From WikEd

Contents 1 The changing role of today's Teachers: 2 Background: 3 What are kids looking for? 4 What should a teacher do? 5 Personal Testimonies: 6 Technology and the Classroom 7 References and Related Links:

The changing role of today's Teachers:

Why are the students not listening?

This page is not about ADD. I used it as a metaphor to demonstrate that today's students are different and that the role of the teacher needs to change to adapt to the student's needs. This page will explore the concept that today's students are different than the ones that our k-12 educational systems were designed to teach. Today's students have access to more information than ever before in human history. They have access to more technology than ever before but sadly in many cases these same students have to go to school and powerdown and be taught the same as their parents were taught many years ago.

I will provide research based studies that state that the role of teacher needs to change to provide today's students with the information and knowledge they need to be successful in the 21st century.

Background:

what percent of the worlds population is under the age of 25?

50%

That is why we have challenges. Today's students are different.

How?

Students will play 10,000 hours of video games, send and recieve 250,000 e-mails, 10,000 hours on cell phones, 20,000 hours watching TV, and see 500,000 commercials in their childhood. In turn, if a child averages 1.2 hours a day reading after the age of seven they will have only read less than 5,000 hours.

In addition, kids will download 2 billion songs per month and send 3 billion text messages per day.

"Brains like ours alter profoundly to fit the technologies and practices that surround them." Andy Clark (Director, Cogintive Sciences Program. Indiana University.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Clark

Kids today are digital natives. They have grown up with technology and it is as natual to them as vinyl records were to anyone over the age of thirty.

Adults over the age of thirty are considered to be digital immigrants and we show our accent everyday in many different ways. If we feel we have to print all of our e-mails out that is an accent. If you don't use the internet first to research a topic, you are showing your accent. If you believe real life doesn't exist on-line, you have an accent. If you type with your fingers and not your thumbs, yep an accent.

What are kids looking for?

"Students are not just using technology differently today, but are approaching their daily activities differently because of technology." --Net Day student comment.

It seems that for the first time in history, students are no longer limited by their teacher’s ability and knowledge. The internet provides an almost unlimited amount of information about whatever is researched. I have an example of this today. My old dog Bonnie is not doing so well. She is on several types of medicine and she just started a new medicine yesterday. She had a bad reaction to the new medicine, so I jumped on the internet and within minutes I had a detailed breakdown of the medicine with all the side-effects and possible negative drug interactions. This would not be possible just several years ago.

Students have access to this information as well and want to learn how to use it effectively. They don't want to sit in a classroom and be taught out of a single textbook. Teachers need to teach internet research skills so students know how to evaluate which web sites are valid and which ones are not. Some sites may be opinions and some may be based in research and facts. Just because something is posted on the internet does not mean it is valid.

Students want their instruction to be as engaging as the rest of their life outside of school. Traditional instruction does not typically provide that engagement.

Many teachers don't have those skills and may be intimidated knowing that their students know more about the technology than they do. If you just learned Italian, would you want to teach a language class to native Italian children in their language? That is pressure.

Teachers need to adapt their instruction to meet the needs of today's student.

What should a teacher do?

I am not a classroom teacher. However, I am in a position that allows me to observe and talk to many different teachers. I am also a part of the process to help teachers grow professionally. The role of technology in the classroom is still evolving everyday. With this evolution comes a lot of pressure on a classroom teacher who already has to teach to standards, deal with administrators and parents, participate in committees, understand their students, analyze data, learn best practices and than finally keep up to speed with technology.

I want to write about how many teachers feel that they have to be an expert with technology before they can integrate technology into their instruction.

This misconception comes to many teachers naturally. The average age of teachers in my district is well over forty. An Educational Study was conducted in 1991 that states that the average age of a teacher in the United States was 41 and is on the rise. More recent information states that the average age of teachers was 46 in 2003. The point is that many teachers learned a certain way of teaching which includes them being the knowledge holder. They feel very uncomfortable being in a setting that doesn’t fit that situation. Students today were born with technology. They are digital natives. My three year old daughter already is able to load and start her games on the computer. My eight year old asked me a question last week about which planet was the coldest and which one is the hottest. I told her to look it up on the internet. Without hesitation she knew what to do.

I am almost forty years old and didn’t see a computer until I was in high school. They were the old Tandy TRS 80 computers. My first personal computer was a Commodore 64. I along with the majority of teachers are digital immigrants. The students in many cases will know more about technology or will be able to rapidly excel past their teachers in the use of technology once they are exposed the resource.

