April 2008 — News
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Are Schools Inhibiting 21st Century Learning?
Extra Credit The point of view of "school leaders" (administrators, technology directors, board members, etc.) was quite different from those of other groups in some ways. Their top-3 concerns include standardized testing (51%), funding (47%), and school safety (40%). More Information --D. Nagel |
A similar call to action was made last August in a separate research project released by the National School Boards Association, which concluded that while safety and security issues involved with certain Web-based education technologies require "thoughtful policies" from schools boards, at the same time, "parents and communities also expect schools to take advantage of potentially powerful educational tools, including new technology. Clearly, both district leaders and parents are open to believing that social networking could be such a tool--as long as there are reasonable parameters of use in place. Moreover, social networking is increasingly used as a communications and collaboration tool of choice in businesses and higher education. As such, it would be wise for schools, whose responsibility it is to prepare students to transition to adult life with the skills they need to succeed in both arenas, to reckon with it."
Some Agreement on Benefits of Electronic Learning
But students and teachers did come closer to agreeing on the overall value of electronic learning technologies, including, somewhat surprisingly, in educational gaming.
According to the survey, the majority of middle and high school students (51 percent of students in grades 6 through 12) indicated that "games make it easier to understand difficult concepts. Forty-six percent said they'd learn more about a subject if information were presented in a game format; 44 percent said gaming "would make it more interesting to practice problems"; and about a third said that "the use of games in schools will help them learn how to work in teams and see the direct results of their problem solving activities."
Teachers were apparently even more enthusiastic about gaming, as 65 percent indicated that they thought educational gaming would be an effective tool for students with different learning styles and would help engage students in coursework. More than half said they'd like to learn more about educational gaming, and some 46 percent said they would "like to receive specific professional development on how to effectively integrate gaming technologies into curriculum," according to the survey.
