Learning Lore

So here is this poll from a Harris-Decima survey reported on by CTV about how the public does not have confidence in the education system in Canada.
I found this quote interesting “Younger Canadians, between the ages of 18-34, are more likely to say it is up to snuff than older respondents.”  So the people who have the most recent experience with the system are more positive about education in Canada.  I’ll throw out a blind opinion(1) and offer up that many of the skills students need to deal with the future work/career world are those higher order thinking/problem solving skills.  To enable students to develop these skills often requires that the educational system be more tolerant and to provide many opportunities for students to discover how best they can learn.  THis type of thinking will be part of what the older respondants may see as coddling, or lowering the bar.  It’s easier to grab on to a set standard or believe that the education system is too soft, then to wrestle with the complex issue of developing a quality public education system.  Education is not black and white.  Dealing with the myriad of ways that each student learns as well as the baggage that each student carries with them (Did they eat this morning, did they sleep at home, are they a perfectionist) makes education a neccesarry morass of attempts, opprtunities, failures, and successes.  To narrowly draw the opinions on such a complex organiztion to “they feel Canada’s educational system does not adequately prepare young people for work in the modern economy” is a little insulting.  The last time I looked the public education system was about much more than preparing for the workplace. (Think of citizenship, think of educated and critical consumers, think of tolerance, think of developing critical and independent thinkers). Also, how can the survey respondants know what the “modern economy” is when by many accounts students will be working at jobs that don’t currently exist.
Stephen Downes has an interesting idea in his post  Canadians worried about education system: poll. “I think CTV and Decima are manufacturing a belief that is false. Why? Perhaps they hope to sell educational services?”  Now, when I read the CTV article I see that there is some attempt at balance, providing some opposing views or examples, but the overal tone of the article raises concersn for people thinking about education.  I’d agree with Stephen in questioning the motives.  It’s all about how you phrase the questions.  I’m sure we could design a poll that would have opposing results. So the question I’d like answered is who paid for the survey?

(1) just a term I use when I’m making a wild statement without having any firm data or citations:-)

Education 21 century skills, critical thinking, privatization

Okay, so I have to toss this up here as my digital native rant led me here.

Marc Prensky put together a list of essential 21st century skills and they don’t all revolve around technology, but technology will be a valuable tool to use within this broader skill set.

I’d have to agree:-)

Education 21 century skills, critical thinking, digital natives

I’ll not say much on this one, but I’ll be adding it to my list of files that I’m compiling for ideas that students need to be exposed to.
Facebook Can Get You Fired, Dumped, And Yes, Evicted

I find it interesting that the Stan Schroeder points out “These folks should not have trashed this lady’s house, of course, but posting photos of it for everyone to see is obviously not a very smart thing to do, akin to slapping them onto a wall on the street.”

Seems to me that the fact that the house was trashed and that the renters fled before getting evicted is downplayed because really they should have understood how to better use facebook.  I want to rant a little about misguided social norms, but instead I’ll simply say that this simple proves my point about the digital natives.

Simply put being born into an era in which technology is omnipresent does not grant kids a superhuman abilty to use technology effectively.  Sure some kids can text faster than I can talk, but if they can’t understand how to apply those techie skills beyond  figuring out where the next pit party is, or don’t yet understand that what you put out on the Internet is actually accessible by everyone then those skills become rather meaningless.
Only when you harness the skills that some of those digital natives possess to some critical thinking will you see effective technology use.  And as we’ve been working for years trying to get students to become more critical consumers and producers of information it seems unlikely that technology alone will affect some grand transformation (except possibly negatively).

So…some digital natives were evicted because of their postings on facebook.  My question for the digital immigrants is… Would you have made the same mistake?

I’m guessing no.

Education Add new tag, critical thinking, digital immigrants, digital natives, facebook