The stress caused by this misconception is a tremendous force in the schools today. Technology is everywhere. Technology is a fundamental part of almost everyone’s life. From work to play, some form of technology is involved in the process.

So, how do we relieve the stress and belief of the misconception that teachers have to be a technology expert to be a successful teacher in today’s world?

It is my opinion that teachers have to stop trying to keep up and change the way they view instruction. Teachers today should continue to grow professionally in many areas but they should not try and speak a foreign language better than someone originally from the country of technology. We immigrants will always have an accent. We must learn to adapt.

The role of the teacher needs to change from being a sage on the stage to more of facilitator. A teacher should do what they do well. Organize instruction, understand their students, differentiate their instruction based on the needs on the individual student, and prepare their students to be successful in today’s and tomorrow’s society.

Again the misconception that teachers feel they need to be a technology expert before they feel comfortable including any advanced instructional tools needs to change. The students know how they want to learn. It’s up to today’s professional teachers to adapt and provide instruction that the students expect.

In summary, misconceptions about how to integrate technology into the instructional process has created a tremendous burden on today’s teachers. Teachers need to reflect on what their role in the classroom is. Should teachers try and keep up with the digital natives (students) and become a technology expert or should they move forward with what they do well and let the students be apart of the instructional process? The text confirms that discovery methods of teaching and focusing on teaching students how to think instead of what to think has a lot of instructional benefits.

Personal Testimonies:

This page is not about ADD...please see above!

I LOVE your analogy of Technology being like a different language, but the reality is, teachers ordinarily don't have to incorporate Spanish or French into their daily curriculum to improve student learning, something that technology has claimed to do. What I believe needs to happen, is that teacher seek expertise from their Professional Development courses, resources at school, and ,yes, try to learn a little more than they know. I work in a computer lab with elementary students. Many of the teachers have absolutely no knowledge about their computers. Should anything go wrong, they immediately contact our department for help. Often times, the error is the result of a unit being unplugged! I say to teachers: Slow down, don't be afraid to not know as much as your students. In fact, it can be a collaborative lesson. Why not let some of your more advanced students help you out a bit? They will love it. The point is, you are not there to teach them how to do technology, but to implement some software to learn more about your subject matter. In my school, some teachers will have the lab teachers teach the students how to use a particular software and then they will continue using it in their classrooms. In other professional areas in the business world, people have to know and keep upgrading their computer skills, at least the basics. I do think teachers should take some basic courses, just to understand the lingo. C. O'Kelley

I teach high school math and on our teaching staff, I would say that I am one of the more proficient teachers when it comes to technology. I also read the article about digital natives vs. digital immigrants [1] and soon realized that I had a long way to go to get to where I should be as an effective teacher. I know how to use technology fairly well but I could be using it more as a teaching tool. The article opened my eyes to how students learn today and why we, as teachers, need to teach them differently than we were taught. They have very different backgrounds than we had at their age. I, too, remember the TRS-80 computers with their black and white screens. I went to college with an electric typewriter and looked up resources on micro fiche. I remember the smell of wet worksheets straight out of the ditto machine. We need to use the technology that we have available to make the most of our subjects. We also need to help students realize that school is not all fun and games but that there is a time and a place for the good old facts on a simple piece of notebook paper out of a single textbook. Rita Grunloh

As a junior high music teacher, I have found that many of my students come to my class with many preconcieved notions about what my class is going to be about. They think that because they have had numerous music classes in their lives, that this one is going to be the same old thing. It turns out to be one of their favorite classes and not because it is an easy A, but because I integrate a lot of technology. They compose music on the computer. They create music videos using streaming and powerpoint and movie making software. They are able to research musicians and composers online and to hear, instantaneously, the music of those people. The kids are astonished by their ability to use this technology and are very proud of their work. We still learn the basics; theory, history, performance, but they are able to use technology to individualize their curriculum and to create ownership in the final experience. It helps me, in that I don't have to be in thirty places at once, and the computer makes grading and testing much easier. I don't have discipline problems because the kids are always busy and constructive. The biggest complaints that I have heard are when the last bell rings. A. Dorough

