The technology that become ubiquitous and inexpensive enough to reach the classroom has been remarkable to witness; I remember the first PCs in my middle school in the late 1980s and learning to insert large floppy discs to play Oregon Trail. In college I was doing rudimentary on-line research and naively perceiving AOL chat rooms as "the internet." However, by the time I reentered classrooms as a teacher in late 2001, there were trends developing that might surprise today's technology consumer accustomed to ever advancing models and functionality. My student teaching placement was at a school that, only a few years beforehand, had been designed and opened as a technology themed building with at least a dozen computers in every classroom, motion-sensor classroom lights to shut down usage when rooms were unoccupied, and closed-circuit TV's for school produced programs.
The year I arrived the district was no longer replacing computers as they died off; by the end of the year even the remaining functioning computers would be removed, leaving only two dedicated student computers in each classroom along with the teacher computer. The heady experimental years of "technology everywhere, for everyone" seemed to have met the fiscal reality of maintaining hundreds of computers subject to heavy use/abuse by nearly 500 students. Additionally, as the district increased class sizes in response to perpetually dwindling budgets, classrooms became cluttered with an average of 20 students, a desk for each, and a comically thick perimeter of gray computer tables lining every available classroom wall, effectively shrinking the usable area of the room by a significant number of square feet. Teachers, alone in their classrooms while the students were at specials, grading papers or otherwise sitting still for some time found they were suddenly plunged into darkness, the motion-sensors dutifully calculating no movement above an arbitrary and imperfect threshold.
In recent years I have watched waves of new technology come into the classroom, some becoming extremely valuable. The sobering reality is that these visions of what will come next are still often created by marketing departments; but even a cynical mind might marvel at the possibilities portrayed in the Corning: A Day Made of Glass 2. The first Day Made of Glass video came off, in my eyes, as rather vapid, consumer-oriented, and celebratory of a future in which sterile living environments allow for full focus upon fashion, shopping, entertainment, and advertisements. Not the stuff of hope, imagination, creativity, and passion we want for our children. The second video, below, captured my eye in that so many of the advances are education based and would be of both practical and inspiring use in the classroom. Watch, and wonder if teachers will still be able to justify a worksheet component to every single lesson of the day.
