Education is Getting Disrupted
At the end of March, I received about 36 research papers in my New Technology course at Reykjavík University. Given that the average paper is about 6.000 words, I read over 200.000 words in the early April. The topics range is wide, some examples are piracy and the death of physical medium, e-sports, smart technology, e-voting, bionics, EVs, NFC, and UAV, Pro-ams and many more.
In a paper titled Technology Education, Hanna María Hermannsdóttir looks at how technology is changing eduction. We have seen how many new technologies are impacting learning, including tablets like the iPad and use of videos and Youtube’s role. The use of new technology in education has sparked new thinking, in particular the idea of a “flipped classroom” where students become responsible for watching video lectures and attend the classroom for hands-on experience and mentoring.
In the introduction of the paper, Hanna María writes: “Education is heading towards digital learning and that development is inevitable, the only question is how fast the development will be. Ten years ago no one could imagine hardbound textbooks going the same way as the slide rules but today that image don’t seem that far away. In the last few years we have seen devices enter the market that could eliminate textbooks as we know them today. The entire way of students learning is being altered. Classrooms are being “flipped”, teachers are being given more time to mentor and guide instead of lecturing all the time and before we know it every student will have a computer device, even elementary students.”
Paper: Technology in Education by Hanna María Hermannsdóttir.
Picture above by mitikusa on Flickr.
