In this post, I will try to bring the ideas I presented in parts I and II of Technology: Revolutionary or Redundant? together and relate it to why my inquiry matters to the teaching profession.

For me, the two major takeaways from both videos were that teaching as a profession is not immune to change – indeed, technologies have always played a prominent role facilitating change in education. Whether we are speaking of wax tablets of iPads, new technologies broaden the range of approaches teachers can use to engage their students in learning. CPG Grey’s prophesying of the coming of Digital Aristotle for Everyone as the revolutionary tool has helped me to acknowledge that education as we know it in our post-industrial world, existed in many different forms in the past. The second takeaway was the realization that, while technology changes within education, two elements that have remained constant in education are the human relationships we establish and maintain and the creation of meaningful learning experiences in the classroom. What we have learned over the many years is that humans are social creatures, whose learning is only enhanced when they think together – two heads really are better than one. The role of the classroom teacher, then, is to facilitate and guide their students towards learning.

Now that I have a home base from which I can expand my inquiry, my next steps are to explore how we can use new technologies (and which ones to use) to create meaningful learning experiences in our student’s minds. It is my hope that I will be able to create a strong base with which to begin my research by first interviewing active teachers. Another resource I will begin looking into are the articles on education found on theguardian.com.

Until next time,
Alex M.