Teaching with technology needs to become a supplement to what we are teaching in the classroom. I teach art and the students are mesmerized by the different things you can do in Photoshop. I think when they see a computer, they tend to tune out what is going on around them because of what is going on in the computer. I wish that schools would emphasize more professional development on technology rather than "filling the time" on those institute days with meaningless information. C McCulley

As a teacher who has tried to integrate technology in to my music classroom, I think it is important to raise the point that the use of technology must be supported by the administration of both the school and the district. The administration of the school can facilitate your attainment of the technology by directing funds towards the purchase of computers or allowing computers no longer used in other classes to be donated to your room. Professional development workshops can also be done to help learn the technology, however the workshops should occur over a long term basis, be directly applicable to the teachers and have ways of following up in order to ensure that any questions must be answered. When I was teaching and tried to use technology in the classroom, I used the computers that were no longer needed by the library. After spending about forty hours setting them up, I had to watch as the members of the school board took them away and put them in the garbage because our school had too many computers allocated to it in comparison to other schools. -G. Vigneron

As a former high school math teacher part of my assignment was to teach a remedial math course. The student population I served was extremely diverse, and all were fluent users of technology and voracious consumers of modern media. My supervisor required that this course be structured around a computer based curriculum called ALEKS. Walking into my classroom on the first day I had never heard of ALEKS, nor had any of my students. Yes, I had lesson plans and ideas about what I wanted my students to learn, but it was impossible for me to become an expert user of the computer software that would be the basis of my curriculum. So what did I do? I did the only thing I could do, which was to learn with the students. I believe that some of my student’s really enjoyed learning with me, and the fact that I openly admitted that we were all learning together. I hope this story brings comfort to other teachers who are faced with a similar situation. – Jeremiah Johnson

This topic caught my attention because of my firm belief that nowadays, ADD is often misdiagnosed and subsequently medicated. Often this can happen when a classroom teacher or parent cannot control the behavior of a student. I am a 35 year old classroom teacher, and when I reminesce about my elementary school years, I am struck by how much things have changed since then. I do agree that the overstimulation of children away from school leads to their attention deficit within school, however, I do not view this as a "disorder" but rather a natural consequence of today's modern world. By the way, I also started out on TRS-80's at school, and my first personal computer was also a Commodore 64. I learned more on that old Commodore that I ever have in any college class. The hardware limitations of the computer forced us as young people to learn basic programming, assembly language, and how to design and create graphics and sound at the machine level- all skills which I still use today to some extent, and also skills that we do not teach the youth of today. --S. Yunker

Like the testimony above, I feel that ADD is overdiagnosed and treated more as an excuse and an escape. I'm the oldest of 5 kids in my family and my siblings have had many of the same teachers as me. The environments outside of school that my siblings are in are very different even from mine when I was their ages. And yet, the environment in school seems no different, the same teachers are doing the same assignments, using the same videos, everything is so stagnant! There are so many available resources and I see them slide right past my siblings without teachers using them to their advantage in the classroom. -Matt Munley

Though I am one to whine and complain about having to learn the new technology that continues to pop up daily, I find myself just being stubborn and afraid of change. Just as it is stated above, I believe that we must adapt. Today's students are from a different time with different resources available. If I truly want to be an effective teacher, I have to learn the new lingo and the many ways I can keep their attention. Recently, I wrote a note to a parent with whom I have a really good relationship with and I stated that the child would be so much more successful if he/she were to take school more seriously. On the other side of that, I think I could have done a little more to introduce topics and concepts in a more interactive way. But, of course, with NCLB and the ISAT always lurking, when does one have the time, freedom (in terms of curriculum), and resources to do it?

~S. Ward

I completely agree with your approach on how children are changing and we cannot simply use the ADD lable to solve our problems. As a Kindergarten teacher I feel that I am competing against the video games and computer games that they are accostomed to. The enhanced annimations and impulsive icons that appear and disappear rapidly must contribute some way to students lack of attention span. I am a brand new and young teacher and I consider myself in-tune with todays youth but I have had to gear my teaching approach to captivate my students attention. It is not easy and I am usually exhausted by the end of the day but what else can I do? -N.R.

