Teachers' Experience
Introduction
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The staff of the School of the Future are no longer coaches who merely instruct. With the use of technology in the learning environment, the verbal transmission of knowledge can be handled more efficiently with visuals and audio. The role of the teachers is to be facilitators, providing a student-centric study environment and an experiential education.
Methods of Teaching
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Multi-sensory
Other than the usual fare (animations, videos, PowerPoint slides), Virtual Reality (VR) is a feasible tool of education in the future. Pac-man and basic first-person shooting games already exist in a virtual reality form and the technology behind them has been undergoing vigorous improvements and revisions.
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Virtual reality used in the future classroom setting will simulate real-world situations in which problems present themselves as consequences of the user’s actions. In other words: A 3-dimensional form of Second Life in school, to facilitate learning and application with flexible thinking.
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In this virtual world, the teacher and classmates will interact with each other, and their actions will also affect each individual’s situation. This also induces more teacher-student interaction.
Interaction with Students
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Use of Multimedia
Because lessons are no longer based on lectures, teachers now provide learning materials and homework help through various platforms, including blogs, podcasts, vodcasts, video conferences and Google Docs (which is now accessible offline). But this is only the tip of the iceberg...
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Use of Technology
At the University of California's Machine Perception Lab (MPLAB), Ph.D. student Jacob Whitehill developed facial expression recognition for robot teachers. Through students' facial expressions, the robots will be able to tell how they are feeling, and how they are adapting to a particular lesson.
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The School of the Future utilizes this technology to gauge how students are grasping topics being taught.
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Robots Replace Humans?
Now you might be wondering how the use of technology will explicitly change the role of teachers in the School of the Future. Would technology progress to the point where teachers are no longer needed?
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Of course, a school run entirely by robots and computers seems workable enough when the above facial expression recognition technology actually exists, but in fact is not desirable nor practical. On the contrary, as technology progresses, the need for human interaction becomes increasingly significant.
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The School of the Future recognizes that technology today has led to a segregation of people. Socializing skills required for face-to-face communication have been dropped substantially, to be replaced by instant messaging. People face screens instead of each other.
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The school seeks to become a place of social mingling as well as studying. This will overcome the effects of over-reliance on technology. Students gain 'people skills'; they understand others, have clarity in self-expression, are able to resolve conflicts and collaborate.
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Educators also play an important role that cannot be replaced by robots: Disciplining students. Human teachers can or will seek to understand students and inculcate moral values in them. "The good teacher explains; the superior teacher demonstrates; the great teacher inspires." Remember: The School of the Future has a fleet of Great teachers.