I think the potential for growth and change in elementary classrooms is tremendous. When I think about the exponential technological growth in the last five years, I can only expect technology to move into education even more rapidly during the next five years. I think classroom learning is going to move farther and farther away from paper and pencil, and lessons will be far more computer and Internet based. I also think there is going to be a huge shift from individual rote memorization learning, to group project based discovery learning.
When I think of classroom technology in the next five years, I hope that SMARTBoards will have become commonplace and teachers, both old and new, will have been taught instructional methods in using this technology. I would also love to see student's having their own computers to be used for note-taking, assignments, networking, etc. I think the world, and therefore jobs, are moving towards becoming an online community so as educators this is what we need to be training children in. The more technology based assignments and learning we can provide, the more prepared the children will be for their futures.
This will affect my role as a teacher in that I think my teaching will go from explicit group lecture style, to an explicit small group, individual discovery teaching. I think there will also be a lot more communication that takes place with my students and their parents online versus in the classroom. For example, I could easily see parent teacher conferences taking place via webcam group chat where I email video's of students work that parents can view ahead of time and be prepared to discuss online.
1 comment:
You brought up an excellent point of discussion with the mentioning of having parent-teacher conferences via webcam. I would have never thought of this, but it makes complete sense. This is something that we most definitly will have to be prepared for!
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