What are 3 Major Challenges as we look to the future?
As we jump head first into this ever expanding technology field we will be faced with many challenges. As a teacher, it is a struggle to be excited about something many people fear. Because computers and technology are entirely new and foreign to most educators, I feel that it is a must to educate the educators before our schools move forward or we will start to grow without our own roots. This is something easier said than done; many educators feel that if their practice isn’t broken, they shouldn’t have to fix it. But there is a problem with this thought. There is one thing that is constant, and that is change.
If the world is constantly evolving, I feel we need to change what we do, inviting new ideas into our classroom to keep up with the world. Our job is not about us, it is about our students. We need to prepare these children for their own future; to send them out into a world they are not familiar with is contrary to what we are trying to accomplish. If we are not accepting of the new technologies that are coming our way, we are denying these privileges and opportunities for our children.
Techno-Promoter Dreams, Student Realities is an article written by Craig Peck, Larry Cuban, and Heather Kirkpatrick. According to this article, a major challenge we are facing today is trying to infuse technology into student learning in four ways. This infusing is successful if:
- All students become technology literate by learning basic technology skills
- Schools are able to offer improved education resources in order to increase student academic achievement
- We change the nature of education by using high-end technologies in the classroom
- We provide students with high-tech skills in order to satisfy student and school needs. (Techno-Promoter, p.3)
This really is a challenge! According to Techno-Promoter, “Technology has simply become a small and largely peripheral element of a familiar, long running school routine.” (Techno-Promoter, p.9) Schools are not utilizing technology to the extent they need to in order to prepare our students for the future.
Many teachers may fear technology because of the uncertainty. People refer to the internet as flood gates that are just waiting to be opened. In a sense, this is true. I wonder if teachers feel that technology might threaten their future as the “knowledgeable one” their classroom. According to Technology in Schools, written by Seymour Papert, a major challenge that we face is how technology is completely changing our perception of learning. “Technology is obsoleting the model of a learning environment in which teachers-who-know hand out knowledge to students-who-know-not.” (Technology, p.5) At first I was puzzled at how this was even possible, but when thinking about my own experience it made a lot of sense. When I went to UW-Green Bay, the atmosphere was different. Every professor gave ME the opportunity to get to most out of his/her class. It was not up to the professor to spoon-feed me information; it was up to me to learn as little or as much as I could. Even though I was aware they knew far more than I would ever know about this class, they all considered themselves a guide, someone to help push you in the right direction, more than just a delivery service for information. This concept is completely different than what our educational system follows, but it doesn’t mean that it is bad. Because I took control of my own learning experience, I learned more in those 4 years than ever before. I feel this “teacher as a guide” concept would work fairly well as long everyone invites technology in and cooperates INSTEAD of hunkering down in the corner of their classroom and wait for it to knock the door down (which is what most of us are doing).
The scariest part about this technology boom is how far it is spreading and how fast it is growing. After viewing Shift Happens, created by Karl Fisch, the slide video proposed an interesting thought. This challenge is an idea impossible to picture in your mind, because it is not here yet. “We are currently preparing students for jobs and technologies that don’t yet exist…. In order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet.” (Shift Happens, 6 min. 45 sec.) That quote alone made me think that my job is much more important than I ever imagined. It proves that it is not entirely what you teach; it is also what you instill and how you prepare your students for their future. Teaching is not what it used to be. We need to adapt to and accept the future in order to continue doing our jobs well. Every child needs to walk away with tools that can be used beyond the curriculum and into everyday life. Isn’t that what technology screams?