via The Difference.
…it’s not enough to embed technology. It’s possible to embed technology in every aspect of teaching and learning and it still be a completely teacher-centred classroom. The teacher is in control of what is learned, how it’s learned and for a large part, how students show their learning. This needs to change.
The real power comes when students take responsibility and ownership for their learning — when they become co-creators of their learning experience, rather than their education being something that is done to them. This is where true student empowerment and engagement begins.
I agree. I do! And we desperately need our students to turn into empowered, engaged citizens.
It’s just… this is the opposite message from content and standards. And I’m not quite so sure I’m ready to trust the average teenager to completely steer the direction of his learning. Do we need to set tone? To set examples? To set or steer content?
To demonstrate work ethic?
We are experiencing a genuine crisis of confidence in our most prestigious institutions and professions. This presents an opportunity to reconsider some basic assumptions. The question of what a good job looks like — of what sort of work is both secure and worthy of being honored — is more open now than it has been for a long time. Wall Street in particular has lost its luster as a destination for smart and ambitious young people. Out of the current confusion of ideals and confounding of career hopes, a calm recognition may yet emerge that productive labor is the foundation of all prosperity. The meta-work of trafficking in the surplus skimmed from other people’s work suddenly appears as what it is, and it becomes possible once again to think the thought, “Let me make myself useful.”
From Shop Class as Soulcraft, by Matthew Crawford
via Embed vs. Empower.
