by Chris Pultz, Rousseau Tech Coach
It was a year of growth and change at Rousseau School. Clear examples of this are the students who progressed in their academic, physical and social development the past 10 months. More changes could be over seen with the the sound of the hammers, saws and drills of construction workers. Less obvious but equally important has been the growth and change in the area of technology integration by teachers. The building is in the midst of a maturation process that began with technology as a pull-out special subject area and moves towards an approach that treats the classroom as a digital learning environment.
It’s not “technology” if it was invented before you were born.
Students today don’t know a world without powerful laptops, the Internet, or pocket-sized devices that access it through touch screens. As adults this is all very new and amazing to us, but to our children it is no more amazing than a remote control or an 8-track tape. As teachers, it is our job to learn about these advances and how they can enhance learning. This is a noble goal, one we are working toward at Rousseau, but evolution in any process takes time.
The first year of change in approach at Rousseau focused on getting teachers more comfortable with technology. They were assisted with planning lessons that put technology into the hands of students and learned about some tools and resources that they may not have been aware of before. This was a big deal. The next year will focus on making this less of a big deal, and more of how we teach. A greater portion of next year’s staff development will be about creating the environments to help teachers and students take advantage of the substantial digital resources available to them in Lincoln Public Schools.
Shelley Blake-Plock, teacher & education blogger said recently “We are probably the last generation that will make the distinction between being online and not being online.” This is a powerful statement, and one that drives home the importance of this change in philosophy at Rousseau. If we are doing our job, it won’t be too many years before students will reminisce and say things like “Do you remember when we had to go to a room at the end of the hall to use the computer?”
