Educational Technology

In his July 29th article, New York Times Op-Ed writer David Brooks argues that the reason the U.S. is falling behind other countries on the global economy scale has to do with our education system.  What do you think about his view?  Is our educational system adequately preparing our nation’s youth for their futures in today’s ubiquitous technological society?  Its your turn to weigh in…. 

What do you think about all this Web 2.0 stuff so far?  Is it all just a fad, a trend, something that doesn’t have much value in education?  Or is it something you want to explore further that you think might have a place in our schools?

I was thinking the other day.  I know, that is a scary thing.  But, nonetheless I was thinking that there isn’t anything we, as teachers, can do about change.  It will happen, whether we want it to or not; whether we like it or not.  This is especially true with technology.  It changes daily.  New programs are distrubuted, network upgrades are defined, OS’s are released, new hardware is invented.  This trend will probably continue for years to come.  So, change happens.  

But, the funny thing is, at the crossroads of technology and education, we are always behind.  Technology changes and months later, education may be introduced to it.  So, for as much as we don’t always like having to learn new technologies all the time, we really are behind with what we do learn.  Take this blog for example.  Blogging has been hot for a few years.  Its been said that a new blog is born every .5 seconds.  But, how long has blogging been hot in education?  Not that long.   So, while we may complain about technology, if we don’t use what’s available to better serve our students, teach them the way they learn rather than the way we learned, we are doing a disservice to our future society.  We’re already behind, just by the nature of education.  It is always playing “catch-up” with the rest of the business world.  By resisting change, particularly in technology, aren’t we falling further behind?