Sunday, January 10, 2010

Skills and Tools

Blogging * WebConferencing * Pocasting * Creating a Wiki



These skill posters and a blog titled "It's not about the tools. It's about the Skills" can be found on the Langwitches Blog: The Magic of Learning. The message conveyed in these posters is something that I think many teachers hear but don't understand at first. In Reading Class, teachers don't try to make sure that students understand everything they can about the textbook that is assigned to them. Teachers do focus on using stories in that book to teach certain skills that students need to learn to be successful in the future. In a Math Class, the teacher doesn't teach specific problems to prepare students just how to solve that open problem. A teacher uses a math problem to help students discover how to use certain skills to be able to solve other problems in the future. The Reading book and Math books are just tools the teacher uses to accomplish the goals of instructing students on specific skills to help students learn. The technology tools that a teachers chooses to use to assist in her insttuction serves to same purpose: to help students learn. We don't know all that the future will hold for these students, but we do know the skills we are teaching will be needed for whatever students encounter.

images by Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

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1 comment:

Lydia said...

This is a great analogy. I have to wonder why there is such a big difference in how teachers (and administrators) look and react to the tool. Would you ever take a textbook away from a kid because he was off task? No- you'd employ some different classroom management strategies. Same thing should be used with technology, be it computers, ipods, or cell phones.