My thoughts on Chapter 7 of "Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology"

I really enjoyed reading this chapter because I think it is a great follow up for the discussion we had in class this past Tuesday. The most recent discussion guides, who talked about chapter 6 in this same book, had a very interesting survey that they had us complete in class. The questions on this survey were very similar to the information we are reading about in chapter 7. One of the questions they asked us was something along the lines of “Do you think learning should be done dominantly in schools?” I answered yes to this question for many of the reasons that were listed in this chapter. Don’t get me wrong, I completely and utterly agree that learning should take place throughout the entire content of a person’s life, but while our children have the chance I think they should do a lot of their learning within the schools. There is a reason that we switched to this type of learning! One of the most important reasons why students should be dominantly in the schools is because of equity of access to learning. There are a lot of families in our world who simply cannot afford to teach their children at home. They do not have the means to buy technology or may not have the time to truly enhance their child’s learning & knowledge. One of the main reasons public schools were created was to give these students an equal opportunity to learn. By coming to school they will all have the same learning environment, tools, opportunities, and help available. This doesn’t mean that parents can’t help further their child’s education at home, but it just means that our children should predominantly be in the schools. There are so many other controversial issues that go along with this topic, such as peer culture and social opportunities among our children. Dr. Boyer brought up a great point that peer culture is not always positive, which in that case, it would be a good thing for students not to be in the schools. On the other hand, our children are learning to be social, problem solving, and work with other people by being in the public schools. I personally don’t feel as though students will get the same opportunities by learning from home.

Something I will do as a direct result of this new thinking is to continue advocating and encouraging for students to stay in the public schools. It is my job to motivate students to want to come to school and I will do that by incorporating new and fresh ideas into my classroom. I plan to take a lot of field trips and do a lot of field work. I also plan to work around my students & their interests. Students will be much more motivated to come to my classroom if they are interested in the material we are learning about.