Click here to receive your FREE subscription to Campus Technology
Mystery Content
Creating Tomorrow’s Classrooms
1/20/2005
Grummon d'esn’t expect the concept of the physical campus to go away anytime in the next century. “Nobody’s going to give up football games, residence halls—because we’re simply social beings. Students learn as much from their peers as they do from any professor.”
And massive IT support to sustain the technologies on campus will become less important. “Certainly, sophisticated scientific equipment will still have technicians, because there will only be one on campus. But for daily computing, we’re going to push responsibility to the individual.”
As she explains, “When we have the ability though browsers to communicate with anybody regardless of the computer platform we have, when you can buy a Dell computer for $449, perhaps we’ll dispose of ones that don’t work anymore. Maybe our ISP provider at home or at the university will back up all our files once a day... so when we’ve had it with [what] we have, we can junk it. We know we can go out and get a new one and plug it in and our ISP provider [will have] our shadow disk on it... We’ll just assign bandwidth to every human being at birth and that’s yours for the rest of your life... Except for massive terabyte data exchange super computing, every individual will take care of themselves.”
Through the gyrations of changes in devices, software, approaches to technology, Grummon hopes the people behind building the classrooms of tomorrow keep one question in mind: “Particularly when we’re looking at a campus where the creation, transmission, preservation, and application of knowledge is everybody’s mission, how do you make sure that the technology d'esn’t drive it but that the mission drives it?”
Creating the Classroom of Tomorrow Is Happening All Over
Clearly, there’s plenty of fodder for imagining what tomorrow’s classrooms will look like.
Campuses face a future filled with disparate devices—many mobile and wireless; lots of connectivity; greater collaboration anywhere, anytime; a growing population of non-traditional students with different technology needs; traditional students who expect a greater degree of tech savvy from their schools; a greater emphasis on distance learning. But as these examples show, tomorrow’s educators don’t necessarily see technology as the answer. Rather, it’s only part of the solution.
Along with the hardware and software, the bandwidth and innovation, they’re focused on the people, the partnering, and experimentation to learn what works. That serves as a reminder that no matter how technology changes the future, it remains only part of a learning equation that includes individuals working together to teach and learn.
|
1 2 |
»Back |
Dian Schaffhauser is a writer who covers technology and business. Send your higher education technology news to her at dian@dischaffhauser.com.
Cite this Site
copy text (above) for proper citation
Recommended Reading
- MANAGING EXCELLENCE: Campus Management Offers Another Choice for ERP
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementations don’t have to take years and cost millions. Just ask Campus Management Corporation. The Boca Raton, Florida-based firm offers robust but rapidly deployable ERP solutions for colleges and universities focused on student services.
- REINVENTING HISTORY
Sometimes the best way to respond to technology challenges is to innovate.
- Creating Tomorrow’s Classrooms
- Industry Resources
- Collaboration Brings Students, Schools Closer Together
- Collaboration Brings Students, Schools Closer Together
