Miss Bartram's Classroom

Reflection #2

The  following reflection is based off of information I reviewed from Marc Prensky's website.

    The first article I chose to read by Marc Prensky was “Teaching the Right Stuff-Not Yesterday’s Stuff, or Todays, but Tomorrow’s. In this article, Prensky compares the important things students were learning in the past to what they currently need to learn, and finally what they will need to learn to be productive in the future. In the past the focus was on writing letters, reports, and essays. Students of today are learning about writing emails, making powerpoints, and writing a blog post. Prensky states that in the future, students will need to have the skills of working in a virtual community, making videos, and writing a program.
    I agree with Prensky in the fact that educators need to be teaching students skills that will be needed in the future. However, not many teachers have the knowledge in technology to teach things like writing computer programs or working in virtual communities themselves. There is also a question of funding in a lot of schools. I believe that instructional programs should be made available so that teachers can continue to stay updated on current technology and bring it back to the classroom. Also, even though the skills of today and the future are important for students, it is important that students are also learning the skills of the past like writing essays and reports.
    The second article by Prensky that I chose to read was titled “A Huge Leap for the Classroom-true peer-to-peer learning enhanced by technology.” This article focuses on how important it is for students to have one-on-one instruction to enhance learning. However, this is not an easy task when a teacher has many students. Prensky describes a method introduced by  Professor Eric Mazur from Harvard. Mazur had his students watch a lecture the night before class, and answer questions about it during class using the students’ computers or smartphones. The teacher can see the response immediately and can analyze the student’s overall understanding of a subject. Then, the students find another student that had a different answer than their own and discuss why they put down a certain answer. I think that the peer-to-peer component of this strategy is the most important and can be utilized in any classroom. Although I think this is a very good teaching strategy, it may be hard to put into practice in an elementary classroom, since not every student would have a computer or smartphone. Perhaps there is another, more cost effective way to implement this strategy in an elementary classroom.