THE SCHOOL FOR THEIR FUTURE OR FOR OUR PAST?

Mari Petrelius is an educational technologist and biology teacher who is very concerned about the worries teachers have regarding the use of technology in class. She is sure that, somehow, society makes us believe that everything was better at old times and maybe teachers are afraid of changes and worried about their possible mistakes and lacks in this field.

We, teachers, are continuously asked to implement new technologies in our lessons, to integrate their use in the curriculum but, hang one, what are new technologies? Or even better, new technologies for whom? Technology is technology only for those born before technology. Would we consider flushing a toilet technology? It may have been technology at a time, but is not considered so any more. The same happens with the use of tablets or social networks. Most of our students were born after the invention of these ‘new technologies'. So they use them as natural tools for their development, their communication and, in the end, for their daily life.

However, we still force them to use the technology that maybe was new at our childhood, or even our grandparents' time. If almost every single aspect in our society has changed, why do we still teach in the same way teachers used to teach when they needed to educate people to work in line manufacturing factories two hundred years ago? Maybe our society, maybe the advancement of our society, is demanding other types of citizens, with other skills and other ways of working and organizing. Why are we educating today's generations as if they were going to live in the 19^th century? Has this got any connection with the lack of motivation or the poor results many teenagers obtain?

It is clear that a change must be done. A deep change that definitely will have an impact in our present and future. The question now would be, what are the best tools, software or apps we should use and integrate? Unfortunately (or actually, luckily), technology progresses much quicker than our minds can think about. According to Petrelius, there is not a perfect device or app. Our aim as teachers is to teach with and use as many different ones as possible to make students FLEXIBLE (again this idea of flexibility so recurrent in Finland) and able to change for one app or one gadget to another and to use them with instinct because in THEIR future they will probably be asked to use software that does not even exist today.