I’ve been working as a private tutor for more than a decade now (geez, I AM old!). Through the years, I’ve seen how school curricula have evolved with the advances in technology. Gone are the days when class presentations entailed crude charts and drawings on cartolinas or manila papers posted on the blackboard. Nowadays, students present their projects or group work through Power Point presentations or other such media. Creating websites are now part of high school curriculum and some schools are even encouraging their students to create their own blogs.
Lessons have become more and more complex with current curriculum being much more advanced than the ones during our youth. The Algebra that we’ve studied when we were in high school is now being tackled in grade school. Would you believe that there are schools that include solving algebraic equations in two variables in their fourth grade curriculum? Grade school students now present their own thesis before advancing to high school.
To complement the challenges posed by these increasingly difficult lessons, technology has now made it easier to find information about almost absolutely anything in the world. There’s a veritable wealth of information right at your finger tips. Books in the library are gathering dust as it is rather easier to find answers to questions through the internet. There is plenty of online help for students (and parents) struggling with their advanced, goes-over-the-head kind of homework. A simple Google search should land you with quite a few resources such as Bookworm help with assignments covering a vast area of subject matters, so kids don’t have to scratch their heads over that incomprehensible assignment anymore.
Although I’d still rather flip pages of a book than read an electronic copy of it, I must admit that when it comes to researching homework, using the internet is the fastest and best way to find answers.
With “google” now considered a verb in the Oxford dictionary, all information is now available at the tip of our hands. All we need to do is to google it.
I honestly do not like this idea. I feel that the school are making things too easy for kids. It’s true that they are opening the kids to the advance way of learning. But I’m afraid books and libraries will become obsolete in the very near future because of this early use of technology in school.
I myself still love the smell of book paper and the sound made when you flip the pages. But, really, even textbooks now come with CDs which the students can use when reviewing for exams. And with the proliferation of eBooks and tablet PCs now, our little ones might grow up in a paperless society. So sad to think about it like that though.