Explainer: What ‘classroom technology’ will mean in the 2020s – The Sydney Morning Herald

Perceptions of "classroom technology" usually depend on how old you are.

If you're 40, you probably think about a computer lab full of machines that played old black and white games and had no more than four colours.

If you're 30, it might be the Apple Macintosh sitting at the back of the classroom with the noisy printer.

And if you're 20, then maybe it's a teacher up the front with a laptop and a projector.

The problem is, technology moves so fast that we've all got different ideas of what it means. So, what do we mean by "classroom technology" now in the 2010/2020s?

The first thing weneed to know is that more and more schools today have a 1-to-1 philosophy when it comes to technology. This means that every student in the class has a device that belongs to them. This is important, because studies in the UK in 2013 showed that personal ownership of devices helps with their adoption and encourages independent learning. So no more noisy computer at the back of the class. Rather, every child has their own device in their tidy tray.

Popular devices and apps

So, what is that device?

In some schools it might be a laptop (Apple is still popular in Australia), but often it will be an iPad or other tablet (again, Apple rules, with most schools going for iPad tablets).

Installed on that device will be apps for all different aspects of schooling, and many schools will have provided professional development to teachers to support the use of these apps.

Students will use "reading eggs" for English, "mathletics" for Math, and video and book creation apps in Science and Social Science. There are even apps for physical education and music.And all of these apps are available whenever the student wants to use them, at home as well as at school.

Class structures

But don't worry, students still go to the computer lab once a week.

Often referred to as a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Math) session, this is where students get exposed to technology that can't be in every class. Lego Mindstorms is common, with students building robots out of lego that they can program, with some schools also perhaps having a Nao Robot, manufactured by Aldebaran, which is a 60cm-tall anthropomorphic robot that can recognise faces and speech, and has his own personality.

And speaking of programming, it's likely that most students with be exposed to a programming system such as Scratch Jr in this class (on their iPad or on one in the lab), teaching them concepts of logic and functional decomposition, in line with initiatives such as the Queensland Government push for robotics and programming in schools.

What's next?

Looking forward, it's dangerous to predict what the future holds. Who would have predicted 10-inchtablets in every 5-year-old's hands 20 years ago?

But it seems clear that Augmented Reality and Mixed Reality is slowly making its way towards the classroom. Considered a hot area in technology at the moment, players such as Google and Facebook are all taking stakes in this new technology, which allows the user to use a headset or mobile phone to escape into another world, or to add digital components to the world that they are already in.

Whilestill a new technology in the commercial space, initiatives are already emerging to use existing devices such as your iPhone or iPad to augment the classroom for learning, allowing students to see how things work (through augmneted x-ray technology) or visualise objects you usually wouldn't find in the classroom (such as digital dinosaurs).

As the technology settles, it's not a stretch to imagine that students will start to use their existing devices, or buy new devices, that support this new area.

So, no more single computers in classrooms, or old fashioned computer labs. What somebody means when they say "classroom technology" now is an adoption of technology into the everyday fabric of the classroom, for English, Math and other lessons.

What we used to think was special for "computer time" is now an everyday part of life, and the computer lab has evolved to include technology such as robotics that wasn't even commercialised when most of uswere growing up.

See the rest here:

Explainer: What 'classroom technology' will mean in the 2020s - The Sydney Morning Herald