My Educational Philosophy

Looking at the classroom 20 or 30 years ago is like peering into a different world, students seated together in a crowded room, the teacher stand on the stage ramrod straight and strict, giving lectures by rote from an old fashioned slate blackboard. Technology has come a long way since then, now new gadgets; new software and digital classrooms are emerging. However, due to the disparity and inequality of economic development, there is a huge gap between urban and rural education development. In rural areas in China, the resources are lacking; instruction method is stale; lack of specialized instruction and tutoring. Any excellent education technology resources can make a great difference in student’s lives.

I believe the first thing is to raise the awareness of people about the importance of the use of technology in education, and then they would start to invest in technology and bring it to school.

Second, it’s essential to break the stale atmosphere in a traditional classroom by setting up a creative system or platform that attract students’ attention. A student’s brain is always paying attention to something, described by Patricia Wolfe as “attention is selective”. So the problem truly lies in how to keep student’s attention focused on the learning experience that are relevant?

Third, similar to the perspectives of Sugatra Mitra, Dr. Maria Montessori also believed that no one is educated by another person. A truly educated individual continues learning because he/she is motivated from within by a natural curiosity and love for knowledge. Therefore, fostering children’s interest and curiosity is vital. Applying a new education technology in classroom would quickly attract students’ attention and give them something new and fun that promote them to learn by themselves. Take the example of reading class, students are often tired of the limited amount of books that are available in a resource constrained setting; teacher’s instruction method is just by reading it, if there is any words students don’t understand they have to stop and use dictionary. But if we could supply this classroom with tablets that has a reader for every student, they could browse the list of books and choose their favorite to read. If there are difficult words to read, they could use the online dictionary to quickly catch the words and translate them. A tablet is a study platform that contains teaching video, quizzes, pictures, text materials etc. Students could already learn by themselves with this tool. Teacher in this classroom becomes a guide or coordinator to help student learn by themselves rather than the teacher lecturing the whole lesson.

When technology was being valued in school, I believe it’s also useful to introduce the Universal design for learning guidelines. It gives a guideline and framework for multiple means of representation, multiple means of action and expression, and multiple means of engagement. Students learn and focus better when they can use their hands, and they are stimulated in visual, auditory and kinesthetic ways. Education technology can be applied in promoting Universal design for learning guidelines in classrooms that benefit the learning process of students.

Last but not the least, safety and healthy boundary of using technology in classrooms should be equally stressed.