I agree with the differing approach that teachers have to take. I think, however, that a stronger stance on discipline and classroom management will help solve a lot of these problems. --David Roth

Maybe I am young and possibly a digital native, but maybe I have ADD. I think that todays kids don't have a condition, maybe it is the over thirty population that has attention deficit disorder and the definition needs to be changed to "the inability to focus on or comprehend multiple sources of stimulus or information at one time with a need for one single monotonous form of information." It is true; today's students are simply different due to the environment they live in. Traditional methods will not always work. -JJakob

A discussion arose in an elluminate session in a CTER class about the use of the message board and typing while an instructor was 'holding the mic' and speaking. The students of the class viewed the short messages as adding to the discussion, allowing others to see questions and comments and allowing the speaker to address these, as well, without being interupted. Many students write short comments, as the topic of discussion quickly changes as each 'speaker' must take turns speaking, so as to keep the placement of comments relevant within the ongoing discussion, rather than revert back to a topic that ended minutes earlier. The instructor viewed this as rude and negative, similar to students not paying attention, writing notes, and talking in the back of a traditional classroom. While many of the 'digital natives' in the class are used to and can comprehend multiple forms of information being displayed at one time and did not mean to be rude, the instructor viewed it as distracting and prefers just one form of media at a time. So, being on the other side of the ADD or misbehavior discussion opened my eyes a bit; digital natives may be better taught with non-traditional means. -no offense intended, jj

A few comments:

• The above comment by jj is an excellent situation where the traditional vs contemporary cultures clash. I can walk into the classroom of most of the elder teachers in my school and it will be dead silent, with student scared to do anything out of line. Walk into my classroom, and there tends to be a constant "hum" of discussion and debate. Each method has its own advantages, but one must also consider what works, and what will prepare the students for the future. I personally know of few situations or careers that involve silently listening to a lecturer for a complete hour. I do know of many that involve team projects, constant group discussion, and group leadership. I also invite any old-school teacher to videotape his/her next department or faculty meeting. I think a group of teachers is probably the LOUDEST audience I've ever seen! People are constantly holding small side conversations and commenting about things - it helps them think about the information and work through it. Why expect and demand a completely different environment in the classroom?
• While this page is not about ADD, people must remember that there is a difference. I've witnessed numerous "old-school" teachers above the age of 50 that believe ADD is "just an excuse" and that some old-fashioned discipline will get the students under control. In this entire ADD versus JNL debate, teachers need to remember that there IS a difference - one is psychologically diagnosed and the other is an informal observation. Just simply "pushing" an ADD student to sit straight and shut-up will NOT effectively improve the situation.

-C. Liang

I have to agree with the instructor's point of view from jj's comment. I get very distracted from the student comments in elluminate. It would be one thing if the students were actually commenting on the topic, but when they joke around and banter back and forth, I think they are being rude. I eventually had to learn to ignore the comment box so I could pay attention to the lecturer. By the way, I'm 31 and I feel pretty adept at technology. I belong to our building's Technology Committee and I'm more than willing to help train my fellow coworkers whenever possible. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE technology and all the resources it brings. As a foreign langauge teacher, I feel blessed that I have so many resources at my fingertips. However, I have to wonder...if students aren't reading enough these days, are we doing them any favors by pushing more technology on our students? I mean, shouldn't we encourage reading? Our school's reading scores have been low, is it because our students are SO wrapped up in TV, computers, cell phone, videogames, etc.? Shouldn't we be concerned that our students don't know how to spell, use poor grammar in their writing (and in oral communication), and have trouble with reading comprehension? Leading back to ADD or JNL, I'm constantly hearing reports that that infants and toddlers should not watch television because it leads to ADD. Maybe these non-ADD students aren't JNL, but can't listen because they don't know how.

- J. Adams

Something I see is that the "non-digital" teacher has a a lot of ego wrapped up in maintaining the status quo of past teaching methods. Many teacher can't admit that student may be able to research more vastly and quickly. The elder teacher certainly has the opportunity to guide the student's curiousity despite the lack of digital skills to carry it out by practicing a small amount of humility. Internet or not, the teacher still has more life experience that can be combined into whole networked classroom environment. - J. Tubbs

