Okay,

So I feel like I’m always ranting.  I go forever without posting, and then something annoys me, and I go off. I’m really sorry about that… really… I am.  Sometime soon, I’ll write a non-ranting post.  Today, however, the Juvinalian Muse is upon me.

The Quest for Authentic Instruction & Fluency Building

In designing my current curriculum for CIT, I was heavily influenced by Cool Cat’s post, “Get Past Teaching Apps: Build and Use a Student Technology Toolbelt“.  I am particularly interested in building my students’ technology fluency, which is defined in Cool Cat’s post as:

the ability to determine and use the appropriate technology tool(s) for the task at hand in a manner that allows seamless transfer of created objects and documents to flow easily between the selected tools without outside intervention.

I also want students to be able to think critically and solve problems within a computing environment.  I focus quite a bit on teaching the students to use the skills I use personally to master computer applications, rather than just teaching them what I know.  As Cool Cat notes and Karl Fisch supports, “We cannot fathom what the future holds for them but we know what it won’t hold: It won’t hold the software that we taught them this year in its present fashion.”

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I’ve found it.  That’s right. Amidst this tumult of uncertainty that is our current world, I’ve found the answer.  There is apparently one determining factor of our students’ success in the 21st century workforce.  Would you like to know what it is?

Despite increased globalization; the need to prepare students to access, evaluate, synthesize, and build upon information and media; and the drive to promote Creativity, Innovation, Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, Communication, and Collaboration, the curriculum of our district’s Computer Information Technology program hinges on Keyboarding. I’m not kidding. This is apparently very serious stuff. One teacher commented at a recent curriculum meeting that this is “becoming a management and discipline issue at the high school.” Wow. It seems that students, who have formed bad keyboarding habits despite intensive training at the Elementary level, are resorting to the technique that works best for them when teachers turn their backs.  Huh…  The nerve of some people’s children…

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