About the project: The most recent generations of students had been through a great amount of changes and technological revolutions. These kids are digital natives at an earlier age. Meanwhile schools and teachers keep using the same elements to teach their classes that they used on the previous century. The objective of the project is to help close the technological gap between students and teachers, by bringing new ways to use the modern technology as a support for the class and the teaching process. Current Scenario: It had been observed that today's generation of children have a very fast skill of learning technology and learning through technology. By the time Generation Y (those born in 1982 or after) are turning 21 years old, they have:
On the other hand, teachers and schools today do not implement technology for the purpose of teaching. The school provides textbooks that often become outdated prior to actual publication and teachers continue to conduct long lecture forms, thus missing the opportunity to engage children in the same way that their world around them is. They experience difficulty in responding to and learning from the traditional lecture model, instructed on how to obtain the right answer the right way, with no room for additional solution paths or tailoring for an individual child’s learning style. In today’s classroom, the teacher, although wiser, should be a guide to the onramp of learning through new technologies allowing students to learn by doing, not by getting told what to do/think. Our Objective: The Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) proposes to create three interactive “edutainment” projects. (Edutainment means an experience that simultaneously educates and entertains. Based on input from and close collaboration with IU1, ETC will seek to solve specific academic challenges, envision what is possible in classroom education, then design and prototype interactive software and hardware to test. The projects will focus on promoting skills that standards in current educational system aspire to achieve – such as problem solving, critical thinking, creativity, interdisciplinary collaboration, etc. - skills that are also in high demand in the workplace and by the community. The projects will be crafted with the following challenge in mind: knowing that children are digital natives and innately savvy with many interactive technologies, how can educators better embrace technologies children are using daily (which educators themselves may not be) and craft their learning experiences around these technologies to engage the child and make more relevant the desired content |
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