How schools can cope with the new technologies

The way our educational system assesses students is a topic that is under much debate, especially since technology is bringing in new ways or viewpoints on what assessing means.  One question raised is whether students should take exams when they feel ready based on their own interests.  Education is becoming a more individualized curriculum, in which, students can study their interest and become more specialized in their future career.  The dilemma with this is what about the student’s who don’t know what they want to be and can’t study a broad range of different topics/subjects.  Another dilemma is when the chapter mentioned how classes could be based on interests and not age.  Although, there are some pros to this, the one aspect that I was unsure about was having the older students teach or be the lead role in the projects.  This would be great for developing leadership skills and having a mentor, but what if that person isn’t a good role model and can’t help the students learn?  Will there education and learning be in jeopardy?  I do like how our educational system is moving towards problem-based approaches and completing projects that relate to real life and integrating in the basic subjects.  I think that if students can see a connection and now why the material they are learning is important, they will be more motivated to learn.  Another question I raised was that with these individualized, interest based classes will there become a greater need for more teachers who can educate on all these specific areas?  This could be a problem for many schools that already have financial troubles to pay for more teachers.

As a future teacher, the biggest adjustment I will have to make is how I teach my lessons.  With the students becoming more involved with technology, I will have to think of more creative ways to engage the students.  This is especially true for in the educational system because technology is offering customization, interaction, and learner control.  By not meeting the needs of each student, they will find different ways of learning the material or simply become less motivated to learn.  Since the educational system is still using the standard classroom and not creating classes based on interest, instead of age, we need to take into consideration the changes that are occurring.  As I said before about my support for using problem-based learning, I think students will have to learn this way because otherwise they will become bored since they can just look the information/facts up.  They need to see the connections and learn skills for in the future.  As for assessment, I want to move away from grading to prevent kids to just study for the test and redirect think time and effort studying to actually learning.  I also think that if I involve more hands on activities that are problem-based, it will be hard to grade the students when it is more of an observational assessment.