Changing the questioned asked

   

 One of the biggest take always from the class for me was that even with the new reality of the smart phone, the school system still has the same standards and expectations of students that they have had pre-smart phone.  Teacher are asking the same questions and using the same methods even though this younger generation is living in a different reality then those before them.

    I wonder if the apathy and general disinterest in education comes (in part) because we as educators are failing to ask good enough questions. When students don’t see the long term impact of class content, or see the tasks they are being asked to complete as pointless, their motivation and investment drops significantly, (and who really can blame them?). The example of the vocab assignment really summarized this well for me. If we ask students to write definitions and example sentences, students can easily find and copy this content from online. The question asked has an easy answer, so the engagement in the task is limited, and students aren’t challenged. 

    But what if we asked students more challenging questions? Instead of example sentences, we asked them to provide connections of the term using Googles Trends or Google’s Ngram application. Can we start asking more challenging questions and asking more of students because of the amount of information and resources they have at their disposal? I think we can. But how much change can happen if state and national standards or tests remain the same? 

    It seems clear we need to be teaching students skills more than content. But the standardized tests and state standards often require a significant amount of content to be taught. I’m hopeful that as new teachers are entering the profession with more training in educational technology, that changes will continue to happen, but practically it feels that the change may come slower than needed.