IN Brentwood-Baldwin-Whitehall Fall 2016 | Page 24

SPECIAL SECTION: TECHNOLOGY IN THE CLASSROOM

shopping, to reading and working, technology is inevitable in today’s
society. Parents, teachers, community leaders, and governmental
representatives are speaking up for their kids and pushing to redefine
success and rethink measuring success in the classroom. Skills such
as knowledge, social abilities, emotional intelligence and dispositions
are all crucial for a student’s success in the workforce, yet many of
these skills are overlooked in the typical classroom setting. Educators
are working toward providing students with meaningful learning
opportunities through technology that encompass all of the aspects
that make up success for a graduating high school senior entering
college or the workforce.

THE WHO

Trends in education are continuing to bring new and exciting
opportunities to the classroom. The International Association for
K-12 Online Learning predicts big shifts in the use of technology in
the classroom for both students and teachers. According to Education
Week, public schools in the United States provide at least one computer
for every five students, spend more than $3 billion on digital content
per year, and are pushing to make high-speed Internet affordable.
While making a massive overhaul in the classroom, schools are also
trying to support the educating of teachers and staff to utilize this
technology in even the most rural and remote schools across the
country.
Although technology isn’t foreign to classrooms, funding has long
been a barrier for many schools across the U.S., along with hesitation
by teachers to adopt new methods for teaching. Yet, with all new
technologies come new challenges. In a time where cloud computing
and data analytics drive the way business is done for everything from
hospitals to grocery stores, big data is continuously being monitored,
making it crucial to keep private information secure. Schools and
colleges are trying to keep pace by trading in textbooks for tablets and
turning toward technology to redefine education. These updates to
traditional learning can be broken into four segments: when, why, who
and how.

Teachers
Near the end of 2015, the U.S. Department of Education released
the 2016 National Education Technology Plan as a commitment to
supporting personalized professional learning to provide greater equity
of access to technology for students across America. In addition, the
Future Ready initiative, developed by the department in 2014, had
more than 2,000 superintendents across the country who pledged to
integrate digital learning into their districts’ curricula. The National
Education Technology Plan also includes a focus on providing each
student with the chance to engage in educational experiences led by
technology.
In addition, Education Week states that digital instructional content
is the second largest spend in the K-12 educational technology market,
just behind hardware. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Pearson,
previously known for their paperback publishing, are pushing out the
most digital lessons in math, English/language arts, science, business,
and fine arts.

THE WHEN

While most of us used textbooks, chalkboards, and hard wooden
chairs in perfectly parallel lines facing the front, 2016 has brought big
changes to the classroom for both students and teachers. Education’s
slow reaction to change and inability to keep pace with constantly
changing technologies and innovations have made upgrading learning
a challenging task, but the time is now for change to happen in
education. In 2015-2016, Education Week reported that, for the first
time, more state standardized tests were administered via technology
than by using paper and pencil. Teachers now have tools for personal
development and are learning how to bring technology into their
classrooms in a meaningful way. In the 2016-17 school year, the trend
of technology in the classroom will grow, as will the continued success
of tech-based learning.

THE WHY

Technology is everywhere. Kids and adults alike utilize at least
some form of technology in their everyday lives. From socializing to
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Students
No student is the same. Each has a different family life, upbringing,
ability to communicate and learn, and yet these students are all being
taught the same way. Schools across the country are shifting from
a one-size-fits-all approach to a personalized learning approach. A
current buzzword in education, personalized learning allows students
to become part of their learning experience. Students will be in control
of creating content for learning using smartphone apps. This approach
intends to put students at the forefront of molding their learning
experience, resulting in stronger student engagement and therefore
better outcomes. The Nellie Mae Education Foundation notes that a
student-centered approach can “only be successful if [it occurs] within
a cultural context that demands continuous improvement and engages
collective processes that foster understanding and broad ownership
of decisions. This should be driven by vigilant consideration of
assessment results that help illuminate the extent to which particular