Transforming K-12 Classrooms with Digital Technology

Abstract

Powerful emerging technologies, data systems, and communications have converged to change how we play, work, communicate, learn, and even what we think. It is fundamentally changing our institutions and support systems, especially our schools and their classrooms. Thus, the teachers that use these classrooms need to also change. If schools and classroom designed for a 20th century industrial age are to survive, then how do they need to be transformed to respond to the rapidly changing needs of today’s 21st century students? There is currently much “hype” on what technology can do for students and their classrooms. This chapter explores what the research says works regarding the integration of digital technologies for schools, teachers, and most importantly the 21st century students that today’s classrooms are intended to serve. However, with most emerging technologies, the research has not kept pace with the ever increasing advance, so this chapter also highlights some of the promising new technology devices, programs, and educational practices in need of quality evaluative research. By exploring how today's students and their learning needs are being changed by current and emerging promising digital technologies, a personal vision for the reader should begin to emerge on how schools might transform their 20th century teachers and classrooms into spaces, including virtual spaces, that better serve today's 21st century students.