SRS 2.0

I am really enjoying this series in the Stillwater Gazette. Yesterday’s article talked about the Intangible Benefits. The article prompted me to think about critical thinking and Bloom’s taxonomy- things I learned about during my psychology training and my pre-service teacher days. I was wondering how exactly do we measure critical thinking? There is no easy answer, seeing if kids think critically is just like seeing if they can understand abstract and concrete topics. As I was working on my senior project in college, I was introduced to the idea of proverbs and how they could be either abstract or concrete.

So I have to ask, do you know what it means to say, “There’s many a slip ‘twixt the cup and the lip”? It means that there is room to make error as you move from one point to the other, as the cup moves from the table to your lip- you have the chance to spill. Measuring benefits of a technology program can be looked at in two different ways, calculated with certainty or done irrationally. The decision to have the 1:1 program at Oak-Land Junior High was not done irrationally, many decisions were calculated to make the best decision for those students. Each educator is obligated to make these types of decisions- none of these decisions are made quickly without thought.

So what about decision making at SRS, about choosing to move the cup from the table. The decision to move from PK-8 Technology classes to only PK-4 Technology classes. As this decision was made, a lot of time was spent thinking about the students. Each year the students were entering the school smarter in the technology field and the focus of the technology program was to teach the students basic computer skills. Now every teacher integrates technology, it is part of the curriculum. Technology is not an add-on. In our PK-4 program it is simply a way to begin giving students the necessary skill set to move into middle school. The decisions and many others were made were to expand the student’s toolbox.