I have followed a lot of discussions about the use of technology in classrooms lately. Personally I thought it was a no-brainer: if schools want to educate pupils in how to function in society, they need to reflect this society as well as possible, right? Well, skeptics have a point as well: don't we want schools to reflect values that don't necessarily have anything to do with technology? Additionally there's a practical side to this: how to pay for it all if education already eat huge portions of an ever shrinking budget... and how fast can we realistically educate teachers on how to use technology efficiently in the classroom?
As always the answer will lie somewhere in between these two opposite visions.
So, first: is there a need for using technology in the classroom? I would think so, if only because it enables great improvement in efficiency of teaching, and in personalizing the pace and content of the classes to each individual pupil:
So how might this integration of technology in the classroom look like? If you want an extreme example, look at this vision of HP:
In comparison, Intel's view of the future classroom contains pretty much the same elements of smart computer usage, gamification and collaboration, but somehow looks much more feasible on the short term than HP's:
Looks impressive, right? But obviously it will take a while before getting there, I'm afraid... In the meantime, we'll have to go step-by-step, and perhaps this example of a school in a remote community in Arizona, shows how small-scale introduction of technology can already lead to huge improvements (be aware that this is an advertisement by Samsung, but try to watch behind the ad here):
...to be continued, no doubt ;-)
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