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"If you quit taking math in high school, you can hear the doors shut." "Five out of every four Americans have trouble with fractions." "There are three groups of people in this world. Those that can count and those that can't." "Teaching has always been hard work, but it seems that each new generation of educators faces a new set of challenges. The recent technological revolution has changed the modern classroom; however, effective use of computers and the Internet to advance learning still poses serious obstacles. On one hand, the world's museums, archives, and art galleries have become accessible and research is easier than ever before. Spell check, editing tools, and note-taking software have improved opportunities for learning but students still tend to surf and prefer multimedia glitz to substance. The so-called Information Revolution has failed abysmally to distinguish quality from quantity so even the best students are unsure about when is important and what is accurate. Our "iPOD Generation" is digitally connected, but they have a dangerously shortened attention span; their quest for immediate gratification has made it increasing difficult for them to concentrate or to think. Few modern students can imagine sitting alone reading a classic or spend a quiet after noon in a library. Mover, plagiarism, however inadvertent has become rampant in our school and cut and paste research means that academic integrity is a constant issue." Phil Bigler, 1998 National Teacher of the Year, quoted from the newsletter, Education Matters, a publication of the American Association of Educators., December 2005 |