American (perhaps North American) kids are not even close

According to a report released by SETDA and ISTE (summarized by THE), there are a number of points that should be addressed. I’ll comment on then as how I see Alberta and the U of A (in Science) might be handling this.

First:

Even if all students mastered core academic subjects, they still would be woefully underprepared to succeed in postsecondary institutions and workplaces, which increasingly value people who can use their knowledge to communicate, collaborate, analyze, create, innovate, and solve problems. Used comprehensively, technology helps students develop 21st century skills. (THE Pt. 1)

So what do these mean? In the first case, the paper calls on educators to teach technology and build technological fluency in students not just through direct instruction in a specific hardware or software, but through the integration of technology in other areas of learning. (THE Pt.3)

If this is the case, Alberta’s idea of integrating technology skills across the curriculum is on the right track,

Second:

Used comprehensively, technology supports new, research-based approaches and promising practices in teaching and learning. (THE Pt.2)

I don’t want to say that teachers are lazy, but few barely have the time to deal with the existing curriculum that they need to deal with, to say nothing of a paradigm shift. I know that many instructors might want to change, but they don’t have the time to commit to make the changes and many young teachers are being mentored by teachers who are not even interested in research based approaches to say nothing of technology.

If you put those two points alone together, you can start to see the essential issue. There is little motivation to integrate the way that it should be done. Over the weekend, I was watching part of the Mars Rising and the point was made that we need a project like Mars, to get young people exited about science again. Without it, we are going down a scary road as our world becomes increasingly reliant on science, but allows ignorance of the process by the masses who will ultimately vote or make decisions about where science goes. This part of the post gets off the rails a bit, but perhaps technology (via the multiple literacies ideas of the last post) might enlighten the Arts that can then fuel the Science – an idea from the A&S Symposium.