Aaron Routon: aaronrouton@hotmail.com: 9/01/08
“Tools for the Mind” by Mary Burns
Overview of Article.The lull in enthusiasm for using technology in the classroom could be linked to the ineffective use of technological tools. Technology has the capability of helping students develop high-level thinking skills but educators are utilizing technology for students only as a low-level “show and tell” aid.
Current education trends fixate on the visual display aspect of technology and as a result students primarily use technology as a way to research or present their work. The higher level thinking skills of synthesis and evaluation are not needed in this process.
Educators should push students to develop these skills. There are technological tools which can help this process (spreadsheets, databases, and GIS programs), but educators need to focus more on content and developing critical thinking skills. Teachers need to use technology to improve content knowledge, curriculum, instruction, and assessment.
Reference Points:
- 1.) Today educators have a narrow focus on technology at the expense of the more important pillars of learning—cognition, instruction, assessment, and curriculum.
- 2.) In all the excitement about new ways of teaching with technology, educators may have neglected to pose the most fundamental question: Are students really learning?
- 3.) Education has an over-reliance on conceptually easy kinds of software—lower-order applications that, although engaging, focus on simple cognitive tasks.
- 4.) Technology alone cannot move students to higher. My own experience in classrooms indicates that students generally use lower-order applications that offer few opportunities for problem solving, analysis, and evaluation.
- 5.) PowerPoint does not lead students to delve deeply into the writing process or wrestle with complex and conflicting conceptual information.
- 6.) Internet use is intellectually passive. Students generally use the Internet as an electronic textbook, often without questioning, validating, or evaluating the information they find.
- 7.) Teachers must learn to use other tools to help engage students but higher-order tools, for the most part, are not as user-friendly or visually appealing.
- 8.) Teach critical thinking first and technology later. The technology community needs to focus on the role of computers as learning tools.
- 9.) Teachers need to use technology to focus on content knowledge, curriculum, instruction, and assessment.
- 10.) Spreadsheets, databases and Geographic information systems (GIS), are useful tools in helping students develop high-level thinking skills in using technology.
Reflection: I think this is very accurate. I think we as educators fixate on the ability of technology to aid in presentation. Presentation of material is just part of the learning process. We need to again focus on developing those critical thinking skills.
In the classroom, we need to continue to help kids develop these skills and not focus so much on the presentation (which can come easier to students than to teachers). This is far more difficult for students and teachers and teachers need to be given tools to teach these things.
Teachers need to be trained how to use these new tools. These tools are often more difficult to use but they need to be utilized in teaching content. Computers have a great potential to be a learning aid and we need to utilize them as much as is appropriate in helping student develop higher-level thinking skills.
