Blog Post #2

The other day, I was confronted by the following opinion of another high school American History teacher involved in the CFF program. This is the gist of his concerns:

“I do recognize the need for 21st Century learning. I believe students need to learn how to function in a 21st Century world. However, there are several obstacles that make the change difficult. It is incredible the amount of curriculum I have to cover as a history teacher. I need to cover over 130 years of American History. I end up cutting out sections as it is. The use of 21st Century learning would have to be done in moderation. Otherwise, they will simply not learn how to sit in a classroom and take notes, which is still the primary method of instruction in college.”

These concerns really got me thinking about how Web 2.0 has changed the classroom environment and how it has begun to impact higher education. While sitting in class taking notes is still the main method of instruction in introductory history courses, higher level courses require vast amounts of research and analysis of information. Mindtools such as Inspiration can help students take notes in lecture classes or even Word notebook with the audio note option (Mac’s only). Students can become familiar with open courseware such as the material from MIT and actually have a comparable course outline up during a lecture for comparison. For that matter, why should a student engage in one-way transfer of information in a high school classroom when they have access to all the content the teacher has and more. Shouldn’t the role of a history teacher be to help students understand the core ideas and then evaluate sources for credibility? Yes, you will have to drop a lot of classic content, but as long as the teacher creates a learning environment that focuses on the essential ideas from a historical predicament, students will get the main ideas that really have an impact on the larger picture. Do students have to know every one of the relief, recovery, reform acts of FDR? Or do they have to understand the principle of what they were, details about a couple, and how they shaped American history? It truly comes down to your educational philosophy.

Being able to follow the blogs of historians, politicians, and economists opens students up to a vast network of content area experts. Social book marking sites such as Diigo are a godsend for history students! Google documents allows students to collaboratively work on research papers. Web 2.0 tools remove so many of the barriers that made lecture necessary. Does this mean the teacher has no role? Quite the opposite! The teacher is that much more important. They need to help guide students, as they are the expert researchers. Students are good at researching topics, but often fail to conduct 3 dimensional research that makes the bigger connections or asks the important questions. It is our job to help students become more thoughtful, critical, and empathetic citizens. 21st century learning environments and technologies remove the obstacles. We are now only affected by self-imposed limitations.

Please don’t get me wrong; I don’t think Comic Life or the other catchy applications make students better researchers. It is the problem-based learning involved in the assignment that challenges students. The final product should help motivate students, but should not be OUR focus. It is the process and content necessary to complete the assignment that is so important and it is our job to teach within that environment. That way, when they do have to sit in a lecture hall, the effort that is required of them is so much less than what they are used to. College students will (and are) quickly finding ways to bypass the more ineffectual teaching methods at the college level and college professors (and I know quite a few) are feeling the pressure to change how they instruct.