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How to make a great topic boring

by Karoli on March 31, 2006

The class: Technology
The grade: Sixth
The kids: High-achieving honors students

Just imagine the things you could do with this class!

If I were teaching it, they’d get to:

  • Build their own website
  • Learn to blog
  • Create an online calendar to track homework and schedules
  • Learn digital imaging
  • Explore and research a chosen topic
  • Find their way around computer hardware and software and begin to learn key terms for evaluating products

The possibilities are endless.

They could:

  • Create their own online newspaper, each covering topics of individual interest.
  • Build a community and learn how to be good citizens online.
  • Be excited about the possibilities the Internet holds for each individual, beyond the obvious allure of MySpace.
  • Have a mock political campaign and election, complete with photo/audio/video, bloggers, and ‘traditional media’.
  • Create a podcast

Wanna know what the first assignment was?

Write a 500-word essay on the history of computers.


HANDWRITE a 500-word essay on the history of computers.

And people wonder why our kids lag? So my girl who has had her own laptop for a year and a half and can put together kick-butt presentations in no time at all, who has her own Flickr account and Blogger blog gets to write an essay on the history of computers — an essay that will be obsolete by the time she’s finished, because as she observed, “By the time something is in the stores something better has already been made.”

This is so frickin’ frustrating.

Technorati Tags: , ,

Update: Dancergirl has some pretty strong feelings about it, too.

Tagged as: Computers

  • Hi Sara,

    No, the entire trimester was dedicated to cursive practice, definitions lookups, and really very little technology education. It was more like a "survey of technology in essay form".

    But I disagree with you on the 'perfect introductory lesson' part, or at least part of it. In a technology class, shouldn't the intro have been written on the computer? Why handwritten?
  • Sara
    I think this would be the perfect introductory lesson to a class in which the aforementioned digital topics would then be introduced. But I take it this teacher had no such agenda...?
  • I feel like I have spend the last 30 years fighting with the educational system both as a teacher and as a parent. I was lucky to have attended an experimental high school in the '60's that used a lot of media. I then attended a unique teacher training course in the '70's, only to discover that the vast majority of schools were obsessed with pen and paper, rote learning.
    I consistently see teachers not giving students credit for what they can create, for what they can add to the educational environment. Are teachers so afraid of their students out teaching them!
  • When will the critical mass of educators "get it"??? This is not 1975! Cursive and not keying???I hope your daughter is able to restrain herself.
  • Deb
    How sad is this! I think we are limited by a few things...first, limits set by contractual agreements that the minority force the majority to adhere to. Second, limited access to computer labs to encourage those few students without the means or access to IT to succeed. Third, teacher fear of not being the sage on the stage and unable to let control slip from their grasp. Fourth, curriuculum anxiety...."I must ram this rigourous curriculum into those poor students".

    Donna, I join you with AAARGH!
  • I only have one thing to say:

    AAARGH!!!
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