Filed under: Uncategorized
on the way to work this morning, i heard about this. once i got to work, i let my breakfast get cold while i was working on a newsletter that included some information about fundraising for my band trip this year. as i walked upstairs to get the draft approved, i got into a conversation about fundraising ideas – we’ve got some great ones this year – but it also gets me thinking….
am i so naiive to think that fundraising shouldn’t be this hard? why is it so difficult to raise support, espeically for youth endeavours. does the community think that the entire financial burden of extra-curricular activities can be ‘found’ somewhere in the school’s annual budget? a budget which, by the way, barely covers teh cost of supplies.
this is potentially opening up a can of worms regarding inflation and politics, and it’s too early in the morning to go there.
does anyone out there have some fantastic fundraising ideas?
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: curriculum, education, industrial revolution, laptops, schools, technology
here are some reasons why technology in schools is great (i’m speaking about 1-1 laptops programs here)
*a work in progress
- differentiated instruction: it’s easy to enrich or simplify content for students varying needs
- it’s the way of the future: students need to be computer literate since they will most likely spend the rest of their lives on a computer in some way or another
- priorities: there’s a lot of crap on the internet, and a lot of good stuff too. part of a digital education includes prioritizing and understanding when to use technology to work and when to relax
here are some reasons it’s the end of the education system as we know it:
- it’s a game changer: it completely changes the way that we think about learning, how students learn, how teachers learn, and how we can interact in a classroom
- learn anywhere, anytime: learning is no longer confined to a desk and a classroom, we can finally break away from the industrial model and get back to learning for personal growth. while a curriculum is important, it’s not longer important to learn content in such a static and emotionally uninvolved manner
- a classroom doesn’t have to look like a factory: learning can take place in group settings, no more rows (most schools are already moving to this model, regardless of the inclusion of technology), it can take place in comfortable settings, outside, inside, on a bean bag, on the floor, etc. i’ve seen a lot of work get done by students when they feel more at ease in the room they are in. students love to move and be free, let them take their work around the classroom
why technology in schools will destroy humanity:
- socially inept: too much of anything will leave you with voids in other areas. too much technology means isolation, there is no facebook, twitter, or blog equivalent to face-to-face contact with another human being.
- i can’t, i don’t have my laptop: the worst thing that happens here is that students, teachers, everyone is now so used to technology being around that they can’t cope without it
- a school is no longer a community, just a common place: workplaces around the world see this very thing, a community of people who don’t know each other, spending too much time interacting with a piece of metal and plastic than collaborating with each other. when will we reach a point where technology is actually an aid to communication and not a vice?
