Learning to Crawl, Walk, Drive ... Understand and Use Technology Systems...

When a child learns how to walk, or even to crawl before that, his or her parents don't first lecture on the importance of developing the skill, nor do they go over the rules for safe and orderly mobility. They don't give electronic presentations on avoiding obstacles, hand out worksheets on balance, or drill and practice, "left-right-left-right."

Children observe crawling, walking, or other motor skills, and attempt to do so when the need arises. They learn by doing.

I mention these examples in an attempt to explain my thoughts on education, specifically the question of whether students need to "learn the foundations first" or "learn by doing."

I find it ironic that many of our colleagues use the cliche that students must first "learn to walk," when that action itself is a hands-on, experiential or problem-based learning endeavor. Now I understand there is no blanket rule for this. Education is an art because all students are -- and all learning can be -- unique. A perfect counter to my examples above could be driving a car or flying a plane. In no way am I suggesting that we should put young people behind the wheel before all those hours of driver's ed and learning the rules of the road, nor would I say a pilot should learn how to fly for the first time while in the air (though it has been the plot of many a sit-com or made-for-TV movie).

So here's the tech connection: you teach first grade. Your students come to you with a wide range of tech proficiencies. Some can type beautiful paragraphs, insert pictures and change fonts. Others can't type a full sentence in a class period. Still others can not successfully log in and open a word processing app. Yet we encourage all students to meet minimum tech proficiencies by the end of the year. What's the best way to move all of these students ahead, ensuring that the ones who come into the year having already mastered those skills can continue to develop, while those farther behind in their tech experiences can gain the skills to be proficient?

• Is it to have the students practice the skills in isolation, drilling their way through different tech skills in a logical order, as we used to do with EZ Tech?

• Is it play, allowing the students to discover what they need to know through educational games, connected to the curriculum or not?

• Is it integration, putting students to work on projects as the need arises in your curriculum, and developing the skills they need to complete the tasks as they need them?

• Is it something else I haven't mentioned? A combination?

There is no easy answer, other than this: it involves getting them on the computers and devices.

• You may believe the students need to go through a drill-and-practice style training program to develop basic skills (using the mouse, turning on the computer, opening a program, saving a file, retrieving the file later, etc.).

• You may believe they will learn each of those concepts as the need arises, and assign projects designed to teach something from your curriculum while allowing them to figure out a few basic tech skills each time. This is the one that takes a lot of teacher foresight, planning and advance work.

• You may believe they need to play with a program. It's how they learned everything from social interactions and motor skills to video games, why wouldn't it work with Microsoft Word or the Start Menu?

• You may believe they first need to listen to you lecture about how to use the programs and applications, or how to follow the operations. Then again, this is the problem for many teachers, who won't allow their students to use any technology that they themselves haven't mastered, a major roadblock for education, in my opinion.

But if it's mid-November, and you haven't had your students to the computer lab yet, is it going to happen at all?