Knowledge-able?

Argument

So what I think Wesch is saying in this piece, From Knowledgable to Knowledge-able: Learning in New Media is that students should move past just memorizing and using standardized bubble scoring methods and create more meaningful ways to engage in their learning.  And with this, the classrooms and educators also need to move into the realm of the 21st century and begin to embrace the technology that is available to them.  Wesch says, "it becomes less important for students to know, memorize, or recall information, and more important for them to be able to find, sort, analyze, share, discuss, critique, and create information.

My mother has been a teacher all her life.  She has taught in Kickemuit Middle School in Bristol Warren, she owned her own preschool, she taught in the EPIC (Enrichment) Program, she taught at Western hills Middle School for a while, before teaching 5th and 6th grades at Orchard Farms Elementary School, and at the moment she is creating the new teacher evaluation programs for the Cranston Public School District.  Basically she knows a lot about teaching.  So of course I went to her to ask her opinion on the subject:

"Of course, from an educator's perspective, we need to start using more technology to our advantage.  We need to start using technology in the classroom in order to engage kids and keep them interested, keep their focus.  Why?  Because it's second nature to them, rather than in my generation when technology was something we had to learn.  The world moves so quickly.  We need to use the same techniques students use in everyday life.  Teachers need to learn to welcome various forms of technology including cell phones... if used appropriately that is.  There should be rules set in place.  There are places that are using things like, Poll Everywhere, in their classrooms and kids are loving it.  They get to text their answers to questions and see them pop up on the board, it's really cool.  Theres also new ideas like Flipping The Classroom.  Where kids take a video home and learn the material there and come back to school and then get to talk about it in class.  If we as educators don't learn how to embrace technology in a meaningful way, we're going to loose students and we're not doing our job.  It makes our job individually obsolete.  Now don't get me wrong.  I'm not saying that kids shouldn't have to read books!!  It's just how you engage them in the discussion about the book that is key.  I believe that every American should have to read The Scarlet Letter, but it's what we  as educators do with it that should be different."

 Now personally I have the same philosophy as my mom.  I have always been a really difficult student, but not because I wasn't trying or because I was lazy or anything, but because of Timmy the Tumor pushing on my memory.  I worked my ass off throughout grade school only to pull off average grades.  The summer after I spent three months in Hasbro Hospital I had to make up grades for two of my core classes: British Literature and U.S. History.  I of course was still having a lot of short term memory loss so retaining the information was super difficult for me especially during the summer when all I wanted to do was be with my friends.  But thankfully my History teacher knew how to engage his students using technology that was appropriate, useful, and meaningful.  Mr. P and I spent the summer listening to music of the time periods from his Ipod, watching video clips of important events, and using whatever means necessary to allow my memory to retain the information.  And thankfully, for the most part, it worked.