Incorporating Technology into Schools

Schools currently treat all students the same. But not every student is similar. Indeed, in this age, almost every industry — engineering, business, law, and medicine — has completely woven technology into their methodology. But education hasn’t. Sure, most schools have computers, and now more and more are moving towards the ideal of a laptop/iPad for every pupil. Still, for most schools, hand-written assignments are the norm.

Moreover, schools aren’t teaching topics like Computer Science even though fundamentally great resources such as CodeAcademy exist online. Plus, online education and a flipped classroom (popularized by KhanAcademy founder and MIT/Harvard grad Salman Khan) where the lecture occurs at home and the problem-solving/homework occurs at school allows for individualized schooling (kind of like how the classes at AwesomeMath worked). Indeed, when the lecture occurs at school, there is not much a teacher can do to help individual students understand topics (unless there are very small class sizes). But online, students can pause, stop, rewind, and forward as they see fit. Then in the classroom, there is more time to ask questions and understand concepts individually (rather than as a large group as in the status-quo).

Rajat Bhageria is the Founder of CafeMocha.org—a social networking website that allows young students to publish and share their creative writing around the world. Additionally, he is the author of “What High School Didn’t Teach Me: A Recent Graduate’s Perspective on How High School is Killing Creativity.”