It is the best of times — and the worst of times — to be a teacher, writes Justin Reich on Education Week‘s EdTech Researcher.
In his seventh-grade U.S. History class, students had a textbook and a primary source reader with 20 documents, Reich writes.
Today, a history teacher can choose from the millions of documents archived online by thousands of libraries and archives around the world, including not just texts but images, audio recordings, film clips, and ephemera.
Students can create “multimedia performances of their understanding” and “share their work with peers and audiences around the world.”
It has never been easier for educators to connect with one another, to share best practices, to see best practices from around the country or around the globe, and to connect across schools with teachers who share our subjects, or our interests, or our peculiar circumstances. Never before has the fraternity of teachers been more connected.
Yet teacher “morale is at a 20 year nadir” as “narrow content standards and high-stakes testing pushes ever more teachers towards an ever narrower, test-focused curriculum,” Reich writes.
Audrey Watters’ annual review of trends in education technology lamented that “technology — like schooling — is something we do TO kids.”
“So, we face a moment where technology dramatically widens the scope of educational feasibility while policy dramatically narrows the scope of classroom possibility,” concludes Reich.
