Thing 5

To me, school 2.0 is a sign of the quickly changing times.  Technology, now more than ever, dominates every facet of our lives.  Some may say it is to the detriment of our society, but I tend to think that technology has done more to help us than to hurt us.  But, like anything, technology should be used in moderation.  School 2.0 is the idea that schools are incorporating technology.  There is no escaping technology.  It is everywhere.  Technology has so much to offer students.  Gone are the days of researching topics in the library.  Any and all information students need about nearly every topic imaginable is at the tip of our fingers.  And, to top it off, most information out there is free.  School 2.0 will hopefully prepare the next generation of students to be better consumers of information.  There is so much information out there (some good, some bad) and students should know what to believe and what to dismiss.

I’m working as a teacher assistant with special education.  Some of the kids I work with can hardly read, but if you hand them an iPad, they can navigate and find anything they want.  Kids today know way more about technology than I did at their age.  Next week, 3^rd grade has some required assessment in which they have to type 2 essays on a computer.  These are 3^rd graders.  I definitely couldn’t type in 3^rd grade.  I’m pretty sure I wasn’t analyzing any passages and writing about them until I was well into high school.  I definitely wasn’t typing my work in elementary school.  This is a sign of the changes of school 2.0.  The face of school today is drastically different than it was even 10 years ago.  Another thing that stuck out to me was the idea that commenting and posting is a give and take and connects people from all over the world.  It is amazing that with the click of a button, you can email someone thousands of miles away and they will receive it almost instantaneously.  School 2.0, to me, is the idea that schools keep up with (and try to stay ahead of) the ever-changing technological landscape of today and incorporate these changes into the classroom. 

I think, in the future, technology will only have an increasing presence in our lives.  Classrooms ten years from now will probably be unrecognizable.  Technology is changing and if schools are to prepare students for future success, they will have to keep up with the times and incorporate these changes into their classrooms.  When I was reading about the open classes at MIT, it made me think that today’s face-to-face classes at universities may soon be a thing of the past.  With technology, higher education may soon become widely available and affordable to more people.  One point that stuck out to me in the posts I read was that the only way to control the amount of information out there is to contribute more.  This seems like an ironic statement.  I think it means that the more you contribute, the more educated you become.  If you are more educated on a subject, you will be a better consumer of information and may be able to help others know what information is false and what is to be trusted.  I think that today’s children are using technology more than any other generation.  School 2.0 can help ensure that they get the most out of what they are doing and ensure that they know what they are doing.