Ahh, the first day of class, syllabus day (hopefully). As you skim over each one, you notice that you need McGraw Hill Connect or Wiley Plus to complete your homework and review majority of your lectures. You think to yourself “Is attendance really mandatory if almost all of my resources are online in one click?” Just the thought of buying these programs rips your heart into shreds, but in the end, you receive fast results instead of waiting for your professor to grade each one, which can take days.
Technology is widely used in classrooms within the United States. I remember as far back as the first grade using computers as a learning mechanism, such as Accelerated Reader and Fast Math. This has evolved into similar programs throughout my college career stated above. I never would have thought ten years ago that most of my schoolwork, homework, and lecture material would be online. We were encouraged to have legible handwriting, and forced group projects to develop communication and team building skills. In Maria Cecire’s “ Massively Open” she envisions how education in the future will change from the traditional classroom setting and how students socialize outside of school. Online universities are not uncommon today, but majority of students attend schools where technology is integrated into the curriculum, but not the main aspect.
We all have likes and dislikes about technology within the classroom but what will the future of education be when our children attend school? Today’s children are bound to their iPads watching other children play with toys and not their own, so it would be no surprise if classrooms included virtual simulations. Creating a learning algorithm catered to their interests and skill level could also reinvent the world of education. There are many ideas to what the future of education will consists of, but technology will not dwindle, but become even more far advanced for the greater good.
Literature & the Internet 