E-Learning Futuristic Education Resources for Today and Ideas for Tomorrow

E-Learning Futuristic Education Resources for Today and Ideas for Tomorrow This article  discusses ideas for integrating new technology with education, what the future may hold for education, and real high-tech resources for students and educators. Smart Phones and Tutoring? The smart phone…screen size may present problems for students. Most students require a lot of room to perform mathematical calculations. Perhaps they could write on a tablet at home/school, then save a reduced copy of it on their phone for later study purposes. The phone should have a vertical and horizontal scrolling type feature to enable them to go back and review or edit previous work in a connected fashion. Concept mapping is a very useful teaching tool in many subjects and also requires this type of navigation. Voice recognition would be a great way to handle the notation for mathematics. I’m not aware if there is such software available yet, but if not, it may be soon. Speaker phone is nice for conversation, but a closer microphone (less interference) might be needed for voice recognition of symbols. It will save so much time, and verbalizing concepts is a productive element for the teaching and learning process as well. If the instructional device could interface with the students’ PD, then they would be totally free to think without worrying about taking notes, etc. They could manipulate these notes on their own PD to arrange them according to their personal learning style. Students think about things in so many different ways. Enabling them to interact with the concepts personally is very important. In the schools (and maybe even in the home) there may be a problem with the applicability of the smart phone if it was not in some way a “secured” learning environment. There should be a way to ensure that students are engaged in learning â€" which could be argued is always the case, no matter what they are doing. I’m personally not a advocate of censorship, but as a teacher, I have noticed that distractions to the learning process have become a very real issue since cell phones. It’s not that I’m bothered so much by distractions (they can be valuable at times) it’s just that many students do not, for whatever reason, decide to use their time effectively. It’s frustrating to see very intelligent young people “wasting their time” on “net junk”… things that may not benefit them in the future. I’m aware of screen monitoring systems, but they require the attention of the instructor whose time is much better spent teaching students. What is needed is a semi-close d system that affords the child room to explore, but also blocks irrelevant interference. In a perfect world, students will learn that they control the technology and their ability to learn from it. It should not control them, or draw them away from opportunities to learn and advance intellectually. The structure of the environment is extremely important. Negative Aspects of E-learning Regarding security and technology, let me give you a personal example of possible negative aspects “e-learning”. One of my wealthy friends sends her children to an exclusive private school where laptops are issued on enrollment. She thought that by doing this she was giving her child the very best. The school had preloaded certain educational software for the students, so she thought he had to work on that particular computer, and since they didn’t have administrative rights, they could not install anything. Without her knowledge, her preteen son became involved with some very scary, unsavory folks during times that she thought he was working on his schoolwork. It will take a very long time for their family to get over this incident â€" the child’s personal information is also out there. These things should not happen. The school proceeded with their laptop initiative without anticipating problems. Future Hopes for Education Technology and education will soon become mutually interdependent. Each person will need to learn how to use technology to improve their education and expand opportunities for the future. I would like to see the development of community-based technology learning centers (for lack of a better term right now) to connect community resources, families and schools to achieve this level of learning. [Honestly, Im afraid that the schools, with a slow-paced institutionalized approach, cannot respond appropriately to our needs] These centers could provide quality technical support to the schools, information and training for parents, students, and teachers. They could bridge the gap between the home and different levels of schooling. [This gap seems to widen as children get older and access to technology increases. This is the exact opposite of what should be occurring. Parents should be empowered to guide their own children.] Staffed with educational technology personnel, assisting the devel opment of more effective tools for the teaching and learning process. This would be a community-based forum for collaboration, innovation, and technical support. A bank of “best lessons” could be available for teachers or homeschoolers to practice with and/or use in teaching. These centers could also serve as e-learning satellites for distance learning projects as we discussed earlier. Like the public library system began years ago, these centers could inject an educational technology renaissance now. I hope to see many changes happening in education in the very near future. Our children are depending on us. Resources Smartboard, Smart Technologies (https://smarttech.com) Complements As high school teacher who uses a SMART board, from SMART technologies, in the classroom I think it offers a great platform for interaction between students and their teacher. My district has three high schools, so the SMART board technology has been extremely useful for me to communicate with other mathematics teachers at the other buildings. It’s nice to just be able to write the symbols, and not have to try to type everything up to email it. I think that there is a lot of potential for teachers and students in e-learning environments to communicate more effectively with a SMART board. Criticism I found myself flipping back and forth between screens when I first started using the SMART board. Students had it all right their on their paper and tried to be patient with me as I fumbled around. What is GeoGebra? (https://www.geogebra.org/cms/) GeoGebra is a dynamic mathematics software for education in secondary schools that joins geometry, algebra and calculus. On the one hand, GeoGebra is a dynamic geometry system. You can do constructions with points, vectors, segments, lines, conic sections as well as functions and change them dynamically afterwards. On the other hand, equations and coordinates can be entered directly. Thus, GeoGebra has the ability to deal with variables for numbers, vectors and points, finds derivatives and integrals of functions and offers commands like Root or Extremum. These two views are characteristic of GeoGebra: an expression in the algebra window corresponds to an object in the geometry window and vice-versa.