Friday, January 23, 2009
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Towards Solving the Fort Worth ISD Problem:
Solving Problems in Education
Thursday, January 08, 2009
By Eddie Griffin
Let me be as brief and concise as possible. We are not getting there in Education. As the saying goes, “a servant is not greater than his master”, so also students are not greater than their teachers, and many teachers are simply 9-to-5 employees, stagnate in educational growth, and less educated than the captains of industry.
Fort Worth ISD Superintendent Melody Johnson has taken a blind step toward improving curriculum delivery with Smart Boards and technology upgrades. Streamlining and economizing is a problem, because applied technology in the classroom must be guided by forward thinking and insight into the future. Where there is no vision, the people perish.
It was reported to me that two whiteboards were marred when two Fort Worth ISD teachers used the boards as chalkboards, marking on them with ink markers, before they were instructed and trained. You can’t teach old dogs new tricks. But old dogs are protected by teachers’ unions, clearly a lose-lose situation.
We need a new type of teacher, not merely more new teachers. We need hands-on people, technologically savvy, and innovative. This think-inside-the-box paradigm is not working. It’s time to think outside the box. We can do no worse than the current 50% dropout rate.
[See Smart Board YouTube Demonstrations]
Thursday, January 08, 2009
By Eddie Griffin
Let me be as brief and concise as possible. We are not getting there in Education. As the saying goes, “a servant is not greater than his master”, so also students are not greater than their teachers, and many teachers are simply 9-to-5 employees, stagnate in educational growth, and less educated than the captains of industry.
Fort Worth ISD Superintendent Melody Johnson has taken a blind step toward improving curriculum delivery with Smart Boards and technology upgrades. Streamlining and economizing is a problem, because applied technology in the classroom must be guided by forward thinking and insight into the future. Where there is no vision, the people perish.
It was reported to me that two whiteboards were marred when two Fort Worth ISD teachers used the boards as chalkboards, marking on them with ink markers, before they were instructed and trained. You can’t teach old dogs new tricks. But old dogs are protected by teachers’ unions, clearly a lose-lose situation.
We need a new type of teacher, not merely more new teachers. We need hands-on people, technologically savvy, and innovative. This think-inside-the-box paradigm is not working. It’s time to think outside the box. We can do no worse than the current 50% dropout rate.
[See Smart Board YouTube Demonstrations]
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