Contemporary classroom: Embrace disruption or be left behind
Classrooms today are not what they used to be! Flexible seating, collaborative groupings, personal computing devices and instant access to the internet exists at all grade levels. Each day one can walk into a second-grade classroom to find students coding with robots, utilising speech to text services on their iPad and exploring their interests effortlessly. Modern-day teachers, I believe, must not only embrace the use of technology but should have a good idea of the how and why, while the students decide the what and how much. Students have their hands on equipment that allows for innovation and aids in teaching educational content. Students have game-based learning in kindergarten — they learn to be coders that makes it possible to later create software, apps, and websites. In fact, some schools are teaching coding as a foreign language.
Young students begin coding with robots and child-friendly programmes like Scratch introduce coding ideas and problem-solving behaviours. As students practice, they learn to code using more complex ideas and platforms. Schools today also house new technology such as 3D printers which allow teachers to better teach geometric shapes, volume, mass, fractions, physical maps, cross sections of structures or internal organs and create new creatures to explain animal adaptations. Virtual, Augmented and Mixed reality systems create a digital learning space for students to travel to landmarks and immerse themselves in history. Virtual field trips expand the classroom beyond the state or even the country in which the class resides. With creator apps like Google Tilt Brush, Students can now create their environment rather than just experiencing pre-made ones. Even drones can help students view hard to see places, teach ratios and proportions, and create opportunities for creative writing prompts. Also adding an essential skill set which will be in huge demand by the time they graduate. When students stop considering their teacher as superior knowledge and more of a facilitator of their learning, they feel safer to take risks, play with technology and even request to change the assignment to better suit their needs.
Allowing students to create VR experiences (for example) on what they learned, and thinking of new applications of technology will allow for a real change in education. If this is normal for these students, imagine their future workplaces? Imagine the technologies they will consider normal if this is what they grew up doing? Artificial Intelligence, Deep Learning, Humanoid Robotics, Big Data, Blockchain, etc. are exponential concepts which need to be integrated with the everyday learning of a modern student. As educators, it is imperative to equip ourselves with these shifts in traditional practices. The flipped classroom, student-led
When students start considering their teacher as a facilitator, not as a superior, they feel safer to take risks and play with technology.” lessons, personalised assessment and maker approach to learning, are just a few of the many tools that can have a massive impact in shaping this Education Revolution which is taking place now.
As educators, we must do what we can to prepare and equip these modern learners for the world that awaits them.