Tuesday, January 23, 2007

EME4401 Pensky Article

Prensky, M. (2005). Listen to the natives. Educational Leadership, 63(4), 8-13.


Good Points from the article
• Teachers need to pay attention to how their students learn
• Need to value and honor what their students know
• Encourage decision making among students
• Involve students with designing instruction
• Gather input from students on how they would teach
• “if educators want to have relevance in this century, it is crucial that we find ways to engage students in school."
• “true prerequisites for learning- engagement and motivation”

My Comments:

Even when we don’t understand things about technology we can bring up discussions about it in class.
Also the students know how they might use the skills they know in use with material they are learning.

• Teach students to use the technology to learn from it
• Students may know what they have, but not how they can use it to learn
• Ties in with allowing students to use their own materials when learning and exploring. In another class we were discussing problem solving, and allowing students to choose from a variety of materials to use in thier exploration of finding the answer. This can be said for technology also. When working on problems and projects students should have a variety of technologies available to them to use so that they are comfortable in thier learning, and can get the most out of their study.
• Collaborating with students is such a good idea, we need to hear from the students how to teach them. Some of the best teachers are the ones who get down on the students level, take interests in their lives, and find out what is happening with them and what interests them
• Integrating technology into curriculum is so much easier today with virtual field trips and so many games and software available. Just on the internet for free there are many resources we don’t really even know about until we go out to find them.

• “herding”
o one- to-one personalized instruction, continually adapted to each
o “having all learning groups self-select. Kids love working with their friends, especially virtually I'm not saying, of course, that students should join any group in this context, but that they should be able to choose their own learning partners rather than having teachers assign them.”
> • I disagree, this will work in some cases, and if the situation calls for an activity in which this grouping can be used, then that is good. Just because students like to work with certain other students does not mean that those students will be the one that they have the greatest learning experience with. Students also need to learn to work with other students they might not be as comfortable with. Allowing the students to continually pick their own groups can also leave out students that the other students may not want to be around. This can lead to that student becoming hurt and discouraged.
• One last point I wonder about is, while it seems like a nice idea to be able to use all of the technology tools out there that so many are using, these things do cost money. The education system already seems pinched as it is. Also, many families out there still cannot afford some of these more luxuious 21st century items, how could we expect to fund a classroom for them. I see how we can use the internet and resources that are on it, and buying games for the school and such, but there are so many things schools still need that talking about using phones and mp3 players in the classroom, seems to me, to idealistic.