Journal Article Blog The Sixth

"It’s Magic: An Educators Vision of the Future" by Annemarie Timmerman

This article was Timmerman’s vision of future education and the new uses of technology. She starts out with an example of a class. It’s supposed to be The Science of Harry Potter. The kids take the class at a Jet Propulsion Laboratory. They learn about how things fly, create their own flying broomstick models, and share their models and how it can fly with the rest of the class. She mentions something called the 21st century Instructional Revolution, which is supposed to change how schools are run and how education is taught. She says the revolution came about because of new technology which allowed teachers to change the way they did things in the classroom. She mentions something called “developmental modules” where I assume that takes the place of grade levels. She also mentions that new students who enter the concrete operational developmental module will get mentors. Personality tests and profiles are used to match mentors and what she calls cherubs, the new students. Mentors advise on what developmental modules to take and find out their interests and learning styles. In Timmerman’s vision students can create interactive holographic people and interactive worlds. One future project she mentions is the student making a hologram of a historical person and making the person appear just as they were in real life by researching them thoroughly. The students would then manipulate their holograms in a virtual seminar, responding themselves as the historical person would respond. Timmerman’s vision is basically that technology is going to be so much bigger in the future. We haven’t begun to use it to its potential in school. She also predicts a revolution where school will be very different.

I found this very interesting. I was a little confused when I read it, all the technology she talked about is beyond me. The future she talks about seems to have very intelligent students. I don’t know what the future is going to be like, but things will definitely change while I’m a teacher. I really hope that hologram thing happens while I’m a teacher. It sounds like a very interesting idea. Timmerman made future education seem like it would be much more interesting for students because it would be so interactive. Timmerman connected her article back to Harry Potter at the end, saying that students at Hogwarts enjoyed school because they were allowed to experiment and do things, and they constructed knowledge instead of just receiving it. I agree with that. My theory has always been that students learn better by doing and exploring, so I think that advanced technology may be able to provide that.