Trends & Challenges
The words ‘trend’ and ‘technology’ are often simultaneous
and like love and marriage you can’t have 1 without the other. The focus of
this blog will be on educational technology. I will focus mostly on educational
technology in special education. I will focus even more specifically on
educational technology for special needs students diagnosed with autism
spectrum disorder. I know…that’s allot of specifics.
Now back to the trends. The 2 lucky trends I’ll be
focusing on for this post are…drum roll please: Augmented Reality and Maker
Spaces. I choose these 2 trends because they seem the most promising in pushing
education forward. Learning should be about doing since this is how the average
person learns. Let’s take a closer look.
Augmented Reality in the classroom would allow
students to access additional information on any subject and make any subject
easier to comprehend. For example, a student could scan a certain image in a
text book and receive specific and clarified information related to that image.
This creates trans-formative and interactive education.
Maker spaces is just a way of saying students can use
advancements in technology to create. The use of 3-D printers to create science
models or having students learn code which encourages a growth mindset. These
are just a couple examples and you can see more in the link provided below.
As we all know there are challenges that come with
technology trends. The 1st and most obvious is funding. Tech and
related resources and many children would be denied access to these things as a result of attending an underfunded school. The 2nd challenge would
be lack of training for educators. With the exception of younger millennial educators
many teachers are not trained in educational technology so many resource will
be needed for this training. However, for every problem there is a solution and
an investment in today’s education would mean an investment in everyone’s
future.
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