Education is changing everyday and it is our job, as educators, to evolve our techniques as well. In this ever changing educational world, some things no longer interest students. This list includes textbooks! So many times, I see teachers handing out textbooks at the beginning of the year and students are instructed to bring these useless tools to class everyday and take them home every night. Why?
As a student in the early 2000s, I was part of this educational downfall. What do we give to our students along with those textbooks? We give them a foreign object that they barely know/understand. These objects no longer have a place in everyday class. They simply enable the students to look for certain answers in certain places, and if they don't find the answers, then they "need to look harder." In the past, students needed these books to find information that they need to succeed in school. Now a days, a student can type in ANYTHING to Google and be able to find out the answer to that question instantly. How do these textbooks help our students? They simply give us teachers something to put in our lesson plans. They also allow us to assign pages for students to read and comprehend while we sit at our desk and get grading, or anything else that needs to be done, completed.
Students no longer are interested in textbooks and what they offer. Its our job as educators to ignite that flame for learning and build it in to a bonfire. How do we do that? Educators need to realize that as technology becomes more prevalent, we need to allow students to use tools that they are familiar with and are interested in. We all know that technology is not always available and accessible to ALL students. It i our job in the field of education to make these technologies accessible and available to these students. In our district, which has not passed a levy for new money in 17 years, we have at least one computer lab in each school building. In my class specifically, we have 2 student used computers and a cart full of 33 iPod touches that the students use. One of the selling points when we wrote a grant to acquire the iPods, we stressed that almost all students know how to use one and it can be beneficial in their education to provide something that they know how to use as a learning tool. these iPods have reignited that flame for some students who never used to get excited about learning. Incorporating these devices allows us to engage every student by giving them a learning tool that they enjoy learning with, unlike textbooks.
