Technology and Education Portfolio Activity

Where do you see technology & education developing next? How do you think the symbiotic relationship between the two will evolve over the next 10 years?

I have recently read a book by Andy Clark entitled: Natural- Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies and the Future of Human Intelligence
I found this book very interesting because it somewhat describes the thoughts I have regarding the evolution of technology and education over the next 10 years. I have witnessed a tremendous shift towards the use of technology, especially in classrooms.
As an elementary school teacher for the past 12 years now, I have been able to note the evolution taking place within classrooms today. I have been fortunate to witness the progress we have made as educators to incorporate computers in the classroom setting as a vital tool in the overall learning process. In the days before computers, the internet and Google, schools would spend much of a student's time and energy memorizing the many facts he/she would need to know. A typical week's social studies lesson in the past might have included four days of memorizing the relevant geographic place names, and one day understanding how they affect the lives of people. Today we might spend a day teaching students how to find the facts online, another day posing important questions, and three days developing higher-level understanding of how the facts fit together and what they mean for our future. The Internet has opened the doors for our youth in unimaginable ways. Communicating to students across the globe nowadays can be as simple as a click of a button. Truly, educating our youth has changed to a dramatic extent, and we need to continue finding ways to implement quality lessons that adapt to these new and changing learning styles. As educators, we must continually ask ourselves, how do we make technology support, enhance and advance the learning experience of our students? My passion stems from such thoughts, and my goal as a teacher has always been to accommodate students in such a way as to make sure they feel empowered by these new advancements in technology, and provide ample opportunities for students to assimilate new information from all technological modalities available to them.
With the many technological advances seen in recent years, it is evident that today’s students are equipped with a vast array of technical skills not demonstrated in the youth of past generations. Today’s typical college students, sometimes called the Net Generation , will soon alter the way professors teach, the way classrooms are constructed and the way colleges deliver degrees. Today's students are armed with a wealth of information and communication technologies, connected to each other and to the outside world. They also typically spend their days communicating, collaborating, and producing with these new technological tools. The important question, however, is what happens when these students go to school? Will they find an environment that takes full advantage of these tools for learning? Indeed, computers, and the Internet have all established an important place in the lives of children, adolescents and adults today. Therefore, employing information and communication technology within the classroom setting in a manner that correlates smoothly with today’s existing technological trends is a necessity and a powerful vision for the progress of technology in schools. As teachers, I believe that we not only need to develop lifelong learning skills in our students, we need to model lifelong learning and we need to commit to learning throughout life ourselves. The Internet has been a major force in creating the need for lifelong learning skills. Learning when to use the Internet and using it to its fullest potential provides exciting opportunities to examine how we teach, what we teach, how students learn, and how this is all connected to the real world. In the same manner, Natural -Born Cyborgs is a book that reveals how our technology is inseparable from who we are and how we think. It draws parallels to the future generations in realizing how we have integrated our lives to technology.
Despite its very technical approach, it explains how closely humans have adapted and incorporated technology into their lives. The author, Andy Clark, points out that we should “appreciate what we already are: creatures whose minds are special precisely because they are tailor-made to mix and match neural, bodily and technological ploys.” In reality, he believes, we are “natural-born cyborgs” and we as humans assimilate well into the technical world.