Re: [seul-edu] I'll put in my two cents... and ask for a penny...

[Ryan Booz <ryanbooz@alumni.psu.edu>]

jeff williams wrote:

> Actually, I'm a Lutheran pastor working on a Ph.D. in educational technology.

Great!  I'd love to know where you go with this... we need more people looking at
it from an educational standpoint, not an administrative "must have" view (which I
seem to run into a lot!)

> ....We need to teach concepts, not keystrokes.  The basic Linux distributions
> give
> the tools to teach concepts.

OK, so tell me what concepts you've come up with as essential.  We have all of our
students go though a Word Processing class and Spreadsheet class.  I had a hard
time doing a database class last year because no other teachers (I was hoping
Science) would help me get data and stuff for these kids to use.  Also I only saw
them two times a week which made for a lot of catch-up each class.

My administrator wants to have a general class for kids (10th grade) after they've
had the word processing class.  Maybe this is the class to do it in.... then offer
the language and specific classes (HTML, Linux basics, etc. - any other ideas) to
the 11th and 12th graders that have gone through both of these classes.

Like I tried to elude to, this is a totally new position for my school, and the
surrounding school districts are honestly caught up in getting lots of computers
without teaching the kids... there are a few exceptions.  I don't want to do that
here.  We're a small school and I think I could have to opportunity to actually
make the students competent at applying this in the future.  Am I making sense?

Ryan Booz
Tech Coordinator
Belleville Mennonite School