Bob Sipchen’s “A Lesson Relearned: High Tech or No Tech, It's All About the Teacher” is a largely unsuccessful attempt to mediate the debate between opposing sides on the issues of technology in the classroom. Granted, Sipchen does an excellent job articulating the deftness demonstrated by a kindergarten teacher in Alaska whom he witnessed teaching her class Russian using only clay puppets. He even observes in detail the gymnastics, skill, and applied theory she employed to present and review the material by praising the stronger links in her class for learning it and using their mastery to reinforce the developing skills of the weaker ones.
While acknowledging that teachers need “good tools,” Sipchen ultimately seems unaware that technology—low-grade …show more content…
Clay puppets, however, may not be as effective in teaching the more complex infrastructure of Russian grammar and sentence mechanics as they are nouns and colors or showcasing what they have learned over the length of an entire course. The children are said to have told a story using sentences in Russian that they built into a plot, but Sipchen’s visit for a day to a summer school classroom hardly qualifies him to comment with a bird’s eye view on the teacher’s use of technology in the classroom over the course of days, weeks, and months. If anything, all the ground-laying the teacher had undoubtedly done to engender such a climactic success on the day Sipchen and twenty other teachers were shown the end results of her prior labor may very well have involved photocopies, slide shows, films, computers-on-wheels, and so on.
The point is that Sipchen is speaking from his experience of one day in a class in which the teacher probably does not teach using only clay puppets, but more likely employs a great range of technology. As most “good teachers,” she probably utilizes a variety of media, both low-tech and high, to facilitate learning in her classroom. To do otherwise could only
While acknowledging that teachers need “good tools,” Sipchen ultimately seems unaware that technology—low-grade …show more content…
Clay puppets, however, may not be as effective in teaching the more complex infrastructure of Russian grammar and sentence mechanics as they are nouns and colors or showcasing what they have learned over the length of an entire course. The children are said to have told a story using sentences in Russian that they built into a plot, but Sipchen’s visit for a day to a summer school classroom hardly qualifies him to comment with a bird’s eye view on the teacher’s use of technology in the classroom over the course of days, weeks, and months. If anything, all the ground-laying the teacher had undoubtedly done to engender such a climactic success on the day Sipchen and twenty other teachers were shown the end results of her prior labor may very well have involved photocopies, slide shows, films, computers-on-wheels, and so on.
The point is that Sipchen is speaking from his experience of one day in a class in which the teacher probably does not teach using only clay puppets, but more likely employs a great range of technology. As most “good teachers,” she probably utilizes a variety of media, both low-tech and high, to facilitate learning in her classroom. To do otherwise could only