The Latest Hi-tech Tools Reshaping the Future of Education

The latest advancement in technology and an influx of high-tech devices in the last few years has an impact on everything around us, and education and classrooms are no different. The new advancement in technology already changed the way we learn new things. The old traditional books are being replaced by ebooks, the notebooks by tablets, and the conventional blackboards with Smartboards.

With tech giants like Microsoft, Facebook, and Google more interested in investing money into the hi-tech gadgets and tools to make the classroom environment more productive for students, you can expect more radical changes in the coming days.

In fact, there is so much happening in the tech world, that it is hard to predict the future, but we can still hint about how the future will look like.

So what is happening in the tech world specifically for education?

How Technology Changed the Education?

First, let’s look at how the classrooms and learning environment changed in the last few years.

• Schools/colleges are making use of the internet like online classroom portals where students can submit their assignments.
• Students are using online help for their coursework, learning, and even hiring online online essay writing service for their assignments and essays.
• More and more students already using tablets instead of notebooks. According to a recent survey, around 76% of the secondary students in the UK are using tablets.
• Use of online collaborative software and interactive tools to study together.
• Use of cloud services to keep all their learning resources at one place online.

This is not it. There is a lot more happening in the tech world that has an impact on the education and how we learn and understand new stuff.

What About the Future?

It is expected, the future will change radically and traditional classroom environment will soon evolve into something completely different, as some groundbreaking technologies are making their way to the classrooms.

• Virtual and Augmented Reality Headsets (VR or AR Headsets)

Often termed as game changer, this new technology or technologies will soon have a huge impact how students learn new things in classrooms. Why? Because virtual and augmented reality is extremely useful for learning.

For example, in a traditional learning environment, you can read about the solar system, look at the pictures of the planets, or at most, watch a few videos. But virtual reality offers something more. You can now just put the virtual headset on and can actually walk on the surface of each planet, finding yourself in the middle of three dimensional images of videos. Want to learn about the age of dinosaurs? Just put them again with a different content uploaded, and find yourself in the middle of the jungle full of dinosaurs.

With thousands of Chinese tech companies creating content for virtual headsets for everything, from underwater life, history lessons, space, artworks, science, and anything you can think of, you can almost learn everything in three-dimensions with the help of these new gadgets.

The only catch here is, these headsets are still very expensive to be used by every student, but expectations are, they will soon become affordable for large-scale use.

• Customized Lesson Plans with New Tech and Tools

One of the drawbacks of traditional schools is – one course plan to fit all. This doesn’t work for many students, both for smart and slow students. But with the online collaborative tools, websites, software, and latest apps, more and more teachers are working on the new style of teaching – customized lesson plans.

For example, some teachers use “Khan Academy” to teach maths, where each student can have his personal account, personalized lessons, where his progress is tracked, while the teacher also has access to the progress of each student. Students have an option to customize learning using that website and its app.

Similarly, there are many more similar websites and apps that can help both teacher and students to create personalized and customized learning experience.

• Wearable Technology

Wearable technology like Google Glass are of great help for students. You can use Google Glass to capture notes and lessons, to revise later. Similarly, smart watches are also useful.

• Arduino Kits

Arduino Kits offer a unique and smart way of learning to secondary students. These are open-source electronic platforms that can be used by students to build anything they want. It uses a micro-controller board and allows kids to develop things on their own. If you want to develop programming and engineering skills, these are the best kits.

Here is the list of some other EdTech gadgets that can change the classrooms of the future:

• iPad Pro
• 3D Printer
• iPhone & iPad Projector
• Smartboards
• Smart Marker
• STEAM Kits
• Smart tables

Conclusion

When technology is changing everything around us, it certainly will impact education as well. Based on the recent advancements, and new found love of tech giants for EdTech, there is one thing for sure – the classrooms in a decade will be different from the classrooms of today.

Simply put, the entire model of education is going through a transition into a new phase – a tech-driven education, that will make learning easier and more fun for students.