Discussing Education in a Digital Age
When considering the classroom environment, more often we consider how to incorporate all the new technology and digital resources that are being developed. This article by Eric P.M. Vermeulen posits its time for a full out change rather than a small update. Those little updates just haven’t been keeping up with all the change the ‘digital world’ is constantly going through now.
That said of course, how can we really make such a change when things are always changing? It seems like a daunting task, just considering the breadth of change and how quickly it occurs. He himself states that it will be quite the challenge for educators, but moves on to ask the question ‘What should we be teaching our students today?’
Rather than continuing the trend of backward-looking educational methods and move towards “forward looking and skill based” methods. Rather than transmitting content and updated information that is slowly but surely becoming irrelevant. Not to say that it’s pointless to learn- but rather that it doesn’t have the same value for helping the students move forward in the current world as it once might have.
The biggest example he gives is technology, incorporating basic skill usage in more subjects. That said, being in a class that encourages different aspects of technology in order to be prepared as a more effective teacher, this is precisely the reason I chose to consider this article. Being the class is working to make students be as helpful to their own future students as possible, the considerations brought up in the article make for a nice building block, so to speak.
What I mean is because it considers the why, the what, and in some ways the how it made for a great read. The teaching of it aside, I especially enjoyed that he brought up student expectations. Probably because, while preparing to get closer and closer to student teaching it can be easy to get caught up in the lessons, the methods, the practical aspects we’ve been taught so much of. It’s great to be reminded to consider the future students and how it will be beneficial to revolve the lessons around what will interest them. How to break away from that normal system that they’ve not only gotten used to but have become so bored of.
If I were to place this in one of the Grand Challenges, I’d place it under (boy, I’m sure using this one a lot) Understanding the American Experience. The reason I’d place it under this category is because it falls under that line of being an ever-changing part of American life, and of the topic of updating technology as far as education.
It relates to my content area in that being an aspiring English teacher I will need to consider technology and how much of it I plan to incorporate within my classroom. Lastly, I think I’d want to use a method that is like Finding Poems. The reason being it gives the students the responsibility to look around to find poems that resonate with them, gives a chance for them to bring in some of their own creativity. Notably, it doesn’t fully incorporate technology as deeply as I would like to go, but with some added pieces to the method, it might eventually be molded into a more ‘forward thinking’ strategy.
