Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology Chapter 8 Reflection

What new thinking I took from this chapter on how schools can cope with new technologies is the idea of customization of education. Though I like the idea of customization in education I think some of the authors ideas go a little bit too far. I really liked the idea of building up certifications and the learn at your own pace mentality this gives students that have a clear of idea of the career or the field they may go into a way that they can make school worth it. I can see how they could be much more engaged in school with a goal in mind and seeing why they need to take those classes could help them be much more motivated. I feel though for students that are not clear on their career path that this could create more challenges for them. Not knowing what to area to focus on they may just start going down a certain path of courses and certifications only to find that years later that the field they went into was not their cup of tea. In that case they may need to go back and take many more courses that they could have already taken in a much more general curriculum. With respect to choosing a curriculum that focuses on a certain theme, I think that particularly with younger students they may choose an area that they may have only casual interest in and then be stuck with it for years. For example with the dinosaurs idea many young kids get super into dinosaurs, but often is a short phase. For the next few years students could be stuck studying an area extensively that they do not care for versus in the current system they would be able to move on to something else rather shortly

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How this new thinking will affect my future teaching is that I may try to spend more time providing individual support with students that may show a large amount of interest in my content area. Though I may not be able to change the system that is in place I can help students know what types of courses they may need to take to help them in their future goals. Another thing that I will do in my classrooms is to make sure I am aware how the content that I teach is applicable to different careers and make sure that I communicate that affectively to my students . If I can share those things I think that I will be able to have a better classroom environment with more engaged and motivated students.