Oppenheimer/Prensky

I reflected on Oppenheimer’s comments about the waste of time spent on computer instruction ; the idea of teaching computer skills rather than using the computer to facilitate substantial learning. The students in the class my final paper addresses are coming away with skills that empower them. They very quickly learned to use this software (PowerPoint) to create a personal product. They are using traditional skills (reading, writing, planning, convincing an audience) and new important social goals (respecting someone’s opinion, clarifying and communicating their own thoughts and feelings in a respectful manner) while integrating those abilities with the digital skills that will empower them as communicators. These kids need this kind of support. I wish I were seeing more of it in our school. I sometimes think about my own two granddaughters and how I helped them develop as readers. I wanted them to have this critical skill. As a reading teacher I feel literacy is a civil right if not a human right. I used good books to give them a sense of joy and intimacy while building language, wonder, and critical thinking. Meanwhile, I never worked on letter sound or alphabetic principal; I let the computer do that. The computer spiced up the more pedestrian elements of reading instruction and they accessed all of that like lightning. Meanwhile here I am as a reading teacher in a public school. I write a grant for such software and get it, but the computer lab can’t be used by my little group of five or six kinders because either a whole class is using it or, more likely, the lab is being used for testing. Sigh. Which leads me to Prensky...sure, it's there in front of me and I can embrace it, and have made the effort to set it up. But then there is the simple matter of the access to the machinery. It all seems so ponderous and plodding sometimes.