Schools Should Embrace Change

Reflections on Chapter 3 
 
Excerpts from the book are in bold text.
  
Flip Your Classroom by Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams 
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Flipping speaks the language of today's students. Today's students grew up with Internet access, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, and a host of other digital resources. They can typically be found doing their math homework while texting their friends, IMing on Facebook, and listening to music all at the same time." 

As a mother of a 7th-grade student, I realize that my daughter has interacted with technology practically since birth. Generation Z has information available at their fingertips 24/7.  It was a battle to keep her off of social media in order to focus on her homework! We finally decided if she continued to keep her grades up, she could have her devices with her while she did her homework. Perhaps as a result of this arrangement, she was admitted into advanced Language Arts and Math.
 
My students also improved their math scores when allowed to engage with the technology for math and math lessons, which I shared in my own action research. As a teacher and parent, I had the same concerns that the authors share in the following paragraph:

"One concern we have heard from adults is that we're increasing screen time in front of a computer, which aggravates the disconnect many adults feel with today's youth. To that we say that we are infiltrating the video/digital culture instead of fighting it. Isn't it about time we embraced digital learning and used it to help our students learn, instead of telling them they can't learn with today's tools? It seems preposterous to us that schools have not embraced this change." ​