VARtek Blog

I was recently reading the 2011 Speak Up report from Project Tomorrow, and I was struck by the theme of their research: the “three new E’s of education.” According to them, the three new E’s are: District administrators should empower their staff to act on their vision of the digital future Librarians and Tech Coordinators should enable student use of emerging technology Classroom teachers should use this technology to engage students effectively Empowering I once read an entry on Big Think’s Education Recoded blog about empowerment. Here’s the text in its entirety: It’s impossible to have a coin with only one side. You can’t have heads without tails. Innovation is like that. Initiative is like that. Art is like that. You can’t have success unless you’re prepared to have failure. As soon as you say, “failure is not an option,” you’ve just said, “innovation is not an option.” This sentiment is so true. I wish I could repeat it to every school administrator out there. One of the main responsibilities of district admins is to empower their teachers and students to help shape the future of technology in their school. With that, of course, comes the small chance of failure. But a fear of failure should not stop...

Have you ever tried to do a complex task while other people were watching you? I'm sure we've all had moments like this. My first experience with this was when I was doing my student teaching.  I remember standing at the blackboard (Yes a blackboard...not a whiteboard) demonstrating to my students how to do a math problem.  I had planned my accounting lesson well, and what I was demonstrating was simple math.  But when I stood in front of those 9th graders, I froze.  My students were amused. Why doesn't it occur to us that this same thing is happening in many K-12 classrooms to our students? Imagine being a student, sitting there with 30 or so of your peers, trying to solve some of the most complex math equations most people will ever have to solve in their lives. I'd be scared to death or at least extremely uncomfortable!  Furthermore, imagine that you have an adult standing over you saying "Do you understand this? It's going to be on the test later."  Yikes! That story is the foundation of an emerging trend in K-12 education, and it's called the "flipped classroom". Basically, the flipped classroom model means that teachers make...