Learning to Unlearn

Our latest mission, should we choose to accept it...

What do you have to unlearn and relearn about education, teaching, the classroom, or learning? This required some thought. I know one thing I've already had to unlearn is how I was taught more than 25 years ago. "Way back when" the majority of our education was of a lecture type, mixed with rote memorization. Without realizing it, when I started college part time 4 years ago, I started to unlearn that process. I found out it didn't work in the context of some of my classes. So I had to relearn in ways that DID work. Sometimes you don't even realize that you're unlearning and relearning. My generation would call this adjusting.. if something doesn't work, adjust it until it does.

"The chief object of education is not to learn things, but to unlearn things." - G.K. Chesterton

Teaching is another concept I think I'm continually unlearning and relearning. I came from a generation of learners who got used to the basic lecturing type of teacher. This is the type of teacher with the attitude of "I'm the expert, so be quiet and listen". I've been a mom for 26 years, and worked with my YMCA kids for the last 5 years. During this time, I've unlearned and relearned more about children than I could ever explain; their learning styles, personalities and how to work with them, and more patience than I ever thought I'd have! But this has all taught me that as a teacher, my approach will be ever changing and adjusting. I would not be a facilitator of education if I wasn't willing to unlearn and relearn. I found an article online that explains another woman's journey over 25 years that I also found helpful.

Interactive Whiteboards in Today's Classroom

Where to begin......? The possibilities are endless when it comes to Interactive Whiteboards today! I personally haven't had any experience with them, since they were invented LONG after my school days were over. I saw one in action, when I was in my son's classroom. The teacher had it set up for children to put their names in either "packing" or "buying" for lunch. It was their way of signing in. The children seemed very comfortable with the technology, and patiently waited for their turn. But you could tell they really looked forward to using the technology.

The learning programs are limitless!

Now, as always, there are pros and cons to this product. Let's start with the pros. According to an article from the The Journal, one of the pros that teachers note is the appeal to kids' multiple intelligences particularly for visual-spatial and bodily-kinesthetic learners that can be hard to accommodate in the print-based classroom. Another benefit could be the options of HOW to present the material or lesson. This could prove to be very helpful when differentiating your lesson to accommodate different learning styles, abilities, and interests of students. For example if you have physical learners who learn best while being active, coming to the board to answer a question or task could help them immensely. 

Team learning could be used also.

Onto the cons. Con number one is that children get bored very easily. Things are only new and interesting for so long. After using an interactive whiteboard for a year, William Ferriter, a sixth-grade teacher in North Carolina, said, "It just allows you to create digitized versions of old lessons. My kids were bored with it after about three weeks." Another major con is cost. These teaching tools cost thousands of dollars. Spending that much on one tool doesn't make sense to me when there are classrooms with not enough textbooks. In my children's high school, they can't take the books home, because there aren't enough. They use them in class, then put them back on the shelf. The Journal listed several consequences that  are associated; usefulness might wear off, every classroom has to have one, everyone has to use it, and IWBs won't be enough.

All of these pros and cons factor into my opinion.. These IWBs are a wonderful TOOL for a classroom and teachers. But it is just that, a tool. The teachers are the facilitators.