Educational Paradigms and Technology

For this post I viewed two very informative videos on teaching in today's educational system.  The first video that I viewed was RSA-Animate: Changing Educational Paradigms and the second was classroom of tomorrow.  I really enjoyed both of these videos, not only were they unique and engaging but they were very informative both in their own ways.

The first video, RSA-Changing Educational Paradigms really made me think about how todays educational system has become so obsessed with teaching to the test that it is actually effecting the health and well-being of the children who are subjected to this approach to teaching.  I have always been weary about labeling children, especially with learning/behavioral disorders in which the solution involves medications/treatments.  This video makes an excellent point that so many children today are being labelled with ADHD, almost as if administrators and educators use this diagnoses as a means of medicating children in order to make them focus and calm them down, in order to meet their objectives and make reaching the teaching standards easier.  I also strongly agree with the point this video makes on divergent thinking.  Students today are being taught, because of the educational standards currently set in place, that there is only one answer to questions and problems and in order to succeed in school they have to accept and remember that one answer.  Divergent thinking on the other hand, teaches that there could be many possible answers to one question and lots of possible ways of interpreting a question.  This is the educational paradigm that is emphasized in this video.

The second video, Classroom of Tomorrow, was a very interesting musically narrated video that shows how technology has infiltrated today's classrooms.  While a lot of the technological tools displayed in this video seemed very convenient and great to facilitate learning, this video gave me the feel that technology has also made learning in the classroom very impersonal. Everyone in the video, including teachers were constantly looking down at their devices and not at anyone around them.  I agree that using technology in todays classroom is almost essential and does facilitate learning to a degree, but I also feel that using technology should not interfere with classroom pedagogy or with communication among classmates and group work; all very important aspects of learning and classroom dynamics.

Both of these videos really made me stop and think about how I will teach my classroom; the types of technology I will use and the types of lessons that I feel will most benefit my students in the long run.  I highly recommend current and future teachers to view both of these videos.

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