What Tech Should Be In a Fifth-Grade Classroom? 325
theodp writes "While going about my day,' writes Slate's Linda Perlstein, 'I sometimes engage in a mental exercise I call the Laura Ingalls Test. What would Laura Ingalls, prairie girl, make of this freeway interchange? This Target? This cell phone? Some modern institutions would probably be unrecognizable at first glance to a visitor from the 19th century: a hospital, an Apple store, a yoga studio. But take Laura Ingalls to the nearest fifth-grade classroom, and she wouldn't hesitate to say, "Oh! A school!"' Very little about the American classroom has changed since Laura Ingalls sat in one more than a century ago, laments Perlstein, echoing a similar rant against old-school schooling by SAS CEO Jim Goodnight. Slate has launched a crowdsourcing project on the 21st-century classroom, asking readers to design a fifth-grade classroom that takes advantage of all that we have learned since Laura Ingalls' day about teaching, learning, and technology."
Re:Exactly. (Score:2, Funny)
Supercomputers should have been +1 funny.
But since you've answered in a serious tone, I'll suggest planetariums for every class.
Re:Supercomputers (Score:3, Funny)
I'd prefer super-balls. Then they could learn some real physics.
There's definitely some interesting physics behind the humble tea bag.
Re:And technology? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:And technology? (Score:3, Funny)
Actually, first thing REQUIRE calculators starting early in elementary school.
We don't make a carpenter learn to put in a nail using a rock before we hand him a nail gun, and we shouldn't be teaching children with the assumption that they have to do things without the appropriate tools either. We should be teaching how the tool works, but once very basic addition and subtraction have been covered to explain the process, a student should NEVER be without a calculator.
Ban teaching multiplication tables. That will free up quite a bit of time for more advanced math.
Re:And technology? (Score:3, Funny)
So what you are basically saying is that professional scientists can't homeschool?
No fifth grader ever said, "I want to be a middle manager," but we need plenty of those.
No, we need less of them; and better ones.
SB
Re:And technology? (Score:5, Funny)
Fifth graders in the 1940's didn't dream of becoming COBOL programmers in the 1960's.
Of course not, they had nightmares about it.