If schools today are struggling to keep up with meeting the needs and ways of learning for this current generation of students, then how will we ever catch up with the next generation who will be moving along at an even faster rate?
When my daughter can operate an iPad to meet her needs before she can speak a full sentence, then we are really going to have our hands full as educators.
What is the answer? I am not sure there is one at this point in time.
I don’t think schools are struggling to meet the needs of students per se. We have to keep adapting the technology, and we’re figuring out ways to make that more fluid. The brain does not work any differently now than it did decades ago, even though we now understand how it works better. As long as schools can keep material relevant to students, we will be able to teach them.
The technology can be used to put more of the learning experience into the hands of the learners, so educators will have less “hands full” and more “hands on” — delivering the types of learning experiences the technology can’t: sports, music, dance, theatre, art, …
If students can already use technology, perhaps we need to go back to basics. I was in a meeting yesterday where we figured out that writing book reports met a lot of the Common Core literature expectations! Hey, if you can find Erin Fry’s Losing It to read, I think you’d like it. She’s a cross country coach, and the book involved running!