Here & now in the school of the future:

Part of a special issue entitled Teaching in a 2.0 world Personal Author: Howland, Jonathan; Levin, Howard Journal Name: Independent School Source: Independent School v. 68 no. 2 (Winter 2009) p. 88-91 http://vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com.libproxy.chapman.edu:2048/hww/results/getResults.jhtml?_DARGS=/hww/results/results_common.jhtml.21Digital tools in school should focus on enhancing and improving student learning. However, educators should be considering the need of the students. Moreover, digital tools allow teachers to access each other's work to improve teaching and learning practices. The rationale for using digital tools in school is to enhance and improve student learning.The school of the future is better than the school of the past not because of the use of technology, but because it supports, and sustains student learning in traditional (as well as new) disciplines in more intelligent, and effective ways. In this way, it builds upon, expresses, and improves so much of what has been. The digital school has a revolutionary feature; The Wireless access, the small group of classmates and the demonstrations, from anywhere. As a result, the once rigid distinction between activities appropriate to class (watch, share, talk, construct) and those called homework (read and write, practice and prepare) has become purposefully blurred. The digital classroom, as such, represents a challenge and an invitation to teachers that begins, as it always has, with generating an engagingThe mistake always made, is to focus on the machine, set up computer labs or purchase laptop carts, and then to ask teachers to figure out how to integrate the technology into a curriculum in this case we have embraced a misleading assumption, that students need to use technology. What do students need in order to learn math, language, science, history, and art? What are the teaching practices we can develop to improve learning in these ears, and what are the digital tools we can use, to enhance the learning in each of these and other areas?