Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach is a well-versed powerhouse in educational technology. Her attainments in the various levels of education help establish validity in her views on student learning and technology. Although her population of students in Alabama vary from ours, her drive is to provide pedagogical strategies with technology for low-income students. In addressing this particular group of students, it is obvious that instructional variables will make it harder to measure student achievement. But the overall message is to afford exposure so that they will enter the techno-world with some schemata.
Another aspect of Sheryl's interview that I found rather interesting was the metaphorical marriage of passion and rigor. This concept of bringing together student motivation and challenging tasks calls to mind a conference I attended a few weeks ago regarding Breaking Ranks II conducted by the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP). NASSP focused on rigor as a very important aspect of student achievement. According to their theory, students who are challenged are motivated to learn. The segment on academic rigor highlights Sheryl's concept of challenging ALL students. Thus, providing students with technological tools, specifically students who do not have a home computer, will grant motivate them and challenge them to accomplish their tasks.
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Thanks for the kind words. As a follow up though, I am in year three of leading teachers in Alabama- however, I live in Virginia Beach and teach at the College of William and Mary. (I also help to lead a cohort of teachers in Western NY and a cohort of Independent schools in Tenn, NC, Ala, Fla and Ga.)
The children to which you hear me refer I am assuming were the at-risk students at W.T. Cooke Elementary in Virginia Beach where I taught for 5 years before becoming a central office administrator.
I would be interested in knowing how you are using technology to change your practice in education and if Web 2.0 tools have informed your instruction in any way.
I agree with Sheryl Nussbaum that students are motivated when they are presented a challenge. Being a special education teacher I feel that you must challenge students for them to be motivated to finish the task. I had an expereince where I did not challenge one of my students, I soon realized that he started acting up in class because his work was to simple. So, off course I assigned him more challenging work and it was amazing to see him so motivated to finish his assignment.
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