Vision-ary Committee

Today several of us attended a business fair at the University of Texas, put on by Linda Cleveland’s business class.

Students had to research an invention, be sure it wasn’t patented, create a template and business plan, and create a marketing booth to sell the product at the business fair.  Some of our students from Vicky Abney’s business class were the judges along with other judges.

Some of the inventions presented by the U.T. students  included smart clothing, a smart grocery cart that could tell you what prices were and total what was in your basket, and a gps system that notified your car of available parking spaces nearby.   Two other groups had Ipod devices, including I Tooth which sent bluetooth signals to another Ipod, and IBike which had speakers embedded in the bicycle handles.  Several of the students were trying to work with engineers to actually create these products.

This assignment is a great example of project based learning which we talked about in our meeting on Wednesday, so I wanted to share it!  (It’s also a great example of how we can connect with university students, by having our students attend events like this).

In his article, Teaching Tech Literacy to the MySpace Generation, Christopher Huen comments:

“In an era in which kids download music, publish their own blogs, and gossip via instant messages—all while juggling a treasure chest of electronic gadgets—the idea that schools should be teaching them to be technology literate seems almost silly.

David DeBarr, instructional technology coordinator for the Scottsdale Unified School District in Scottsdale, Arizona, hears that from parents all the time. “I cringe when I hear that the kids already know it all. The kids don’t know it all,” he says. “The kids know how to text message on their phones, but ask them to type a research paper and format it, they don’t know how to do that. Not many of those kids will be going into business and turning in a business proposal on a phone.”

DeBarr believes that teaching students how to use the Internet or specific software applications is simply a means to an end. “Technology literacy has to be technology as a tool,” he says. “Our approach is not to teach technology. Our approach is to teach it as a goal. It becomes infused in every classroom and becomes part of life. It happens naturally.”

I think this is part of the challenge for our committee–to identify future trends and then find ways the school and district can support the natural infusion of those trends into the classroom.  I think we also have to remember that even if students can use gadgets easily, that we need to continue to teach them how to ask the important questions, how to gather information, and how to evaluate the tools they are using.