Classroom Dot Com: The Big Shift in Education

Throughout modern society it has become conventional wisdom that an education is necessary not only to excel, but to function in public. Times are said to have changed, and without proper schooling one is doomed to a life of either hard labor or low-paying pencil pushing. And if you're planning on paying for an education there is no escaping the fact that college costs are rising. Besides the hefty price tag, traditional schooling is consuming, socially and mentally, forcing a particular lifestyle upon the student. Further, the relationship between student and teacher maintains a certain depravity, as a professor holds a figurative gun to the pupil's head (any false moves may lead to a career crippling F). But what does the near future hold?

Within the past ten years information technology has pervaded the public sphere. Popular culture has been riddled with HTML and MP3's. From coding a blog to surfing a network, digital thought is reshaping civilization. Futurists have postulated that eventually cyber identities and interactions will be more significant than real life. The Internet has become a professionally and socially consequential compass. This tapestry has quilted a lush environment for intellectual maturation. As the realm of higher education begins to soak in the trends of Web 2.0, we could notice its trickle water the seeds of elementary level learning. Within the next year we will see the classroom move to the digital landscape, and various subsequent shifts.

I can say with a great deal of confidence that virtual technology will play a leading role in the future of education. Already most colleges and universities offer distance learning programs (online classes). Hybrid courses, in which physical meetings compose only a third of the course time, are also becoming popular. This model moves the educator from the head of the classroom, handing knowledge down, to a guiding medium. This new role forces a teacher to not merely present knowledge, but to be sympathetic in facilitating its acquisition. The characteristics of the contemporary web will push this trend forward.

The design of today's Internet aims to facilitate creativity, information sharing, and, most notably, collaboration among users. As scholastics begin to adapt to this new model we can expect to see the further proliferation of open source devises. Such resources digitally available today already allows for such a shift. Wikipedia alone serves as an ocean of open knowledge. Various colleges, including MIT, offer 'open-courseware,' which include lectures, videos, and notes for entire courses for free. EBooks, language courses, podcasts, and dictionaries have all become openly available in a spectrum wide enough to cover anyone's interests. Even aspiring musicians can learn basics of instruments, theory, and entire songs through online tablatures, sheet music, and video lessons. Rather than growing around current structures, we should move to evolve the system to fit our needs and goals. Next year the classroom will cross the digital divide, landing web users in a new paradigm.