Using Technology Wisely in Schools
Wenglinsky's publisher is "Teachers College Press," and in fact, Wenglinsky is a research scientist, advocate for the modernization of schools and teacher who has testified before the U.S. House of Representatives on school issues that have nothing to do with technology. His book offers both wisdom and practicality, and he suggests that of the two philosophies / styles of teaching, didactic and constructivist, when embracing computer technologies in classroom, the best approach is constructivist. In fact, the word "constructivist" appears continually in his book. Constructivist is the best policy first of all because, as he writes on pages 8-9 of his Introduction, the teacher's role is not to hand out drills as assignments and sit in front of her own computer playing solitaire (the didactic approach). In fact the teacher as a constructivist will use computers as a tool to "concretize concepts"; this opens the door to the teacher's opportunity to "try to convey the initial abstraction" in a way that students will then convey to one another. The constructivist teacher uses technology correctly and hence teaches students "complex problem-solving skills in an iterative process that moves from abstractions to concrete examples, whe
A recent study by the American Institutes for Research indicated that "education majors had the lowest level of practical literacy among college students," the Courier-Post columnist Chavez explains. Individual schools will have - and do have - ample opportunity to teach "higher order thinking skills and complex problem solving" (Wenglinsky 83) to advanced students (using technology); but to bet the farm on using technology in all cases at all levels is to wind up with a losing hand. Basically, he is saying teachers trained properly in technology can empower students to think and problem-solve on their own. Chapter 5 is more of the author's advocacy for additional - and better - use of appropriate technologies in classrooms, and for the tools with which to measure the effectiveness of those technologies. ("No Child Left Behind is designed to change the culture of America's schools by closing the achievement gap, offering more flexibility, giving parents more options, and teaching students based on what works. This is not uncommon, based on my experiences as a substitute teacher; there are always students who understand computers - how to get the most out of them, how to repair them and tweak them when they crash - better than the teacher. " In fact, some 34 states have been notified by NCLB officials that "their teacher testing had major problems and would be subject to mandatory oversight. And if NCLB regulations are pointed toward teaching basic skills in math, science, and reading, that should be what schools spend money on. "The author's main points and what I have read elsewhere: On page 82, Wenglinsky writes that the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation is taking the wrong road when it comes to closing the gap between white and minority students, the so-called "achievement gap. A connection between Wenglinsky's main point and what I have observed: Wenglinsky mentions that some teachers in technology-enabled classrooms know so little about the equipment they rely on savvy students to solve breakdowns. [and] 4 out of 10 teachers do not know how to integrate technology into their curricula. Chapters 2 (academic debates about technology's usefulness) and 3 (case studies of the good, bad, and worse computer-in-classroom scenarios) are partly autobiographical and partly editorial, but Chapter 4 offers data, facts, numbers and more evidence that constructivist approaches work best.
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