Monday, September 16, 2013

The Future Starts From Here


The future of teaching starts from introducing of technology. As what I see from the video “ Educational Change Challenge” and “ The Future Starts Now-2012 edition”, the import of technology becomes a trend in future teaching.
Every student can learn, but they learn differently. For a long time, the greatest hurdle of education reform is that society does not have a clear image of what school is for. People view school as a place where children can learn things, however, how can school guarantee how much children can learn or how educators mediate students? One thing inspires me in “ Educational Change Challenge” is that “In education, if you don’t use technology for learning, you may lose relevant. Educators must be relevant.” We, as future teachers, must take advantage of technology in future teaching if we want to be a “relevant” teacher. We can use computer to find materials, or we can use blog to connect with students after class. It is not a simple way to conduct a new thing in teaching, but at least we should try it and may it be useful in teaching.
“ The Future Starts Now-2012 edition” reminds me of students who use smart phone in Chinese class. This is quite a common thing happened in Chinese classroom because most of them are trying hard to learn Chinese, and they encounter problems that they need to figure out. For example, they use smart phone to check unknown words they hear from the instructor or sometimes, they use it to google relevant knowledge to the topic they discussed. The ICT (Information and Communication Technology) should not ban during class time because our students need it and they think it would help them to learn better. The problem is how can we use ICT smartly to improve learning and why ICT is so important in learning? As far as I am concerned, the use of ICT in teaching or learning may benefit both teachers and students. For students who live in rural area, they can communicate with teachers by log in the Internet, they can click on the lesson they want to learn or they assign to learn, so that they share the same opportunity with students who have class at school. The cost of learning reduced because they don’t need to travel in a long distance. Moreover, computers help students to learn differently and think differently. There are plenty of source in the Internet that students can search it, read it and react to it. Article they read could be the same, but reaction or thinking might be different due to different sources, and students need to distinguish what is right and what is wrong from what they read online.

The future of teaching starts from the implement of technology, we, as teachers, can not ignore what is happening now, but we need to accept new trend of teaching is coming, get ready for it!


1 comment:

  1. Thanks for you illustration of how some students in Chinese class use their smart phones. They use smart phone to check unknown words they hear from the instructor or sometimes, they use it to google relevant knowledge to the topic they discussed. That's a very good example.
    In future posts, please integrate the links into the text instead of adding them at the end.

    ReplyDelete