Reply to Gifted programs, lack of, in DC

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]First round PARCC tests have highlighted just how wide the gap is.  After another round or two, most of the administration issues will have been sorted out and schools will lose their "we just got the computers and most of our kids can't type" cover. Then what? Facing facts?

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Unrelated to the gap, and unrelated to the topic of gifted education in DC, keyboarding skills will continue to be a challenge until kids have those skills. You can't teach most 8-year-olds to type well enough to type an essay or a sentence on a timed computer test in a few hours per year. Even the brightest little kids will still chicken peck a key board. Now, if they could text their answers just using thumbs, that would be whole other matter.  :wink: [/quote]

Do you really believe that? Have you see how computer savvy kids are? Computers are available at school & library for those who don't have home access.

http://www.learninggamesforkids.com/keyboarding_games.html[/quote]

Game playing yes, typing no below 8th grade. I teach in a high school and you'd be surprised how poor some students typing is, I also have a high number of students who do not have access to a computer at home and have never set foot in a library. [/quote]

If you consider Minecraft a game (I do), that is how my 8 year old daughter learned how to type, thanks to mimicking her older brother who would exchange messages online with the other players in the virtual world.  Enough to get a 4 on the ELA for the PARCC in 3rd grade last year.[/quote]

And on the opposite end of the spectrum, my little Minecraft coding guru (who hasn't taken PARCC yet), took the ANET this year and got 100% correct on the sections requiring clicking, and zero -- literally zero -- on the sections requiring click-drag and drop. He was angry and frustrated and could not get the image on the screen to do what he wanted it to do. So now we are working on his mouse skills. I'm sure he'll have mouse skills by high school, but it really isn't the focal point of my expectations for third grade.

It doesn't bother me that much, as I care most about what my child is learning (as opposed to standardized scores), but it does show that what is being tested for some kids is more about computer skills and not the substance -- your child has the computer skills so she can show her substantive knowledge; mine has fine motor issues (apparently, but not enough for OT or an IEP or accommodations) and so cannot show his knowledge on large portions of the test.  BTW, I'm not anti-testing at all; just realistic about the flaws in the system and what the tests do and do not show.

I'm not sure what they will do about this, but I sure hope the answer isn't that they will spend more time on mouse skills n typing than advanced reading and writing. They already cut out so much of a traditional education that there just isn't room to cut out more to make room for mouse skills that presently are only important for a specific function of a specific test. I'd rather they spend more time on printing and cursive, and leave typing for middle school. Bubble tests are fine for ES; why complicate matters?
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