Technology has become something that we all rely on in our day to day lives. It has become something so needed that it actually becomes difficult to avoid it at times. Not so long ago, when the landscape of online participation was just starting out, a lot of people didn’t think any media platforms would make any lasting changes to the world. But along comes Youtube, which is now one of, if not the largest online sharing network in the world. The atmosphere of Youtube, in the beginning, was so positive, people weren’t making money off of anything, they just posted what they enjoyed and everyone seemed to have fun with it. But now that Youtube and Instagram are platforms for people to make a living out of, I feel like that underlying joy is gone; of course, there are still those who post videos or pictures who don’t get paid for it, and it feels like those people actually have the better experience with the platform.
Aside from regular life changing because of technology, schools experienced change as well. As said in our class, anything new was considered new technology, for example, the blackboard when it was new was considered an educational technology even though there was nothing technological about it, it was just a change. Teachers are now more than ever, having the difficult job of staying up to date with technology at the same pace, if not ahead of their students, I’m still a student and feel like I am already behind so I have some catching up to do. There will be new changes to the classroom and educational technologies every few years and if the teacher can find ways to incorporate some of those technologies into the school day that’s great, but it isn’t going to be necessary to have every single new thing that comes out the second that it comes out. I think that schools have done really good with adapting to new things fairly quickly, and that makes me think there shouldn’t be a problem looking ahead to the future of schools and teaching when it comes to how schools have been operating and are run.
Lochlin Winterton 