Future learning is very important in society today. The world is revolving and things are constantly being updated. Teachers need to adapt to the revolving world. Students no longer can sit for and hour and listen to a lecture. They need interactive group work and beneficial real life skills. Schools are trying to incorporate video games into learning with them in order to keep children engaged. With technology improving every day, schools are going to need more technology based classes and less irrelevant courses such as art or band. It is important to find ways to use technology to its fullest potential.
There are places in the world where children do not have the access to technology. Since they don’t have the access, they are missing out on the potential of learning from it. “Children anywhere, in groups, can teach themselves how to use a computer”. -Sugata Mitra. One may think that the computers in school can be disruptive if they don’t really know how to use them. Children can teach themselves almost anything given a relaxed environment as well as permission to the internet with one another. “Learning happens when the mind is relaxed”-Sugata Mitra therefore, children will be able to learn better if they are not stressed. Creating learning games is a great tool to relax while also learning. Teaching children things that they see as useful will also keep them engaged in their learning. If the information being presented is not interesting but applicable to real life, the children may remain engaged for a longer period of time. Video games help children to be self motivated to solve a problem. They will repeat it over and over until they succeed. Video games could help engage students if the content became more educational.
If video games are interesting it will help children focus more and be more motivated. Children are disengaged in school, but video games help students stay engaged. When children come across a problem in a video game they learn how to fix it themselves. This helps develop independence in children. “Kids shouldn’t have to rap a song about a parable to get excited about it” stated Sal Khan. This also intertwines with the idea that teachers are trying to find better ways to keep students focused and be more interested in school. Instead of just teaching them to be quiet and submissive. A lot of people argue that what children really need to learn is reading, composition, information search and retrieving skills, and teaching children how to believe.
There are some children today that will learn how to use an Ipad before they’ll learn to read. Video games seem to help kids in school systems, but is this because some kids are not interested in the curriculum? It might be. Most curriculum do not take into account the students thoughts and the subjects or the student’s individual interests. When this comes to video games it interests children because of the aspect of control. Growing up, video games were not looked at as a helpful learning tool. In today’s society when people look at video games and technology it definitely has more of a positive impact. In future learning, Sugata Mitra said “If a child plays a video game they will keep trying to succeed even if it takes them 100 times to do so.” This really shows that more and more people are starting to pick up on they way that children learn the best. If you gave a kid a math problem and they couldn’t do it they would just give up and not think about it again. Seeing that a child will try over and over on a game but not a math problem shows teachers they need to identify the structure of video games, then encounter it with other learning skills.
This new era has come with the challenge of creating an engaging classroom. This also comes with the challenge of incorporating technology in the right ways for children to want to learn. This era has also brought upon the question of whether or not technology is really helping students broaden their learning horizons in the classroom. Future learning has inspired a new way to think about using technology in the classroom. If all students are learning is how to be submissive and quiet, how is that really helping them be the future of our world? The future is helping in their hands. We need to change and adapt with technology to benefit the future of America.
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