WEATHER EMERGENCIES
Our area has certainly experienced a challenging start to the new year
with record setting low temperatures, and snow and ice covering driveways and
sidewalks. I would like to recognize and
thank all of our maintenance and custodial staff who worked very hard in
difficult conditions to make sure the schools were ready for the return of
students last week.
SURPLUS SUPPLY AUCTION
The Vermilion Local School District is
participating in an online auction of surplus materials. The auction site
is sponsored by Ohio Schools Council, a consortium of Ohio school districts.
Complete information and instructions for accessing the auction site can
be found on the home page of our website.
Users can search for specific items by category or by location.
TECHNOLOGY
IN THE CLASSROOM
Recently I read the following short article in “DAILY INSIGHT: Looking for inspiration?” by Steve Young. This article offers some insight into the ability of children to discover creativity and solve problems together. The changing the role of teachers in the classroom is the basis of the Ohio Improvement Process Goals recently adopted by the Board of Education. Our schools are focusing on the concepts of blended learning, co-teaching and center-based instruction to help our students discover the joy of learning. Below is the text of the article.
“If you have not picked up
the November 2013 issue of Wired magazine
and read the cover story, “The Next Steve Jobs," then
you missed out on a truly inspiring story of a teacher struggling to get by
with little to no resources in the drug war-ravaged
Mexican border region. While the star of the article is an impoverished
12-year-old, Paloma Noyola Bueno, who responds to her teacher’s radical change
in teaching methodology and becomes one of the best students in all of Mexico,
the real story is about the teacher, Sergio Juárez Correa.
Correa struggled to
reach his students and meet state testing standards. (Sound familiar?) He knew
that with virtually infinite access to information online (which his students
did not have access to), the days of him being the bearer of knowledge for his
students were numbered, and it was not producing results for his students. As
Correa struggled to learn about how teachers are changing their instruction and
having tremendous success, he decided to make a change in his classroom. So he
told his students that they do have it extremely difficult and have none of the
modern advantages, such as laptops and high-speed Internet, that students
across the river in Brownsville, Texas have. But he knew his students had
potential to learn and to love doing it, which often seems to be lost on
students and teachers neck deep in state and national mandates.
The methodology
employed by Correa was at least partially modeled on the pioneering and
increasingly cited work of Sugata Mitra in India.
But rather than leaving students unattended,
Correa changed his role and now took a back seat in the classroom, as his
students became investigators, cooperatively working on problems and debating
answers in order to find solutions. He largely did this without the use of
technology and had amazing results.
Would technology
have hurt or enhanced what was done is his classroom? I think it certainly
could have assisted in enhancing a great teaching and learning
environment. The power was in asking the
students to think about problems and work cooperatively on solving them.”
We are very fortunate in Vermilion that our
students are able to have access to technology to assist them in their learning
process. These tools help to enhance the
student’s ability to explore new ideas, but should not be the only source of
their learning experience. We continue
to work to instill creativity, imagination and the desire to explore
independently. This is increasingly
challenging due to the availability of technology throughout our culture. As a school district we will continue to
strive to find a balance between using the technology to enhance learning, and
encouraging students to use their own initiative and imagination.
