Week 5- Post 1 It's Not About the Tool

Making It Stick- The Tools and the Standards

Week #5- Post 1

David Wees blogged this week about a moment in his high school career that was etched in his mind.  He called it “stickiness”.  There are moments of learning that just stick with us.  We have all had them, so how can we provide them more often for our students? 

Sean Capelle discussed the need to connect the Web 2.0 tools we have to the standards we need to teach.  With the large amount of material I am expected to teach in a year, I don’t have time to make a wiki with my students, just to make a wiki.  It needs to be embedded in the content.  Time is so precious in the classroom that any large project I undertake with my students must be meeting multiple standards.

My dad can make or fix anything, but he believes in having the right tool for the job.  When I look at my curriculum I need to have the right tools.   Pencil and paper might be the perfect tool for one learning task, a field trip might be best for another, and creating a video the best for another.  It is my job as a teacher to always be adding to my toolbox.  Henry Ford said, “Anyone who stops learning is old, whether they are eighty or twenty.”  I don’t want to be old yet so I keep adding to my toolbox.

Anyone who has been in the classroom any length of time knows that students work harder when they know someone is going to see their work.  Having an audience inspires all of us to work harder whether that audience is a peer, last year’s teacher, a parent, or anyone in cyberspace.  Blogs and wikis can offer students an audience for their work.  The first graders who created the America wiki had to make sure their writing was top notch because others were going to read it.

Teaching based on the standards, using the right tool, or having an audience can all help students learn, but when these are all combined at the same time that is when we get the “stickiness” David Wees was talking about.  Crafting lessons and projects that combine all of these is challenging and takes time.  I used the word “crafting” because these things cannot be thrown together and just throwing in technology will not help it stick.  Only good teaching can do that.