The paper never ran out

​The interesting thing about predicting the future is that it’s ALWAYS a gamble. You may guess correctly, but it’s far more likely that you’ll guess the opposite and be completely wrong. In the late 90s during the first dot com boom, business students were told that unless they understood how to code a website using html, they’ll be left behind. 

That, of course, never happened. Neither did the idea the internet was a fad or Amazon would never make money.

In education it becomes even more of a gamble when you try to guess the future, especially in the context of technology. If you guess incorrectly, you may send a student into the world with an incorrect or inappropriate skill set. The predicting is the most dangerous when you judge the usefulness of new technology. 

The paper never ran out.

Tablet and smart phone technology has become increasingly important in education.

Access to the web has become a fundamental human right.

Rather, technology seems to shape us quickly, intensely and permanently. Think of Facebook. Nobody really resisted Facebook, they just didn’t understand how to use it. Once it’s critical mass hit, it went gangbusters. Now there’s so much noise on a person’s Facebook feed, it’s essentially impossible to read it all. 

If, as an educator, you dismiss technology as useless you run the danger of being over run by students who are more capable then you because they embraced it. 

The person who thought that slate was never going away became outdated and expendable very quickly. The teacher who saw the potential of paper and began to use in their classes saw the realized potential very quickly.

Which teacher do you want to be?