Musings on Education in the Future.....

There's a lot of new ways for students and teachers to interact with each other using technology that go beyond just having a computer and a program in the classroom.  It makes me excited for the future.

Now, I think that we will always have younger students coming to a building, if for no other reason that you can't leave young children at home alone and even if a parent is tele-commuting, they won't be able to supervise their child while working.  It's possible that high school and college students will be able to "attend" class while at home, but for now, at least, we'll need school buildings for education.

Of course, one of the problems with schools is that they are under-funded in many ways to take advantage of new technology--and technology changes so fast right now that by the time a school or school district buys a new technology, such as a Promethean Board (prices range from $709 - $6,000 per board/system),  or the ELMO (prices range from $500 -$1,500, roughly), something better might available. Even netbooks cost about $400. I am not knocking these technology solutions, just pointing out that using technology costs a lot of money, money that schools/school districts don't always have.  Heck, an overhead projector costs about $300, so no matter what, we're talking big bucks overall (just count how many teachers there are in your school.  Almost every single one of them use some sort of projector at least once a school year, and if they are a "regular" classroom teacher, they use them all the time.  When I taught Spanish, I used about 4 overhead transparencies per class every day).


Of course, if you buy into the technology, you need web resources for students to use, which can be a little tricky.  We want safe and secure places for our children to learn, both in the physical environment, and in the virtual environment.  Luckily, there are a lot of sites schools can use for education.  Promethean Planet has their own programs and websites for use with their Promethean Boards.  Teachers are using wikis (yep,  just like Wikipedia--but not necessarily Wikipedia) for students to virtually discuss topics.  There is also Edmodo, which looks similar to Facebook, for topic discussion.


To really take advantage of new technology, you need to have teachers who are excited by the new possibilities and direction in education.  Not that there isn't value in the "old" ways, but when I look at what is available, I get excited about teaching.

Florida State University (yeah, you knew I'd work them in here somehow, didn't ya?) has a new Certificate Program:  BOLT (Blended Online Learning and Teaching), that I hope to be able to earn.  (For more information, go to http://www.coe.fsu.edu/BOLT)


My philosophy about teaching is that the most engaged learners are the most aMused learners.....