Educators cannot ignore effects of technology

Technology will revolutionize the education system, but not in the way most people think.

Educational technology has advanced by leaps and bounds within the past 10 years. Nearly every classroom here at the University has a computer that can connect to the Internet, show videos and DVDs and play PowerPoint presentations. All of these are technological advancements that our parents and early educators would have never dreamed possible. But for all the advancement they represent, they are not the advancements that will truly alter the education of future generations.

On the contrary, it's not the technologies themselves that will change education, but the after effects of these technologies will shape the education of our children.

We live in a time of great technological advancement, but the true benefit of technology is not reaped by the first generation to experience it. It's the subsequent generations that truly explore, exploit and refine technology.

This isn't a knock on the intelligence of older generations. It isn't an issue of capacity, but one of exposure.

The easiest example of the diffusion of technology through generations is the Internet.

The early adopters of the Internet were a few tech-savvy members of Generation X. This generation, born between 1965 and 1982, helped nurture the Internet into its current state. In those days the Internet was more of a person-to-person method of communicating - similar to the message boards we have today. However, because of the advanced knowledge required to access the Internet, only a small set of Gen X have been exposed to it in significant amounts.

While Gen X is credited with furthering the Internet, it is not the generation most entrenched in it.

The Millennial Generation, unlike its predecessor, came of age when the Internet was just beginning to take off and is most heavily associated with its use.

This group, born between 1982 and 1997, were exposed to the Internet on a much larger scale than the general population of Gen X. The millennial generation has extensive experience with the Internet, but it was still introduced after its early socialization - the Internet merely augmented an existing world-view instead of being the focal point.

The Millennial Generation is the group that has popularized sites like Facebook.com and Myspace.com - they are social Internet users.

The generation after the Millennials, which some have taken to calling Generation Z, was born with the Internet. Many of those young people were at keyboards before they could ride bikes and are quite familiar with the Internet and its possibilities.

At the heart of the Internet is information, specifically instant information. There are few questions that cannot be answered, or at the very least enlightened, by a quick Internet search.

For those socialized and educated through the old way of learning, such as using a card catalogue in a library, this new method of information seeking exists in contrast to the old way, and makes it better.

For the new generation coming up, there is no old way. The technology that has brought amazing advancements to Gen X and the Millennials will be the status-quo for Gen Z- they won't know anything else.

Rapid access to information will become, or already is, the norm. I imagine there are hundreds of students at the University right now that have no idea what a library card catalogue actually looks like, much less how it works.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with that, but that generation will need new skills to deal with this information.

This new generation shouldn't change for us - we should better ourselves and up the ante. Future educators will need to revolutionize the way they dole out and teach students to analyze information.

It's already happening in other parts of society.

In a 2008 study, The Context-Based Research Group found that young people responded better to information that was processed in quick, successive waves. Each wave increasing the level of detail, until a full picture was established. Using that information, several Associated Press branches tailored their style and found a great deal of success.

The writing is on the wall. While it may seem blasphemous to those that still remember the old ways, those ways may need to go the way of the Edsel and Windows ME.

Of course not all areas of education will change completely. Medical doctors will still need to know how to troubleshoot a patient's problems, and scholars will still have to be familiar with the body of work in their area. But the steps leading to those levels of education cannot remain as they are.

Without revolution or innovation we may find ourselves a shallow, under-educated society that has access to all the world's information, but without the capability to use it.

Originally published in The Daily Reveille...