The world has changed, and new young generations are online more than ever. How will this affect future classrooms? Well, kids and teenagers are more used to being bombarded with information all the time, in various formats and full of movement, text, music and flashy images.

Sadly, in lower-income homes, the amount of time spent online is more than necessary, this means that in lower resources schools, students’ attention spans will be lower than the average.

This is a challenge that universities are already embracing, introducing courses such as Educational Technology in the future teachers’ curricula. This and continuous learning of teachers to adequate to modern times are two important factors to keep students engaged in their education in the future.

There are already many ways in which education has evolved, we as teachers try to make liberating education, where students seek what they want to learn, and the teacher stops being some sort of lecturer and starts being a guide to achieve higher degrees of knowledge, rather than memorizing what it is written on a whiteboard for instance.

At last, I think it is fundamental to keep a balance between what we can achieve through a screen (which is plenty), and what we can do physically, with our own hands. There are different approaches to the whole diversity of school curricula, so as long as teachers keep themselves informed, equilibrium will be achieved.

Image by Iconic Bestiary – Shutterstock

Talking about Douglas Adams in our Reactions to Technology, I agree with his ideas. It is only logical that past certain age milestones, we change our perspective on new things.

Also, taking into consideration the report: “Teens, Social Media and Technology 2022” by Emily A. Vogels, Risa Gelles-Watnick, And Navid Massarat, the statistics can be kind of scary, especially for older parents, caretakers and teachers; because everything is changing so fast, and technology, internet and social media have a main role in everyone. But I know for sure that some basic technology literacy will be enough for most people to not feel excluded from everyday changes.

Although a little bit old, Wesch’s video “An anthropological introduction to YouTube“, shows a very insightful approach to how new people-generated media replaced normal TV in popularity, and became a way to reflect our world, and even shape it. In my opinion, this is a very ahead of its time perspective, and now more than ever can be seen in reality.