MY FUTURE CLASSROOM
The year 2020? Maybe it's 2050. The bell rings, some hundred middle school students pile into a classroom and take their place in front of their PC. The teacher walks up, switches on the whiteboard. A few clicks on the laptop later she's ready with her multi-media presentation. The students are free to choose between the small and the big screen to follow the lesson.
Today, the PPT is on volcanoes. The graphics appear, and the kids watch unblinkingly. The main points of the lesson form the text, and the teacher fills in the details, answering questions. Just when student attention dims, a volcano erupts with a loud bang. Clap and cheer! Lesson over, the students take an e-quiz uploaded on the desktop. They search the Net for information, prepare answers, make their own graphics and save the answer sheet on the screen. Class dismissed.
As a future classroom, this version is pretty basic. Advanced ones will have interactive whiteboards, wi-fi, message boards for group project work, instant access to interviews, external networks via LAN, recording facilities for radio/TV projects and definitely, facility to join the classroom from home. Children will study e-books or download textbook content. Audio-visual rooms will have video-conferencing facilities with experts. Hypermedia tools will take the drudgery out of homework. In high school, all assessment will be done through computer software. No favourites! Better still, CBT and CAL software will help with self-evaluation. Less paper!
All right, handwriting will be a dead art, but aren't key-boarded essays easier to read? And guess who the substitute teacher is? A robot named... whatever.
Students grasp much more than textual learning when they gather and analyze information. As the child clicks at his individual PC, he doesn't just get his lessons, he jumps on to a level-playing field of 21st Century skill-sets. Technology removes background shortcomings, it's a fillip needed to catch up with the class.
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