Another discussion to keep an eye on

Mark Pullen (The Elementary Educator) has written a post he calls “The Definitive Guide to School 2.0.” I think it comes pretty close to living up to its title. His post is based on this premise: “Our kids are living in a world that is very different than the world we adults grew up in.”

He points his readers to an article written by Marc Prensky. Entitled “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants,” it presents an interesting position:

It is amazing to me how in all the hoopla and debate these days about the decline of education in the US we ignore the most fundamental of its causes. Our students have changed radically. Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach.

The two of them present a pretty strong argument.

I’m not prepared to take a strong position on this myself (though I will say it seems to make sense to me with my limited experience as a formal educator), but as I’m reading through all of the above material I hear the echo of a lament that I’ve heard so many times before: The teacher is in the difficult position of being a change agent between a new generation of learners and an older generation of parents, administrators, and legislators. There isn’t fault; there is simply difference.

While I don’t personally feel the testing pressure that I hear other educators speak of, I have to wonder how the “School 2.o” ideal matches the reality of a “high stakes” educational environment. School 2.o (which, again, I find appealing) seems closely related to the constructivist approach (which has its good and bad points depending on the pressures one feels). The constructivist approach, as I see (read about) it, is more popular at the beginning of the school year than it is as testing approaches.

School 2.0? Will it occur before or after today’s students become the first “digital native” generation of teachers?