Technology is changing our way of living and our thought and action
processes at large. The education sector will not be spared from these
transformations.
In the short-term, we can expect that the
teaching and learning process will change significantly due to the
technological innovations in daily education activities. Learning
platforms, software tools developed to support the different stages of
education, personal devices like PC tablets and e-book readers and
displaying devices like interactive web boards will have an impact on
how educators plan programmes and how students receive information.
The
introduction of these tools produces a very different learning model
from the one we are used to and may shift all teaching and learning
interaction to a digital or virtual level. It is a scenario that is
already feasible and is being tested in schools around the world. In
this environment teachers plan lessons and define learning materials
according to the functionalities offered by the platform. Lessons are
delivered through interactive boards and display devices in the
classroom. Students take notes on a copy of the learning materials
downloaded to their personal device from a platform that assures access
management, authentication and copyright protection of the textbooks and
materials. This delivery phase is enriched when the board is connected
to the Internet as users can access complementary information. Students
can also develop texts and exercises directly on their personal devices
and upload them to the platform where teachers can access them for proof
and verification.
At home, students can connect to the platform
to download learning material, study on their devices and collaborate
with other students using community tools like e-mail, chats and forums.
Everything
is developed at a digital level - there is no need for paper and in the
next few years we may expect devices to become thinner and faster, to
have higher definition images and videos, to support 3D features and
holographic capabilities that simulate tangible objects.
The
introduction of these innovations in educational processes, aided by
decreasing costs, will change the face of our schools and universities
and transform traditional learning models.
The revolution begun
by these technological advances, however, goes beyond making learning
activities virtual. The traditional way of acquiring knowledge, based
for the most part on textbooks provided by publishing houses, will be
affected.
In this new scenario, teachers and students can easily
select and organise relevant information from texts, as well as add
other content sourced and downloaded from the Internet to the basic
material. The educational path can be tailored to match individual
teacher and student needs.
Websites that offer searchable content
about a diverse array of subjects are accelerating this phenomenon.
Youtube and Wikipedia are the most popular, but companies, universities
and even private citizens use the web to publicise and organise their
content. Students can access this content by simply clicking a link or
touching a word on their tablet. In the future, systems that allow for
the visualisation of content and provide links between the various media
platforms will make these searches more facile.
These
possibilities illuminate a model where there are no boundaries between
the traditional disciplines, which have been culturally coded and where
we define our knowledge in real time within the limits of a physical
book.
Of course, the use of the web as a teaching tool involves a
risk concerning the source of the material and whether the content is
trustworthy. Educators will, in the future, have to transition from
simply profferring knowledge to students, to helping students produce
criteria for selecting reliable information on their own.