. We moved on to Apple IIes, Apple Macs, and then finally Windows machines. At first our software was simply the BASIC programming language and a word processor named Bank Street Writer. Through the years the software has evolved as well as the hardware. Somewhere along the way the Web was developed and now we have Web 2.0.

Every 7th grader at SLRMS takes the computer course for a third of the school year. The major emphasis of the course is to teach students to use the computer as a tool. Microsoft Office is the software used most often. Many times other subject area teachers and I will collaborate on a project. Frequently the librarian is involved as well. Our school has a 2nd computer lab adjacent to mine and many teachers bring their classes to work in that lab on a regular basis which allows students to continue to develop skills learned in my computer class.

You can’t get complacent or the technology will pass you by. I had made the conscious decision to avoid Facebook, Myspace and similar social networking sites. As educators, we had been told to be extremely careful or avoid participating in those sites altogether. Without realizing it, I lumped many of the new Web 2.0 technologies into the same category and as a result was missing out on a great deal. I am hoping that the course I am now taking, “The Three C’s of the 21st Century”, will help me to better understand many of these new tools and help me learn how to best use them for my personal as well as professional good.

CompTeach (Steve Hurlbut)