On JNL... What a great WikEd piece! Bravo! This topic caught my attention because I am definitely in the above 46 category (started teaching in 1970) plus my current job is to help teachers integrate technology into the curriculum. I totally agree that teachers need to get rid of that notion that they have to hold and then impart all knowledge, and become more of a facilitator or "guide on the side". I also agree that those of us in my age group will never "catch up" to those who simply grew up with technology. However, I do think that teachers need a certain amount of technology knowledge to be that facilitator or "guide on the side". Teachers also need to move away from "skill and drill software" that, (according to Les Foltos and research by the North Central Educational Lab or NCREL and the Center for Applied Research in Educational Technology or CARET), does not positively impact education and move towards higher level technology uses that do. Just because we will never be the experts our students are in the area of technology does not mean that we should ignore technology altogether and "do what we do best". As educators we need to know enough about the technologies that are in use and available to our classrooms to know when and how to best use them. We need to get over the idea that we have to know more than our students to use something in a lesson. That means knowing the potential of different applications and technologies so that we can integrate them and use their full potential for our students' education. We need to take a leap of faith and trust that our students will figure out how to use that technology with us along side guiding the educational process. Together we can transform education into something valuable and meaningful for our students. - Pam Olivito

Your analogy was awesome, it caught my immediately as I scrolled through the WIKED topics. I am not a schoolteacher, but I have been in the Marine Corps for over twenty years and I can relate to your page in several different ways. When I first came into the Marine Corps in 1989 I looked at the people who were senior to me and thought these guys are dinosaurs, they couldn’t change their ways if they wanted to. Now after 20 years the tide has turned and I can see the younger Marines looking at me the same way.

You said it perfectly when you stated, “students have to go to school and power down and be taught the same as their parents were taught many years ago”. It is the same way with the military, these students are borderline computer geniuses and when they come to work we may as well hand a stone tablet and chisel. In order to get the best of our students or Marines we have to challenge them. –David Troyer

Technology and the Classroom

I also believe that some teachers need to update their skills when it comes to delivering instruction. However, there are many teachers like myself who are attempting to change the way that curriculum is delivered. I teach 3rd Grade Math and Science in Texas and so much emphasis is placed on the State TAKS exam, that we are not able to teach anything else. Of course, we are still expected to make sure that students receive the minimum required amount of Technology hours per week. Our school has a computer lab that used to be staffed by a full-time instructor, but the position was cut this year due to decreased enrollment. So, what is a teacher to do? - J. Alexander

I continue to see more and more teachers saying, “When do I have the time to learn how to use new technology?” In most cases the new technology is getting easier and easier to use. During the past summer I was able to create an online US history class that I am always updating and adding to. An Econ class webpage with only learning the basics of how to use web creation tools like dream weaver. Since I have started using the online US history class the students love it. They get to get online and discuss events and questions in our forum and with this the discussion has gone to a new level. Many times I have to cut the students off in class to move on the next subject, but with the online forum the students in some cases continue to discuss the topic. I am seeing learning continue without me. Nic D.

I wish teachers would open up to the possibility that learning to use new technology in the classroom may actually save time and be very beneficial. I use Notebook Software with my SMARTboard and am able to save lessons. In this way, I can access the same lesson for the next year or review previously taught concepts any day I feel it to be necessary. I believe this to be an excellent time saver. M. Flessner

I am a huge advocate of technology and I would gladly take advantage of the opportunity to use a tablet or SMARTboard in class. However, in all situations, I believe it is important to technology to supplement and enhance the curriculum, not replace it. In order to find this happy medium, I would like better professional development in this area. Although I do attend seminars during institute days, I still feel there is a lot more technology available for my use than I am made aware of. As a student in CTER at U of I, I have already learned about more programs that I can use in my class, than I have through my department at school. Yah technology! JB

Technology is the one key that teachers still have to keep students motivated and involved in lessons. I teach high school special education math and have a tablet computer as well as (limited) access to a SMART board. Students love working with the SMART board, but also during regular lessons, as long as I have access to a projector, the tablet acts as a portable SMART board for the students. The ability to manipulate objects, quick access to different programs, and to use different technology in the classroom has had an immediate effect on student attention and information that they have learned. C. Grice

References and Related Links:

Population Connection (formerly Zero Population Growth), http://www.populationconnection.org/Factoids/

The video Game Revolution, http://www.pbs.org/kcts/videogamerevolution/impact/myths.html

Marc Prensky, http://www.marcprensky.com/

Archived Digital Divide Resources, http://mathstar.nmsu.edu/teacher/ddivide.html

North Central Regional Educational Laboratory (NCREL®) is one of the 10 regional educational laboratories funded by the U.S. Department of Education, and its work is conducted by Learning Point Associates., http://www.ncrel.org/

Contemporary Research in the United States, Germany, and Japan: United States , http://www.ed.gov/pubs/Research5/UnitedStates/teacher2.html