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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Okay, so you haven’t heard from me for awhile because I”ve been a bit pre-occupied with the harsh realities of public education.  Specifically, the reality that the policy makers involved often have such little knowledge of the realm they’re overseeing.

Economics or Steel?

I teach students a variety of technology related concepts and applications with in my seventh and eighth grade course called “Technology”.  The course centers on the following skills:

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