Read the article at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/technology/at-waldorf-school-in-silicon-valley-technology-can-wait.html and comment on it/discuss it. Share with us your
educational experiences.
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Wow, this school is great. If I had children, I would definitely enroll them in such a place. High Tech is everywhere and honestly I'm not sure if it's good that 2-year-olds know how to use Iphones, tablets,computers etc. I think that it's great to have some break from all those high tech appliances, because according to many researches they make our brains lazy. So I guess in order to learn more efficiently and exercise our brains on a daily basis, it's good to leave out technology from the process of learning so that we can fully develop our skills, interests and talents. This school reminds me a bit of Montessori pedagogy approach. Fortunately, for my future prodigy, we do have some Montessori schools in Warsaw.
ReplyDeleteI think schools following Waldorf principles educates technology developers not users. Children learn new technologies in seconds so it’s no problem in delaying ‘technological education’. One practical problem is making differences between children so it is good if all group live according the same rules. Moreover it is crucial for children to have similar rules in school and at home. My 9 years old son doesn’t have problems with technological limitations. When he occasionally plays on the tablet I lobby for old strategic games like Heroes 3.
ReplyDeleteWaldorf school seems to be so crazy in comparison to other schools nowadays, but not so long ago - even when I was in primary school it looked the same, there was no smartphones, laptops or tablets. Do I regret that I was at school at that time and not now? Absolutely not! I am actually very grateful especially when I see younger people living Instagram live when I actually had the real one. I spent more time with my friends focusing on being present, talking, playing football and just living normal life. Of course there might be discussion that the world looks different now and how you can not use Google or even know programming, but the truth is that a lot of people working in other fields than technology achieved a lot without that knowledge. It seems a bit too strict to not use any electronics at all, because obviously it is important to know how to find information and so on. But young people learn quickly and starting using computer or learning programming few years later will not be a problem for them. If one day I will have kids I will definitely try to limit their time on electronics and spend more time in nature, sports and other activities. Knowing the future will be full of robots and other automation, programmers one day will no longer be as needed as today. It is hard to predict how will professional life look in 20 years from now.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was attending primary school technology still wasn't so easily accessible. However, I think modern devices like tablets or interactive whiteboards must be great as educational aids. I acknowledge that as stated in the article, it's not necessary to teach children how to use technology as it's designed to be intuitive.
ReplyDeleteNonetheless, teaching how to use technology is different than teaching with technology. The second can be very beneficial for children on every level of education. It's better to learn Physics when you can manually play with some vectors, change forces and immediately see how it affects the behavior of the object they're applied to, rather than see a static illustration in a handbook and memorize equations.
Technology can drastically increase engagement and improve understanding of abstractive subjects that are usually considered difficult like Math.
Therefore I advocate using technology in education.
I have often guided by common sense. "Not a computer to be found. No screens at all. They are not allowed in the classroom, and the school even frowns on their use at home." I disagree that the lack of modern technology is a guarantee of great education. Access to the electronics devices should be adequate for the child's age. Anecdote: I heard a friend say: "My two-year-old daughter is nervous as we take her tablet."
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion schools should put more effort to teach kids, math, problem solving and teaching many languages. Creating environment where they can experiment. Teaching how culture is different around the world. For me it is nonsense to teach kids programming but you can teach them how algorithms works. Technology is changing so fast that in my opinion we should help our kids how to live in continuous changing environment.
ReplyDeleteI agree with my colleagues that the reduction of technology in school in some aspects makes sense but I do not agree with the statement from the article: "computers and schools don’t mix". I think that schools should use information technology but first of all during the lessons devoted to this subject and it is a possibility to teach the usage of the new information technologies.
ReplyDeleteMoreover I do not see any obstacles in using new technologies in didactics, such as interactive whiteboards instead of the old black ones.
