We Are In The 21st Century, But Are Our Schools?

By Diego Camposeco

Recently, I attended a teacher workshop with the purpose of assisting a webmaster update the new school website, while he explained the website to the teachers. However, while I was tinkering with the website, I noticed that many of the teachers in the workshop were having great difficulties with the technology. I ended up having to leave my duties and help the teachers log on to their email accounts, upload their syllabi to the website, import their contacts, and other presumably universal tasks.

I can understand why many teachers may not have Myspace or Facebook accounts. They may not understand the concept of Twitter and RSS Feeds. All these technologies and ideas are relatively new and seemingly useless to the archaic teacher. But when teachers cannot even get to the school website to check their email because the idea of browsers is an enigma to them, our school systems have a problem. How can we prepare our students for the global playing field when the teachers we employ are ill-prepared when it comes to technology?

I also understand that this scenario is not present everywhere, nor is it unique to this school. But to know this is present in some schools today is an unnerving issue. China has the number one amount of internet users in the world. They are preparing themselves. How can America stay competitive if we are being left behind? We need to find a way for America as a whole to embrace technology.

Now, I’m not calling for a Cold War-esque America where we invest vast amounts of money into new technologies and ways to prepare our students for the technological age (although this may work too). The solution to this problem is simple. Hire recent college graduates as interns. Having a few of them in every school will move schools forward. What the fresh college graduates lack in experience, they make up for with mastery in 21st century technology because they have been well-schooled on computers in college. They have their iPhones synced to their Microsoft Outlook, Facebook, and Twitter accounts. They know the difference between Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Chrome. And a good amount of them could even tell you the cons of updating your computer from Windows XP to the Vista OS (or they flat out tell you that the Leopard OSX is superior).

With school budget cuts due to the economic recession, this solution may have to come to fruition slowly. But I am not saying this is the only solution. Send teachers to workshops on essential technologies of the 21st century taught by their own students. Somebody told me one time, “Teachers are the hardest to teach.” I don’t know if this is true, but to better instruct and prepare our students for the “flat” world (Go read “The World is Flat” by Thomas Friedman), we must make sure our teachers understand what their students are getting ready to jump into. We are in the 21st century. Simply knowing how to make a PowerPoint presentation doesn’t cut it anymore.

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