The tagline to this book is: How Disrupting Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns. Which is what got me to buy the book in the first place and, I am happy to say, I was not let down. You see, I have always felt a bit like and outsider looking in, I want to try things differently, I hate the status quo. I want more, new and innovative ideas when working with school technology for students and teachers.
The premise of the book is that the way we learn doesn't always match up to the way that we are taught. So if we want our students to be able to make it in the new digital and global economy, we need to rethink our understanding of intelligence. Which means we need to overhaul our educational system.
I believe the perfect place to start is with school technology, after all we're expected to be constantly changing. If you are still teaching the same tech lessons that you did five years ago -- it is time for a change. Every summer I look at my tech curriculum and throw out the old and add the new.
For example, a few years ago when I was teaching middle school technology and taught a lesson about social media, which at the time it was about MySpace. If I was to give that same lesson today it would be about FaceBook instead. If I was to teach middle school students about MySpace they would make fun of me: "MySpace is so 2008 Mr. Flick."
What is innovative one year, can be a joke the next. So make sure your tech lessons are current and fresh.
Once when I was visiting a school they took me on a tour of their "modern computer lab" the students at the time were working on a worksheet about technology (for the record I hate worksheets) and one of the questions was to have the students label different computer parts, one of which was a diskette. Really -- a diskette. Come on people, we can do better than this.
Tech curriculum should always be in a state of innovation and change, we must keep up with the times.
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