Let’s be absolutely irreverent. Enough of that talk about the need for / importance of / risks of technology in schools. Let us create schools full of educational technology taking risks into account, embracing its advantages, avoiding its traps, suggesting changes, creating opportunities and enjoying the journey or observing it.
How can mobile phones be banned from school?
Why pen and paper are used more than tablets or pendrives?
Who decides that textbooks should stay the main source of knowledge?
Why do we have to do things in the same way if we are all different, which is a proven fact?
Have we not yet grasped that we can not demand that a formula 1 car and a tricycle show equal speed?
Who fools us by telling us that talking about something is the same as doing it?
There are GPS, drones, robots, headphones, tablets, computers, smart cars, Internet, nanotechnology. Let’s use them in an appropriate way, that is since we use technology anyway, we have to learn how to use it wisely and by this learning ensure its proper application in our lives and for the sake of life.
Every disadvantage of the technology: decrease in the need for interaction, increase in social isolation, marginalization of those who can not access innovations, excessive consumption, sedentarization of leisure, development of social pathologies, cyberbullying, identity theft, data insecurity, intrusion into private life … Those are serious problems, which are offset by its great advantages such as: Productivity, use of resources, increasing motivation and enthusiasm, accelerating processes, bringing innovative solutions, facilitating collaboration, reducing pollution, promoting self-learning, stimulating critical thinking, bringing autonomy, making us creative, improving communication, fighting against digital gender violence … A sensible and measured collaboration with technology brings security, creates opportunities, ensures innovation, provides meaningful learning, promotes cooperation, facilitates data exchange on the global level, develops knowledge …
Urge to move from the pen / paper / text to the touch screen, stylus, keyboard, virtual platforms, and tablets. The school has to place a premium on virtual reality, online education, educational video games, artificial intelligence, 3D-printing, e-learning, studying with mobile phones…
It’s now or never. The school has to open up to technology, accept and embrace it in order to be empowered and become more productive through it. This path is not easy but we are not to lose the opportunities it provides in such fields as teachers training, improving interpersonal relationships, changes in methodologies, collaborative work in projects, open / participatory / flexible curricula, adjusting what we evaluate to students’ planned and real needs.