A video of Baltimore County Public Schools’ superintendent, Dallas Dance, is making the rounds on the Internet. It’s a LinkedIn spot about “top professionals 35 and under.”
This part in particular is drawing attention:
“If a 5-year-old already knows the capitals to the United States cities, what are we going to do in terms of what we can do with that information with the kid?,” Dance asks. “They’re not going to need to go into fifth-grade history learning that material if the information is already provided because, hey, they can ask Siri.”
He then says the schools need to make that information relevant to what students need to know in their lifetime. (See the full video here.)
He starts the video by saying, “There’s a big fear that technology will replace teachers. That’s not the case. But teachers who will use technology will replace those teachers who do not.”
To perhaps illustrate that point, here’s an image Ryan Imbriale, head of digital learning for BCPS, tweeted earlier this month:
10 minute video about how STAT became a global model within the first 9 weeks of implementation- worth the watch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YPZ1OpF0qc&feature=youtu.be
BCPS now has 3 Board of Education members on a computer safety committee along with BCPS employees. What a win-win for us all. Such a great time to be part of BCPS- proud to be a parent in a community that is fighting for the right thing for our kids.
We don’t use half the material we learned in school. Most of those lessons were soon outdated. But studying and learning are never outdated. When I was in school we had to use a slide rule; calculators were not allowed. No one taught us to use a calculator. They didn’t need to. We cheated and figured it out ourselves. We used encyclopedias and other books too. Now we use Internet search engines. However, these are mear tools. It’s how we use these tools that counts. I don’t believe that’s part of the curriculum.
Well, when you consider yourself a great Dad because you FaceTime your child every night, I’m not sure there’s much room for a discussion about what kind of human connection children need.
What a disheartening video. I have no words.
This is a not-so-thinly-veiled threat to free-thinking teachers. So much for TeamBCPS. Also, so our children should be robot-like, asking questions of a a device’s robo voice? What does this have to do with knowledge…and this from a county schools superintendent?? Children, I suppose, should not try to learn or practice memorization when Siri knows all the answers. Then what? How can they make connections about the world if they don’t already have knowledge within their minds from which to draw conclusions, or even ask the right questions of tools such as Wikipedia or Siri? All of this increasingly reads like a script from the edtech companies that see a huge market in the unproven, widespread use of new tech in schools. This whole STAT initiative needs to be slowed down before we are all lemmings heading off the cliff..
I am not sure your definition of “knowledge” matches that of others. You see my definition of Knowledge doesn’t have my child memorizing information to just keep in their head. I would MUCH rather have my child understand how to apply information that is stored in digital format to further his learning. Knowing processes, techniques, and strategies will further learning WAY more than memorizing.