Undoubtedly, it is necessary to maintain moderation in the use of technological novelties, as they may harm more than help. What too much is not healthy. In my opinion school should strike a balance and use technology in a right way. I agree that computers inhibit movement but not creative thinking, human interaction and attention spans, for sure. We use technology to communicate with each other, we play strategy games and solve puzzles or sudoku etc. In my point of view it is possible to use computer in personal development.
For me it is difficult to make opinion about this kind of children education. Whole my life I spent in front of computer. Those children perhaps are going to be great architects, artist or lawyers but still I belive that using computer in our times is inevitable.
ReplyDeleteAs many others I agree with a general message of this article. Children should spend their time socializing and using physical objects instead of screens and apps. At early stages of education technology would be nothing more than a distraction.
ReplyDeleteI must admit it is very interesting idea. In fact it is very easy to be critical about our educational system, but on the other hand it is difficult to propose something instead. I used to be very irritated about frames, in which our schools function – as program standards, the same for all the kids. Nobody checks particular interests, skills and possibilities. Everybody must learn and do the same, irrespective of true needs, in fact – because it would be more useful to develop adequate abilities, proportionally to their capabilities and means.
ReplyDeleteAnyhow, the idea of “less-computing” or even “no-computing” schools seems to be very tempting in our computing epoque. In fact, it is not possible to avoid technology and kids shall be able to use it anyhow, independently from the school program. I think IT teaching in school shall be waste of time very soon. Instead, children could spend more time developing social interaction skills, the most important ones in adult life. They can also do more creative activities, for instance some hand works, realized also in teams. In my opinion Waldorf school is a brilliant idea, I even predict it can be educational tendency for the future.
Just like Maciej, I disagree that cutting out modern technology would be a guarantee of great education results. However, I agree with person from the article that children in elementary school don't need technology aids in grammar school. In my opinion, there should be a ballance between classical teaching methods, which combines development of manual set of skills with the technical ones. From my perspective, extreme way of cutting of all of technology from school is rather marketing action that should attract Silicon Valley parents. According to fact, that teaching results in mainstream education versus Waldorf approach could not be measured in the straight way (because as private schools they administer no standardized tests in elementary grades) it is hard to conclude if that provides better educational results.
ReplyDeleteThank you for a very interesting article. The presented approach is somewhat controversial in modern times. In my opinion modern technology is very helpful in teaching, but the presented approach gives a higher level of abstraction and develops creativity. On the other hand the forbidden fruit tastes the sweetest - limiting access to modern solutions sometimes brings the opposite effect...
ReplyDeleteToo much technology in school is not a good idea. I think that learning in a traditional way is better for kids. They learn social skills, use their memory to remember facts and more creativity to solve problems. They have a chance to discover the real world as it is not just cybernetic one. I highly agree that “Teaching is a human experience” so we shouldn't use technology on every subject at school especially where it is not needed. I think that computer slides do not help to understand the topic better than clear explanation from a teacher. On the other hand, I think that there should be some IT classes where students learn how to use computer software because not everyone has the same possibility at home. In general teaching technology at school is not bad but should not be used too much.
ReplyDeleteTo be honest, I can hardly see an advantage of using gadgets to teach math. Maybe I'm old school, but I prefer using paper and pen over calculators while learning in primary school. I think that Waldorf way is good as long as parents can continue it at the home. Nowadays, four years old children can use a smartphone as good as their parents. In the contrary, we have Samsung smart schools. Digital schools with a lot of gadgets. I'm not saying gadgets are bad, but by using them at the early stage we can easily make our children lazier and dependant on them.
ReplyDeleteI have never thought that a school without technology might be better than nowadays school where new technologies are everywhere. I heard opinion that the people before technology expansion were smarter. Technology has bad impact into self-development, because people are not patient and can not focus on the problem solving. They expect fast and easy answers. It is hard to imagine how hard was to find answer for the question. Student had to go to library and read couple books to find proper data. Right now we can find the same answer in couple seconds using for instance Google.
