An Edmonton teacher is looking to the past to create his cutting edge technique.
Every day, Thomas Fraser, a Grade 6 teacher at Crestwood School, allows students to take half an hour out of each school day to play and imagine.
The catch is students play, use or design something using common items such as a pile of rocks, a bunch of elastics, or countless other objects the class has collected.
Fraser calls the half hour “Bored Time” and he uses it as a way to regenerate the class during the times his students have become either bored or listless.
Because of the pervasive nature of technology, Fraser said this generation have become so dependent on their devices that they often don’t know what to do without them. Bored Time is Fraser’s attempt to spark their creativity, teach them problem solving skills and otherwise engage his students.
While I commend him for his efforts and don’t question that many of today’s children have become intertwined with technology, I must admit I don’t understand how we got to this point.
What Fraser calls Bored Time in my day, not all that long ago, we just called it recess, lunch or after school.
When I was in elementary school I remember that my friends and I would make spaceships or cars out of our empty milk containers during our breaks. The 25 cent rubber ball out of the vending machine at the grocery store would provide weeks of lunchtime entertainment. Or one day you would go to school and for no real reason, 90 per cent of the students would be playing marbles.
Now thanks to the influx of Smartphones, iPads and the like, many young people have forgotten how to get along without them.
Yes, I understand how addictive the Internet and video games can be. Throughout my life I have spent too many hours in front of computer screens, from the Apple II and Commodore 64 to my current computer playing everything from Oregon Trail and Pac Man to Freecell, the list goes on and on.
What I don’t understand is why children and teenagers must have cell phones. My wife tells me that the world today is a different place than it was when I was growing up and children need to have a cell phone for safety. Assuming that is true, why must young people have smartphones or other devices capable of connecting to the Internet? What is wrong with just an ordinary cell phone, one that can’t be connected to the Internet? If a student can’t connect to the Internet, having a phone will be less of a distraction and perhaps then there wouldn’t be a need for Bored Time.
