Reflection 5

So I've been trying to decide what I really want to write about. But this last week when we visited the high school I realized that I had a more abundant experience with technology classes than most of the students here.  All of the technology classes I took were pretty good. I mean there were only a couple but I was still able to learn so much. I feel that a lot of the schools have all of the resources but don't know how to use them. Either that, or the teachers are not well trained. I mean, this classroom we visited had a few more things that we did but  they could be using them to build things, or learn how to program. Instead, they were given busy work or just time to play with their apps on their phones.

I remember that my teacher always had something for us to do. I have no idea how he kept us all on the same page. But I think it's because we progressed a bit each day. He was able to teach us drafting, software and woods at the same time. The project that comes to my mind is the building of CO2 cars. We first learned about drafting and how to actually make an ISO drawing. We then learned to design those on AutoCAD. (Let me tell you about AutoCAD, it is one of those basic tools that most engineers use. Although their fields vary, they still need to know how to use it. They have a whole course of it here at BYU.) Well, we learned how to use it. We designed our cars on that program. We then had to transfer that design to another computer where we would change our design into coordinates. We would then use a router or a drill machine if you will, to cut it out. We had to make a few touch-ups here and there but we would then test it for drag in the wind tunnel. A lot of times we had to go back and make changes and so forth to make it ready for our race. I don't recall how long it took us to do all of this, but I do remember that I was in 8th grade and we all finished our cars in time for the race.

Now really, what was the point of that tangent? The point is that children have so much potential to learn and grasp so many ideas but they keep getting shut down. Children are not given that room to grow. I want to be a teacher that will teach children technology and how to use it, but let them do the thinking. It's like the Mindtools article we read about how mindtools are essentially tools. We tell them what to do, not the opposite.