After reading Chapter 12, I definitely think that the advanced technology of virtual classrooms is going to be very prominent in the future of education. It provides expanded instructional opportunities for students because students no longer have to be limited to the classes only offered by the high school in their area. Students can find a spot in a typically low-enrollment class by enrolling in a class with students from all over the country in one single virtual classroom. I've even had a personal experience dealing with this, as my high school now requires all students to take at least one virtual class, using Florida Virtual School, in order to graduate. Taking classes online is becoming more and more popular in today's society, especially because it includes aspects of broadcast audio and video, internet chat, and phone technologies with the virtual teachers. And once the aspect of videoconferencing gets more popular in virtual schooling as well, it will basically seem like you are sitting in a classroom from the safety of your home.
A future technology that is being pioneered recently is called Google Expeditions. It is a new technology that produces virtual field trips for students in the classroom. The program requires students to have an individual smart phone at their desk, while the teacher is able to control the field trip on her own personal tablet. Even though some virtual field trip programs already exist, Expeditions is supposed to be much more advanced, using 360 degree rotation and hi-deff pictures provided by GoPro. It also allows the teacher to control the field trip by pausing it any time she wants in order to make comments, write notes, or answer questions. So far, Google has set up many different destinations that can be used for educational purposes including the Great Wall of China, Yosemite National Park, and Verona, Italy, along with many more to come. They are even working on implementing virtual college tours and job shadowing to assist those older students who may not have the resources to visit campuses or explore different career options. I think this invention is very interesting and will have a huge impact on education as it will provide a new and improved aspect to visual learning methods that may already exist, like still pictures in presentations.
Here is the link to the website: https://www.google.com/edu/expeditions/
The digital divide is a term that refers to the gap between those who have easy access to computers, the Internet, and other communication technologies, and those who do not. This can include many different divides, like city and rural areas, socioeconomic groups, educated and non-educated, and even well-developed and undeveloped nations. I definitely land on the side of the divide that has the available access at any time to these technologies, as I can't even remember a time that my family didn't own a telephone, a TV, or a computer. I constantly have access to any information that I need no matter where I go, especially now due to the fact that I own a personal smartphone as well. In my future classroom, I will definitely face problems with the digital divide, depending on the different socioeconomic statuses of my students, as well as the region that I end up teaching in. As a teacher I will need to be aware that my students will have different levels of access to technologies, so when creating my lesson plans I always need to make sure there is an easy alternative to technology, like finding the information in textbooks. In cases where students may need to write papers or create presentations, I will be sure to let them know of local resources that have computers, like the library, and will also make sure to schedule extra visits to the computer lab at school when needed.
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