As technology permeates all aspects of our lives, the question whether in the future technology will completely replace teachers is always on both educational administrators and teacher’s minds. After all, despite significant transformation and starting using online tools to distribute and manage classrooms, the classroom still remains the same for the most part. Why has the transformation been going slow, what is most likely deemed to happen in the near future, what will be the benefits and drawbacks of following or ignoring the imminent transformation?
Education is a highly regulated industry. Rightly so, it is the bedrock of transformation and the economy at large. It is a complexe transformation process that is supposed to produce the much needed human capital that the country, state and organizations desperately need to keep functioning. It doesn’t help that the sector itself is fragmented in different levels: pre-primary, primary, secondary, tertiary, and professional; organized both under private, public and a combination of public-private umbrella. With that any transformation requires involvement of different levels of bureaucracies that often sit on different sides of the lake.
The complexity of the administration structures has been at the core of a slow transformation, coupled with possible negative potential, risks and financial resources impact. Especially when the government is involved, if something works, people tend to be reluctant and adamant to pursue any change. It is true that the education sector, despite some criticism, is one of the most productive and well organized sectors, that has traditionally prioritized the much needed human connection between the learner and the teacher.
In that light, most technology solutions have focused on enhancing the relationship by solving the content and information accessibility, with the idea that the same mode of education content delivery should stay intact, But shouldn’t they? With platforms such as google classroom, moodle, the focus is on centralized location of information. The question is why hasn’t anyone replicated the entire online experience online? In my opinion, there can be different reasons, but all of them are outside of technology, possibly financial investments.
Although lacking drawbacks to ignoring the trend to at least integrate some form of online learning are numerous. One is that schools would miss out on availability of information reuse, and cost cutting. Another drawback would be time wasted, ineffectiveness, for instance, when all learning materials are in one place online, students can be spared having to buy physical textbooks, in addition, information would be easily shareable online.
Education is still centered on a human connection between the learner and the teacher, hence in the near future, it will be less likely that technology will replace teachers. It is however likely that as technology gets introduced and blended in the normal workflow, opportunities for private school operators will attempt to maximize profits, possibly sharply reducing the face to face interaction between the teacher and the learner as has been witnessed in the medical industry, this is still up for debate. Who knows what the future has in store for us?
This article was written for my new upcoming blog wallasplanet.com, where I intends to share my opinions in education and technology – all articles will be posted to all of our other platforms: www.standardgateway.com/blog, www.nationalexamination.com/news_room.php and edrivingschool.org – I follow education and technology sectors daily!…Thanks for reading.
