Future of Education and Technology

In doing research on the future of education and technology I was really encouraged by the possibilities of the future. One statement that stood out to me was that of Gordon Moore's, the founder of Intel. He predicted "the exponential growth of technology. Moore's law postulates that the processing power and speed of any electronic calculating device will double every 18 months. At the same time, the price for that technology will decline approximately 35% a year relative to the power." The idea that technology will continue to expand is common knowledge; however, it is shocking to realize the rate at which it is continueing and growing.

An interesting fact that is telling of the emphasis that our schools are placing on education is that schools are being judged based on the ratio of students to computers. This ratio is further instrumental in classifying the schools as being able to provide a “quality” education. This fact struct me as particularly interesting because I graduated from High School not too long ago, and I don't hardly remember using computers in High School. This just goes to show the rate at which technology has already influenced education in the last couple of years.

Other interesting research that I found was that of schools becoming dependent on online learning. I did a reflection on this subject a couple weeks ago, and then we further talked about it in our technology class about it. In brainstorming ideas about the benefits of online learning, we (as a class) came up with this list: online learning is beneficial for students who need extra time with learning, have special needs, have a learning dissibility, are advanced learners and want to get their school work done in their own time, etc...

These are just a few of the topics I found when researching the future of technology in education. As a future educator, it is so interesting to learn about and think about the new things which will be available to use in education.