Back To The Future... Or Something Like That

From what I saw and heard today it looked like a lot of minds in class were boggled and or blown. The idea that kindergarteners are learning in school on iPads is in my opinion a bit unexpected. Most of us in class remember when there weren’t any computers in the classrooms and when we still used projectors. It seems like technology is moving so fast that we can’t keep up with all of it. We would need to be learning more about technology that is being developed and won’t even be on the market for four more years in order to be ready for teaching in two years. The teaching styles that were used to teach us is ten years obsolete; the teaching styles used to teach us right now will be in only a very few years also obsolete. The fact of how students are being taught right now is on equal or superior footing than how we’re being taught.

This new generation that came after us, the ones we will be teaching, is so fast paced and its refusal to stand still for only a moment creates a real challenge for us. What do we do now? How will we compete? We will have to be on our toes and always be ahead of the curve or else we will fall behind and will be replaced by someone that can keep up.

This can be disheartening but we don’t have the luxury to back down and quit, it’s too late for that; we’ve made our choice now it’s time to step up and honor it.

It is sometimes scary to see things pass right by you in the blink of an eye. After hearing what has been going on in the academic world in the now and a few years down the road it is scary what lies not too far from now. Schools are now having students use iPads to do tests, quizzes, and homework on. This is so vastly different from our own upbringing and studies. I have always been an old school kind of guy with holding an actual book in my hand, doing my tests and homework on paper, etc. This is somewhat frightening to hear that all of that has been thrown out the window.

They are now having students doing their homework, tests, quizzes, and classwork on iPads. From there it will become the normal thing for schools and will be all over the nation from the Pacific to the Atlantic. Next it will move to where some schools will incorporate a virtual class where students don’t even need to be in a school building. A few years after that it will also become the normal thing for schools. From there school as we know it, a building with teachers and principals and students all under one roof, will be obsolete. The new class room will be comprised of one teacher and thirty students all broadcast from their computers from every corner of the country. There will be no need for even a school building and so they will cease to be used for educational purposes. They will be left to rot or they will be repurposed into offices, stores, etc.

The entirety of the hierarchy of the school system will most likely change drastically. Many of the offices and positions in schools today will not be necessary for “schools.” Instead what will happen is that teachers will instead of being interviewed by the principal or someone else in the school; they will be interviewed by their future student’s parents via video cam. Teachers will of course be required to renew their teaching licenses and will be subject to monthly check ups by some authority. This is scary to some future teachers knowing that they will have to persuade parents to in a sense “hire them” to teach their kids. This provides a less stable source of income that is why it would frighten many upcoming teachers. Being a teacher would be more like being a business man. Having to convince a possible buyer, i.e. the parents, to pay for a service you offer, that is teaching their children.

We’ve all had that one awful teacher who nobody liked and who couldn’t wait till Friday to get their check and they could get away from “us.” Remember that teacher? I do, but no matter what you or your parents said or did could change that or get rid of that teacher. With this business-like run school that could change. It worries future teachers for the above reasons and for the reasons I don’t have time to mention but this puts their student’s education in the parents hands. Parents would have more say on their child’s education; that also includes these future teacher’s own children. This could also give the power of the parent and the teacher to negotiate payment. This could help weed out those teachers that only go into teaching for a steady paycheck. It would require teachers to stay on their game and master their content of teaching and present it masterfully to the students. To the teacher that goes into this job with a passion in their heart to help their students learn and that want to ignite that spark in the minds of their students; this change just might help not only their careers but future generations.