Latest trends in education, part 3

Please enjoy posts from Golden Apple’s own Penny Lundquist for the next few weeks.  Penny is a 1986 Golden Apple Fellow. She has been on the staff of Golden Apple for 17 years, and currently serves as Golden Apple’s Director of Professional Development. Prior to working at Golden Apple, she was an English teacher with 23 years of classroom experience in grades five through twelve. Her interests include literacy and teacher professionalism.

What follows is a highly personal list of what I perceive to be 5 key education trends . . . expressed as injunctions.  I would love to have readers comment on my choices and list picks of their own.  These are in no particular order, just things I’m picking up surfing the internet, reading Educational Leadership, Edutopia and other education publications, and following Obama’s/Duncan’s education priorities. 

Last week, I looked at three trends in education. This week, I’ll be sharing two more. Today, #4:

4.  The digital divides need closing. 
Definitely one of the most urgent priorities is to guarantee that students acquire the 21st century technological skills they will need to compete successfully with students in other countries for the high quality lifestyles and living wages that are in everyone’s best interest.  For that to happen, two digital divides need closing.  We all know about the first – ensuring that poor kids have the same access to technology that more advantaged kids have.  That’s the original digital divide and by all accounts it is widening rather than shrinking.  And that brings us to the second:  in many high poverty schools, computers and other high tech equipment sit gathering dust, in some cases still in their original boxes, because teachers are either technology averse, haven’t received adequate professional development to use the technology or our current priorities under NCLB seem to preclude more innovative instructional approaches – those involving technology.  There is a digital divide between kids and their teachers across socio-economic groups.  It’s just less problematic in more advantaged communities where kids have access to technology after school, when much of their real learning is taking place, driven by their own interests.  All teachers need to become more sophisticated users of technology for instruction.  That means they need to understand how to harness web 2.0 features for classrooms across the nation.

For more, check out Edutopia.

Check back in a few days for the 5th and final trend in this series!

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