Making Schools More Engaging and Relevant

Currently, schools are having problems with being engaging and relevant. Many students feel the knowledge that they learn in their classes is either not useful in the real world or just not very interesting in the way it is presented. There are three concepts that can rectify this problem of low engagement and relevance.

First, laptops. Almost everyone has one at some point in their life. According to the book, many teachers, students, parents, and policymakers view "1-to-1" computing - which is the allowance of laptops for all students and teachers - as an effective, useful, and more engaging tool in the learning process compared to traditional pencil-and-paper methods. It increases organization for teachers and students, it increases efficiency in writing, submitting, and grading assignments, and it increases the methods available for teachers to instruct the students. I have personally found laptops to be essential to my education. My writing ability grew because I was able to make quick revisions, my communication skills grew because I was able to discuss with peers about topics, and my learning grew because I was able to access up-to-date and relevant information across the web. Since I have found much benefit in laptops, I would also like to see my future students to be using laptops. One instructional method I could use is having my students write short stories and essays periodically throughout the school year and then have each student peer review other students' work in order to make them better critical thinkers and writers.

Another concept that can help schools to be more engaging and relevant is social networks. Facebook is the big one out right now. It offers people a way to connect online that would be unfeasible offline. According to the book, social networks are a great way to have students collaborate with each other on school projects, or to give students a voice who are normally quiet in person. In other words, it levels the playing field so that all students can interact with each other in a safe, neutral, and encouraging environment. In my experience, social networks have been very useful for me. From staying in touch with distant friends and relatives to debating in online discussion boards to creating learning communities with my colleagues, I have been able to use all sorts of social networks to accomplish the simple goal of interpersonal immediacy and teamwork. It is my hope as a future teacher that my school will have its own social network that the students can use to make friends, collaborate on assignments, and discuss ideas and concepts. And if the school doesn't have one, I may be able to convince the principal to create a grassroots version via a self-created online forum with the help of the school's tech support.

Lastly, educational games are an effective way of making schools more engaging and relevant because they offer students a method of interacting directly with the material that they are learning, whether that's a digital dissection of a frog in biology class, a hypertext string in language arts class, or a Minecraft excursion in physics class. The book states that even the U.S. government is finding educational games (aka "serious games") as useful, such as for military applications. It is clear that there is a very broad use for educational games in the modern era. From my personal experience, I have found great use for educational games. When I was younger, I played games like Math Blaster, Typing Tutor, among others that really engaged me with what I was learning. Sometimes I would even inadvertently learn a lot from a game that wasn't purpose built for education, such as Civilization V, where taxes, international diplomacy, city managing, national history, war strategy, and land development are a common occurrence. As a future teacher, I plan to use games like these (in moderation) to help students figure out concepts about reading, writing, and most importantly, critical thinking.

These three concepts - laptops, social networks, and educational games - have been a great asset to me and to many others in our educational careers. I believe that as an aspiring teacher, I will be able to use these assets to make my school curriculum more engaging and relevant to the students because they will be able to learn, interact, and explore educational concepts in ways that they could not do before. While future technologies may be vastly different than today, one thing is definitely certain: students love technology. And the faster that teachers appropriately apply this technology to their classrooms, the faster the students will learn!