Technology in schools FUTURE CHANGES IN THE CLASSROOM


Technology of all kinds has changed the way in which schools teach almost every subject on the curriculum. David Devey, head of learning technology at the Alice Smith School, Kuala Lumpur, examines the latest education-related technology and offers his predictions for the future.


echnology has become so prolific in education that tablets and laptops are now almost as ubiquitous as pens and pencils as part of a student’s start-of-school kit. There are apps, websites, videos, games and classroom management tools that can be used to support and enhance the teaching of almost every conceivable curriculum area. Tools like G-Suite (the rebranded Google Apps) and Microsoft Office 365 have enabled communication and collaboration on a new level and truly ‘distributed’ the traditional classroom to a point where learning can take place anytime and anywhere. Collaborative workspaces and communications with teaching staff have become as easy as opening Google Classroom in your browser.


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A few years ago, many of these features would have been referred to as a ‘virtual’ classroom – a stagnant and bland place


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where students could draw on shared whiteboards, watch videos provided by their teachers, and send instant messages to their peers. Today, these are simply a part of a standard classroom and no longer seen as virtual. Instead, we are on the cusp of a technological advance that has the potential to reinvent education and truly revolutionise what the virtual classroom really means.


VIRTUAL REALITY JOINS THE MAINSTREAM Virtual-reality (VR) technology has been around since the early 1990s, a time when graphics were neon and blocky, and where entering a virtual world involved strapping a three-kilogram helmet to your head and stumbling around a restrictive circular treadmill. This type of VR experience was a novelty, at best.


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