LeeAnn mentioned that teachers have taken a newer approach to teaching……….many teachers are using hands-on activities and learning centers.  Many teachers have thrown out the old method of students sitting in their seats all day and working on worksheets, for the new way (learning centers, cooperative learning, hands-on activities, etc.)  I am one of these teachers…………….my students do one, sometimes two worksheets a day and no more.  They never sit in the same spot for more than 20 minutes.  Most of the time they engage in learning games and play.  And many teachers just like me, walk around school, telling people this is the “NEW” way to teach. I’ve even heard retired teachers that sub on a regular basis at our school refer to this method of teaching as the “NEW” way………they are always saying they don’t like this “NEW” way of teaching…….it’s too loud, too noisy, too chaotic. 

Nate’s blog made me think about whether this more current style of teaching is really “NEW” or not.  I know from past classes that Vygotsky believed that learning was social; he believed that students needed to talk about what they were learning with each other.  So my classroom of learners that engage in conversations during center time is not really a “NEW” idea.  Vygotsky had already said that this is how it should be.  Other theorists such as Dewey said that children should “learn by doing”. He claimed that students could learn chemistry, physics, and biology by investigating the natural processes which went into cooking breakfast—an activity they did in his classes (basically he was teaching using hands-on methods).  So again, this “new” method of teaching is not so new when you consider that Dewey was already doing some of these things in the early-mid 1900s.

As LeeAnn pointed out, a SmartBoard is really an interactive chalkboard or whiteboard.  It is just an improvement on the older version.  A dvd is just a better version of a filmstrip or vhs tape.  Nothing ”NEW” there….

So where are all the new innovations in education?  The more I thought, the more I realized that most everything we do is just an improvement on the old and much of what we are doing, as a class, we have already said is not working.  Students are not scoring as high on tests as they could be because they aren’t learning as much as they should.  Where are all of the new inventions/innovations for education?  We need something different.  Is distance education finally a true educational innovation, along with the methods being used at Sudbury school?