Anticipating, Embracing and Adapting Change: Using Technology in the Classroom
Some men see things as they are and say “Why?” I dream of things that never were and say “Why not!!!” Robert F. Kennedy
Sooner or later we will all have to accept the fact that we need to keep up with the fast technological progress. The question that we need to ask ourselves now is: “What does it really take to ‘act accordingly’ within our area of interest which is education?
My professor, Dr. Gary Bitter, who is a true innovator, gave the opening speech at a European conference last June where he addressed an auditorium of university faculty, as well as undergraduate and graduate students, whose primary affiliation was educational technology. In part of his speech, he employed a YouTube video entitled “Did you know?”. I recommend that you spare six minutes of your time to watch this video if you have not already seen it in another occasion.
This video, which by all means is a mind opener, was originally created as a PowerPoint presentation for a faculty meeting at Arapahoe High School in Centennial, Colorado, and later spread like a virus on the World Wide Web, more than 5 million online viewers had already watched it. Today, old and new versions of this video presentation have been seen by at least 11 million people in a countless number of occasions including conferences, workshops, training institutes, and other venues.
The Arapahoe High School’s faculty used this PowerPoint to convince the administration to invest more money on educational technology. However, the very purpose of this video goes far beyond that; it is meant to help raise awareness of the phenomenon of “change” in the ever evolving global world of today. Here are a few remarkable quotes from the video:
The amount of technical information is doubling every two years. So, for students starting at a four year technical or college degree, this means that half of what they learn in their first year of study will be outdated by their third year of study.
According to the data provided by the US Department of Labor, the top 10 jobs that will be in demand in future did not exist less than a decade ago, which means that we are preparing our students for jobs that don’t yet exist.
In 2013, a supercomputer was built that exceeded the computation capability of the human brain; in 2023, a $1000 computer exceeded the capabilities of the human brain; by 2049, a $1000 computer will exceed the capabilities of the human race.
What do these all mean? It means that “We are living in exponential times when ‘shift happens’; therefore we should anticipate, embrace and adapt change quickly and modify our courses of action accordingly.”
Sooner or later we will all have to accept the fact that we need to keep up with the fast technological progress. The question that we need to ask ourselves now is: “What does it really take to ‘act accordingly’ within our area of interest which is education? Is it sufficient to give everyone a state-of-the-art laptop computer that can access the Internet through the fast wireless network we just launched?” Unfortunately, no! The laptop computers will be of absolutely no use as long as they stay in students’ backpacks; they need to be made useful through meticulously designed and carefully planned activities. But how and who should design such activities? The answer is simple: We, the educators, should undertake such responsibilities; but do we really have the time?
Fortunately, we don’t really need to invent or reinvent the wheel; wise people who have foreseen the near future already started building excellent educational activities that utilize the audiovisual aspects of technology and made them available to the world through the Internet. So all it takes for us is to listen to what they have to say and find out what they have to offer in order to use such activities in our classes; thus it will be possible for us to save considerable amount of time and effort that we can devote to improving and perfecting our teaching practice.