What the Technology Future May Hold for LPISD
Looking at the classroom of the near future will, in many respects, be very much like looking at the classroom of today with, hopefully, one glaring exception. The classroom of the near future should be much more technology rich than the classroom of today. For the purposes of this assignment I am choosing look at the district in which I work and to make some prediction and assumptions about where we will be in the near term future of five to ten years.
Our students today are already very sophisticated in the ways that they use technology to communicate with their peers and teachers need to incorporate this sophistication into the educational domain by encouraging students to work collaboratively. One important factor that teachers must remember is that collaborative inquiry is not having students fill out worksheets together. Rather collaborative inquiry is students using collective intelligence to work through a variety of situations and problems to get a common solution (Gerber 2009). Students would be as likely to communicate with students from another country as they would be to communicate with their own classmates to collaborate on a particular problem or issue.
With the sophistication of today’s personal electronics, many students are able to utilize their cell phone not only as a personal communications device but also as a means to stay connected to the world at large. The manufacturers of mobile devises are keenly aware of the needs of the educational community and they are paying attention to the needs of schools as new models are geared for educational markets with increased screen size and durable designs (Rice 2009). Unfortunately, the use of mobiles continues to be restricted by polocies tht prevent many schools from taking advantage of them as tools for teaching and learning. (Johnson, L. et al 2010) School districts like mine have begun to look at the second generation netbooks as a possible solution to providing every student with the computing power that they will need in the future.
This will become an even more critical consideration as we move forward with providing more cost effective application and network usage with the development of “Cloud Computing”. The Texas Legislature has already enacted and the governor has signed HB 4294 which allows for the purchase of electronic textbooks in the state. The benefit of electronic texts is that textbooks are notoriously difficult to update, and purchasing cycles can take years to complete (Rice 2009). By providing student with a device that can readily access all of their textbooks any time any where schools can be much more effective in meeting the needs of their students. Beyond the classroom walls, students can take advantage of online resources, explore ideas and practice skills using games and other programs they may have on systems at home, and interact with their extensive and constantly available social networks. (2010)
Let’s imagine a science student equipped with a district provided netbook collaborating on a lab assignment where the tools that they are using will communicate directly with programs on the netbook. If a student is using a triple beam balance to determine the mass of a particular sample, the data will be recorded in the data sheet set up by the student on their netbook. In a physics class the student could be using the accelerometer on their iPhone to measure the vibrations of a simulated earthquake in an applet called iSeismo and then sending the data to their laptop to be incorporated into graph or spreadsheet.
As the sophistication of electronic devices continues to develop it is entirely possible that there will be a greater push for the development of entire virtual classroom and schools. From a cost standpoint virtualization makes a lot of sense for many school districts. For schools, the costs of using virtual instruction can be considerably less expensive: an average of $4300 per full time student versus $9100 (Devaney, 2009). So as student fine tune their personal web they can focus even more clearly on their personal education both within the traditional classroom and within the virtual classroom of the near future.
Devaney, L. Study: Virtual schools can help cut costs. eSchool News (Online) Retrieved 8 Feb. 2010.
Gerber, Hannah R. Lessons in Literacy 2.0 TechEdge Winter 2010 14-18
Rice, John The Future of Ed Tech 2009 TechEdge Summer 2009 20-21
Johnson, L., Smith, R., Levine, A., Haywood, K., 2010. 2010 Horizion Report; K-12 Edition. Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium
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