Technology+Integration

 Technology will allow for 21st century teaching and learning through Distributed and blended learning opportunities. Students will learn in a multitude of environments—online, virtual, or face-to-face—and therefore require changes to physical spaces ( Rudd et al., 2006 ).

 Advances in technology and “digital creativity” will require reconfiguring learning spaces to allow for and encourage collaboration and “development of communities of interest and practice” ( Rudd et al., 2006 ). Students will need “opportunities to generate, share, edit, and publish materials” through various “internet discussion forums, messaging, social networking and social bookmarking tools, weblogs [or blogs] and wikis” ( Ibid.). These tools will allow our students to create their own learning environments while fostering student-to-student or student-to-expert or a host of other learning arrangements that will become the mainstay of education in the 21st century. This new dynamic is rife with challenges; students will need to learn “ how to acquire and build knowledge in social contexts, how to assess its quality and how best to apply it” ( Ibid.)

A few design elements should be taken into account when integrating technology in classrooms. First, classrooms must adapt to technology, not the other way around. Seamless integration allows for a continuous “cognitive flow”. Second, there should be no bad view of the projection screen or display. Last, but not least, the learning space must “encourage and foster genuine, face-to-face communication" (Open Architecture Network, 2009). Regardless of the advances in technology, “we still need emotional connections to other human beings to create, inspire, and develop self-worth (Ibid.)



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