the future.

Where is the future of teaching and learning heading? Is it to a land of behaviorists, conformists dictators that shorten the minds of our students? Doesn't exactly sound ideal. Perhaps to a land of of technological illiterate students and teachers occasionally venturing online. Again, not ideal nor comprehendible really when you think of the growing technologies that we are privy to today. Really, the future of education lies in the hands of us, the next generation of teachers, who are becoming more and more technological savvy. Therefore it is essential that we make the future an environment of contemporary teaching and learning opportunities that motivate and engage our students. This is achievable with technology.

Each day new technologies are being developed that offer endless possibilities to our students. With this future also comes the concept of Web 3.0, a continuing revolution of emerging technologies that compliment teaching and learning. This augmented reality centers around the idea of communicating relevant information to the individual, the cyber universe directly corresponding to you in association with your needs. Amazingly though this technology isn’t limited to Web 3.0, without a doubt it will continue to develop even further, who knows how long it will be until we here whispers of Web 4.0 or even 5.0. As long as people are using these resources, technology will continue to grow, providing teachers with the opportunities to expand their student’s horizons and to encourage them to explore the world that is at their fingertips. By continually developing technologies and implementing them into our school environments, we are creating...

“learning that is relevant, useful and appropriate for the world [our students] will enter when they leave our classrooms” (Dixon, 2000).

Moving forward we’re witness to concepts such as m-learning or otherwise known as mobile learning which is the foundation of providing continual anywhere access to the online world. The ability to voice record, mblog, create immediate multimedia records on school excursions, encourage and facilitate interaction with an otherwise dull surrounding through the use of a mobile phone and provide potential platforms for person to person interaction, the possibilities with mobile learning are endless. Many view the concept of such technologies as an invasion of privacy, having anyone, anywhere able to access information based on facial recognition software, or interaction with surroundings; however like all of the technologies mentioned on this blog the potential of a “privacy breech” SHOULD NOT be a determinate factor in technology usage. As previously stated with these new technological demands come new privacy settings that are stronger, more efficient and effective than ever before. Instead of immediately associating negativities with new technologies such as m-learning or virtual worlds, how about people start thinking about the exciting and engaging ways they can broaden our students minds.

Virtual worlds are on a rapid climb. Operating your own Avatar (virtual replicas of yourself or as some people view it your ‘ideal self’) is fast becoming the norm amongst people in the 21^st century. However when we hear about these MUVE’s (Multi-User-Virtual-Environments), we are given distorted news reports that focus on once again the negatives, such as cyber bullying and illegal associations or interactions. We’re missing the point of the technology. It is a platform for a contemporary teaching and learning environment that not only encourages our student’s imaginations but also creates an engaging and most importantly different way of learning. Pedagogical advantages are endless, offering ‘immersive, interactive and situated’ learning where our students are active participants in a virtual world. 

“You have to want to use technology, see some educational potential n it, and be willing to take risks” (Johnstone, 2006)