RE: Recap of the educational conference in Kyoto this week
No problem. It has been eye-opening seeing what people are doing. The stage picture is of a special ed. teacher who worked with a dentist to develop a stylus for his students so they could use iPads on their own. Tears all over the place when I first heard the story.
I try to reach out when I can on the ESL front (all levels) when I hear about teachers struggling with classes (technology usually grabs my attention first, but in as many cases as I can). I have worked with a few jhs teachers on everything from classroom management, ed theory, and of course tech. They can be tricky to track down though. The local schools are easiest to maintain contact with, but I have helped a few teachers here and there all over the country.
Definitely. The computer rooms I have seen generally are being used as a high tech replacement for tape recorders. Students aren't allowed to take the software home (and it is horribly out of date). The teachers aren't trained on it and many have limited options on when and how it can be used because the head of the English departments are (generally, not always) scared of the tech and just want to rely on the tried and true books.
That said, there are teachers who take it upon themselves to take chances and are able to effect some change in their systems. Just need more of them. The Apple store in your area should have Teacher Tuesdays starting or in the processes of being set up. The goal is to demonstrate solid pedagogical uses and examples of how to integrate tech in the classroom.
That makes me wish there was an Apple Store in my area. I think the closest one is three hours away. I'll have to check again.
One of the biggest instructional impediments for teachers I've found in Japan at the jhs level is the amount of extracurricular activities that both students and teachers are involved in and the lack of interest in pursuing online portions of their courses for what I think is fear of exposing income differences between students and possible security breaches that would expose personal information. Teachers and students are so busy here, it blows my mind.
Yeah, there is a pretty heavy stress on the club activities in jhs as well as shs. It takes a huge toll on the students and teachers too. Having clubs and things like that is great, but they tend to go to the extreme with it.
The online portions of the courses pose a whole different set of issues. I get that they don't want students putting out personal information and they don't want teachers requiring assignments to put out that information. But they have juxtaposed any online exposure with bad online exposure. The ridiculous part is that there are plenty of things that can be done without posting to the public internet. Even just in-class activities using technology are viewed with suspicion in many circles (even at the higher ed levels). It is changing, but glacially.
Glacially is a very apt word for change here. And then, when they're ready for it, it comes on like a bullet train.
That's probably the best description I've heard of how it works. (Examples for those outside of Japan: Rampant FAX machine usage and 7-11's everywhere.)