One room schoolhouse vs. industrialized learning

Busy moth of April and May

Well we are winding down another school year here in Michigan. It has been a little hectic here and I have been also tie-up with family, my nephew Nimmer Jabber from Australia and my uncle Don Jagger from California. Also this Friday 5/1/2009 I have my last class in master degree program at Central Michigan University. So was short break from the blog has allowed me to reflect on education and educational technology.
First Nimmer was here and we talked about technology and it effect on society and education. Being a 21 year old he has a much different prospective then uncle Don. My uncle came from a one-room schoolhouse with maybe running water from a hand pump that was outside and the old out house, with no blue water. It has made me think about how we have industrialized education as Henry Ford industrialized auto manufacturing. Is this good for education? Will we look back on history and ask, what was that all about? Only time will tell this story, but I think we need to get back to some basics of education, Reading, Writing and Arithmetic. If we instill basic building block for students the rest will start to fall into place. Oh yes please don’t take away the basic of kindergarten mike and cookie for a snack naps in the afternoon and playing with building blocks. These have been foundation-building skill for years let them still be children and not try to make them into little scientist in Pre School. This being said and this message is to my self also, Read to your children early on age one to four. Then help them read for if they find a love for reading this will start the opening of a whole new world for them. Then there are the teachable moments when you can make learning relevant to them and this opens more doors to learning. With good basics and fun learning student will thrive and grow. If we can then just find that little switch of what they love and find interesting they will light up and produce more then we could ever get out of them by forcing them to do activities and learning that is not of there own internal motivation. External motivation as bribery will not work in the long term. So lets bring back some of the one room schoolhouse and integrate it into the technology enriched environment. Technology will not be the difference from a successful student and a struggling student. It will only work to accelerate student learning. But it sure is nice to have in door bathrooms and not the old out house.