What will the future hold for education and teaching? We are now at a point where students could attend a lecturer virtually via a VR (Virtual Reality) head set such as Oculus Rift, without ever attending classes physically. They could also use VR technology to “be” at the battle of Waterloo, rather than just read about it. This has the potential to completely change education.
As great as this sounds, something would be lost along the way. There is no substitute for face-to-face interaction, or the experience of being in a physical location with other people. Digital technology, no matter how good, cannot really substitute for hands on experience. I think teachers will always need to interact in a physical environment with students in some capacity. After all, science fiction has often postulated the idea of eating your meals in a pill form, but I cannot imagine anyone packing away their dinner plates any time soon.
By looking at the bigger picture of what technology can bring to our classrooms, and upgrading our thinking, we can become more open to embracing the new and exciting technologies that are widely available to us.
The call for presenters for this year’s ICT in Education conference is now open at bit.ly/icteducall.
For more on how ICT can help to improve the way you teach, or to join the digital revolution, come along to this year’s ICTEDU (ICT in Education) on Saturday the 23rd of April in Limerick Institute of Technology, Thurles. For more information see http://lit.ie/ictedu.
Written by Kevin Dwane, Digital Animation Student in Limerick Institute of Technology, Clonmel, helping to promote #ICTEDU during syndicated online conversations, along with his team Laura Pigott, Sean Jordan and Marta Casalini.
