Getting an Educational Buzz On

You know those images of water-deprived people lost in the desert, crawling with their last remaining strength in the sand toward the watery oasis ahead?  

Well, that's me, dragging my you-know-what up to Montclair State yesterday.  In this case, MSU was the watery oasis and I was the person in the metaphorical sand, deprived not of water but of intellectual vitality.  

I'm back today, against all odds, having temporarily jury-rigged camp and childcare schedules, not to mention the paving of Grove Street and torrential downpours, to get here.  I know, I know: A month ago I was "freaked out" by thoughts of scratchy professor clothes and getting out of the house before 11.  But that was then...

Today, I have a meeting with an academic advisor.  But mainly I just wanted to be here again, surrounded by grad students and other adjuncts, reading the various department bulletin boards for interesting education news, perusing new publications by professors I know, and absorbing the cerebral buzz through my pores.  I won't get much accomplished--my summer plate is too full (and not, unfortunately, with barbecue).  But I will get that little electric charge I need to anticipate the Time for Me that is only 49 days, 20 hours, and 15 seconds away.  Better yet, being in an innovative environment makes me want to create, improve, and think hard about The Future.  

Looking around at this very moment as I sit in MSU's ADP Center for Teacher Preparation and Learning Technology, I see people banging at computers, meeting in small groups, checking out various resources, collaborating, thinking.

I wish K-12 educational environments were like this by mandate, not just because some have successfully partnered with agencies like NASA or have links to corporations with deep pockets. Schools should be places where kids--even the little ones--are engaged in supervised intellectual pursuits and research most of the time. And why not?  After all, the technology exists and most of us use it every single day.  

With wider, more efficient use of technology, we could start teaching kindergartners how to find out stuff using books, the Internet and other digital tools, each other, and teachers-as-guides.  Couldn't our aim be that by, say, third grade, students would be independent authors of their own educational agendas?   We could provide the structure for those agendas; well-engineered state standards are crucial to having an excellent national school system.  Then we work out with children--using those ever-important problem solving skills we are trying to foster--how they will not only fulfill those goals, but prove they've done it.

Here's a cool video about a kid named Cameron, all of eleven years old, who uses technology in every aspect of his life--to educate himself, to educate others, to prove what he knows.  Tell me this cannot be done more widely in Montclair.  Or tell me where it's already happening.  (Not in the elementary schools that I know of.)

In my next entry, I'll write more about Montclair's commitment to technology in education.   In the meantime, read here.