Bridging the Achievement Gap through PBL3 and a PC!

Bridging the Achievement Gap through PBL3 and a PC! Increasingly with the inception of multi-facted technological advances, both parents working outside of the home, single-parent homes, and movement away from the parental family nucleus, (logistical concerns) children are coming to school deficient in not only language acquisition, as a result of rich experiential language sharing, but, deficient in simple problem solving strategies, hand's on development, in some cases deficient in learned skills such as riding a bike, skipping, in short kinesthetic, hand-eye developed skills. Schools must fill this void or like a child who walks before crawling, must go back and learn to crawl or suffer developmentally. NCLB and governmental imposed standards have diminished the plausibility of this taking place in the early developmental period. In the place of show and tell, skipping 101, hopping 101 and tumbling 101, finger painting, etc., is Alegbra Readiness and standardized test prep. Teachers of pk-3 know the importance of play. They chose to go into that level because in their souls they are still remembering the with fondness the time when they began to play at “school.” They wanted to continue this approach. Their Professors reminded them of the importance of “playing school” with their soon to be students. Instead they are quickly swept into the bureaucratic nonsense of the day. Along with this reality is the ever increasing achievement gap. While there has always been an achievement gap predominately due to the generational poverty both economically and academically, the reality of our current cultural demise has greatly contributed to this particular culture group. The need for play based learning to take a lead in educating all children, but most especially those who are suffering, who are caught in the achievement gap-hose is more important now than ever. Children play at growing up. School should feel like they are playing at becoming who they want to be when they grow up. Children should be playing at becoming doctors, lawyers, they need to be playing at who they will be, because that alone infuses goal based learning, success determined play. More importantly during some of my recent inquiry into advancing my research I discovered something quite telling about the “great divide” in academic outcomes. While we continue to glory in the technological advancements of our day, we ignore this simple fact: NOT everyone is advancing with it! In 2003 we were introduced to youtube, that was only 10 years ago. When I entered my first classroom as an educator in 2000 very few people had cell phones. Very few people had laptop computers. Many were still saying goodbye to their antiquated “machines.” While the academically inclined, the upper middle class were making room for their home computer systems, many were still hoping for a place to live for more than 6 months at a time. We have advanced rapidly, however, our school systems and our average urban home has not. They still fight to keep their lights on, let alone have a PC on their living room tables, or wifi accessibility for their kids to apply for jobs, do their homework and yes, take an online survey. A prior Post on Paper and Pencil = PC As long as that divide is in place we will not advance all populations, thereby closing the achievement gap. How is this for an idea? Bill, why don't you and all the other IT giants get together with Arne Duncan and instead of ensuring that everyone has an free phone, ensure that everyone has a pc, wifi (which should be free now anyway) and teach them how to use their pc's as a phone? It is a win-win situation. That is a start. Now, let's go play!

"TODAY'S PC IS EQUAL TO THE PAPER AND PENCIL WHEN I entered grammar school, in 1964."

So, here is a call to Bill Gates, Michael Dell, HP, and IBM. As the marketeers are determining that the PC is about to vanish from our little reach, I implore you to take the vast amount of PC's sitting on the shelf, continue to make them all for one very logical sound reason. People need them! Far too many are still unfamiliar with and lack proficiency in computer manipulation. You see there is a direct connection between hand to eye coordination and brain stimulation. 15 years ago as computer/telecommunication by way of the PC and internet became the rage, schools stopped teaching handwriting as a mandated subject. They wondered why it was important when we were all going to be typing on PC's. The PC replaced the paper and pencil for a great many of us. Now we have touch pads, and a simple swipe of the finger does it all, so pads replace the PC. But, please understand the vast majority of children in rural, and urban communities still have never mastered the PC. What does this mean? It means we have created a society of consumers and not producers. Of simpletons as opposed to developers. I encourage the vast wealth earned by the front runners of the telecommunication/computer age to now reinvest in a meaningful way. Until every school age child has a PC, access to internet and access to meaningful implementation into their daily lives the achievement gap will continue to widen. In other words, "TODAY'S PC IS EQUAL TO THE PAPER AND PENCIL WHEN I entered grammar school, in 1964."