Remember sitting in a classroom with your classmates, all facing the chalkboard, listening to the teacher drone on and on about the chapter you had just read? That classroom is a distant memory.
Today’s classroom bares little resemblance to even the ones of a decade ago. Now you see student sitting in peer learning groups, researching and taking notes on laptops or tablets. Interactive projectors have replaced the drab and dusty chalkboard. Read along lessons have are all but lost, in it’s place bright and animated websites, which bring history, science, and math alive. But is this transition a good thing?
Some would say abandoning book learning does a children a disservice. That students will have no appreciation of knowledge gained from research. That information is too easily attained and necessary skills are not being taught.
But it’s a simple fact that the children of today’s world do not know a world apart from technology in the classroom. Their lives are emerged within all the knowledge of the information aged, right at their finger tips.
But it’s not just to the benefit of the student. Technology brings with it huge advantages to parents and teachers. For example, with the right programs, children’s time on task and progress can all be monitored, in real time with enormous amounts of statistical data that can be analyzed in such a way as to help individualize their educational path.This immediate feedback also serves to bridge a connection to the student and adult, so that they both immediately see the fruits of their knowledge and hard work.
With many of the tools available to students today, they can communicate their knowledge in a multitude of ways. No more do children have to rely on one method to reveal how much they have learned. With computers and tablets, students can put together slideshows, movies, or even create websites. Today’s student can even miss school and be all caught up by the time he arrives back at school.
Finally, technology has given parents and students alike a more efficient way to communicate. Homework can be posted online, conferences can be held via email or visual calls, and students can even contact teachers after hours if their homework for the evening is bogging them down.
All in all, technology has only diversified the educational world. Bringing out new strengths that were previously gone unnoticed. It’s given children direction and allowed them to learn and respond to what they have learned more efficiently.
