What’s Gotta Stay

Blogs come to class reports the Deseret News this morning. As I have been trying my hand at blogging these last few months, this of course caught my eye. My educational background (I have a teaching degree) also lends to my being prone to read articles concerning education. Plus, I have kids beginning to work their way through the educational system. This really makes me care about what is being done these days.

When I studied teaching and spent some time in the schools, I was always interested to see how technology was being used. Honestly, usually teachers were struggling to find ways to figure out how to use the technology they had available. I found this to be one of the major shortcomings at the time for the pushes to get computers into the classroom. There was funding to get the computers in there, but nothing was being done to train teachers on how to make the computers a useful part of their curriculum. I had the opportunity several times to conduct trainings in local elementary schools and a few conferences on various technology topics due to some of my affiliations with the education department at BYU. The reception was always overwhelming, including teachers crowding me after the session with questions and the desire to receive further training.

The article this morning made me smile because a teacher has found a unique and novel way to include a current technology trend at such a young age, and make it both enjoyable and useful to kids. I really am not all that old, but when I was in high school keyboarding was still taught on typewriters. We had a few computers at the front of the class that we could do the speed tests on, but the rest of it included changing out 10 and 12 pt heads on the old machines. I can hear the snickers from a few readers now. Fortunately my parents had done all they could to keep a current computer in the home from the day they could afford one and I had learned how to type well before high school. After two weeks in class I was sent to the office as a TA and was able to skip the typewriter nightmare because I had passed off all tests they could throw at me.

Kudos for this teacher for engaging these fourth graders in such a fun and educational way. Not only are the kids learning to express themselves, they are learning practical skills that quite honestly many adults do not have. Way to go!