ReplyDeleteWe can not say technology is something completely bad. Interactive boards, animations, movies can increase engagement and improve understanding of difficult subjects - as Adam wrote.
Interesting article. I really like the idea of Waldorf school's fundamentals. School, especially on the primary level should explain the principles of different domains as math, science, literature, music etc. Technology can make some problems easier for students, but at the same time can hide some aspects of the solution of the problem or the step of some process. In my opinion we should not separate children completely from the technology, but limit it to the cases where it is really needed, and most of issues discussed at school can be explained without advanced computers or smartphones. Moreover, I think, that children who have started using technology devices very early, have problems with being focused on real world. Many aspects as nature, animals, sport are just uninteresting to them.
ReplyDeleteI am a proponent of finding the golden measure in everything. Nowadays, when people treat Google as their "external brain", we become some kind of cyborgs with knowledge extended by data gathered in the Net. This approach is controversial, especially for people who still remembers the times where knowledge access was exclusive, but it is a reality our children will face. And they have to be prepared for that. School should prepare them for that. It should teach how to exclude valuable information from Internet - but how can you do this without using devices such as computers or tablets? Not using technology in school is not the answer to reduce it's excessive usage in the future. In my opinion, the point is to teach even little kids how to use it wisely.
ReplyDeleteHmmm I must say that I agree and disagree with collegues opinion. Last Monday I was listening to the radio audition and it was about "How modern technology and easy access to information kill our neurons". The point of of this program was that in todays world we don't have to use brain so often to gather information we can use google or wikipedia and we get information right away. Also I was reading article (couple of years ago) how Stack Overflow kills thinking and probles solving in programers brain. So I must say that school which uses technology is not so good. First of all we have to know that children after this kind of school do not have to be interested in technology at all and this was also case in Poland when younger people with familiarity in using modern technology tend to choose different paths than path in technology. Secendly we still need to know that they are children so let them play together and if they want they can go into computer science or whatever that will good if not then also ok. In schools they schould focusing on learning foreign languages (which I think that it is very important in todays world) and logical thinking and instead of computer science with programming they should learn how to use hammer and fix things (fixing things is also very important in technology).
ReplyDeleteSo my conclusion is that in schools children schould have less access to computers, tablets etc (in home also).
While I see the point, I don't fully agree with the idea.
ReplyDeleteThere are kids so familiar with touch gestures, that they try to perform them on a simple sheet of paper (which is sad and frightening at the same time), but from my perspective those are the extreme. And we shouldn't look for another extreme to prevent such situations.
Personally, I believe that good technical education is what youngsters need. I would send my son to the additional school, like "Young Engineer" (http://www.malyinzynier.pl/) and I would give him a limited access to all the technology goods at home as well.
A wonderful school ...
ReplyDeleteSuper, very cool ...
I remember my first years of primary school when there were no computers. LOGO language was taught on paper, because there was only one computer, and that the Director used only.
My children were raised (my son is 22 years old, daughter 19 wright now) in a classic school of the twentieth century. They had access to computers, internet. But it was my job to familiarize them with normal life - normal in my opinion. So they played football, went skiing, sailing, hiking, swimming, and spending a lot of time doing things that do not require a computer. I will find in the Warmia cottage a house, where there was no electricity or interent range - barely worked telephone. I spent a lot of wonderful days there with my children. Living without technology, I didn't have to pay $ 2,000 per semester.
I don't know which method of learning is best. The school described in the article is using traditional methods of teaching, and they have a great record of being effective.
ReplyDeleteThere are limitations to this model - teaching computer science can only go so far without the use of a real computer.
When I was at school, at first "there was no Internet" (for me), and then in secondary school there was, but you couldn't find "everything on the Internet" (like an essay to plagiarize for a school assignment) just yet.
Some artificial handicap at the start may be beneficial or necessary (like writing in pencil, when ballpoint pens were all the rage). Some outdated tools are not taught (like Morse code or using the logarithmic slide rule), but e.g. handwriting is likely to be taught forever.