Tablets Or Learning Schools? Yours Is Old School, And It Has To Go!

 

Shared on Facebook in the above images, Pinas Forward PH makes a plea to celebrate “National Indigenous Peoples Day” on 21 June – late, but I just saw it today – and urge Filipinos to support and help these people especially in these pandemic times.I am a teacher; I am also digital, if self-taught; and that is why I took notice. One child is making an issue of a PC tablet for herself while the other child is dreaming only of a school for her tribe! Both are legitimate dreams.

In these times, I am not interested in a 4-walled room you can call a classroom, only a free WiFi space where at least 20 different youths can study using digital tools like laptops, tablets, and/or notebooks. Granting that they have a proper curriculum where the wonders of the digital world are maximized, at least optimized.

Note: “Where the wonders of the digital world are maximized, at least optimized.” Graduated as a high school teacher from the University of the Philippines Los Baños in 1965, I taught myself my digital skills in dealing with texts and images, especially in blogging. I was already 45 years old when I began to learn digital – word processing, WordStar 1– age is not a reason for not being able to learn.

Today, I’m interested in teaching the Theory of Multiple Intelligences, MI, by Harvard professor Howard Gardner; there are 9 MI in his list:

Bodily kinesthetic intelligence – “body smart”

Existential intelligence – “world smart”

Interpersonal intelligence – “people smart”

Intrapersonal intelligence – “self-smart”

Linguistic intelligence – “word smart”

Logical-mathematical intelligence – “number/reasoning smart”

Musical intelligence – “music smart”

Naturalist intelligence – “nature smart”

Spatial intelligence – “picture smart”

In the lower grades and in high school, Lumad learners or not, we should now change the way we teach so that we teach the learner how to be intelligent in his/her innate smartness.

If you are body smart, there is an athlete waiting to be trained and developed; you may also be a dancer, mechanic, surgeon.

If you are world smart, you will thrive in philosophy.

If you are people smart, you will make a good leader. Or a sales person.

If you are self-smart, you may become a counselor or psychologist.

If you are word-smart, you may make a good teacher, speaker, author.

If you are number smart, you may make a good planner, accountant, statistician, computer analyst.

If you are music smart, you may make a good composer or singer.

If you are nature smart, you may prove to be a botanist, biologist, or a good philosopher that the world needs.

If you are picture smart, you may become an excellent pilot, surgeon, graphic artist. Interior decorator.

In these digital times, it is no longer degrees that employers demand from applicants but prowess with computer applications, such as for writing, editing, layouting, and desktop publishing. At 80, I am a digital WFH.

So, how do you teach multiple intelligences? Go digital! Classrooms confine; the digital world liberates!@517