Re: Technology and its future role in highschools...
 

Unfortunately you picked a really expensive subject to talk about. Depending on what you want to do it's horrendously expensive to equip a laboratory with anything beyond a multimeter and power supply. Then again I never really used anything beyond a multimeter,resistor box, and power supply in my physics course. Im not even sure if the multimeter I used was digital either. Personally, my high school has a cool technology department. I was one of the last people to actually get to create and etch their own circuit boards in an electronics class. Hehehe... I also got to play with electrophoresis to look at fake DNA.

Re: Technology and its future role in highschools...
 

The biggest problem of robotics overtaking major sports is the accessibility of it. Most people like to go see the sports, many times in part to see improvement and the more you see a team the more attached you get to it. Because robotics is generally a 1 or 2 event thing (1 regional, 2 regionals, 1 regional & championship) and that none of the events take place at a schools own location (students would have to travel quite a ways to see a competition) it would be hard for students to become attached and to love robotics the way they do other sports.

Re: Technology and its future role in highschools...
 

I live in a county where every high school and middle school student is issued an Apple iBook. About 24,000 iBooks are in service. We are now in to the fourth year of this program and now more than ever, I'm sad to say that I think the investment was a waste of money. I've seen few students actually use their iBooks as little more than $1000 Media players or coasters. Teachers have become aware of the abuses of the iBooks and now rarly use them in class activeties. With that said I believe that technology in my county will decrease and eventually disapear because of student abuses of the iBooks. I believe that in the next few years the school board will find a happy medium of iBook usage that will create more of a place for the iBooks as more of a learning tool for a greater percentage of the students and teachers involved.

Remember, just because technoloy is present in the classroom does not mean it will be a good learning tool compared to a good old fashoined book.

Re: Technology and its future role in highschools...
 

Technology and its future role in high schools will only be on the increase. Of course, sometimes you must chop off a finger to save the hand. From what I have heard, in my old high school, the administration was thinking of eliminating the technology department all together. This would include: woods, metals, photography, CAD, Digital technology. Of course this is just a rumor and I doubt they would close down all of that.

But yes, I do agree that technology in the classrooms is increasing. If you notice, more professionals are using Power Point to teach. Others are relying on video conferencing.

Why stop there? The more technology a school has the better it will prepare its students for the next steps. Whether it be in the military, a skilled trade, or college.

Re: Technology and its future role in highschools...
 

Not necessarily, there are the circuit boards that you just plug things into to create the circuits, they can be used every year etc. They wouldn't be that expensive. I can't think of another example right now, but I do not agree that its as expensive as you think - I'm not saying we should be soldering connections and stuff, you could even just use a battery and wires with alligator clips on it, etc. My point was that the theory of teaching should be changed. :)

In our school we have TVs in every class room (connected to the teacher's computer), hardly any teachers use them (none more than two or three times a year). Total waste of money that could have been spent better. In my opinion Proximas should have been bought not for every class room, but two or three per department.