Better education through tech

Technology: Anything not found in nature – be it made by man, animal, alien, machine or whatever – that changes lives in some way.

While most technology is important to society on a large scale, I am concerned with two specific items that are in the position to change education – modern cell phones with integrated PDAs and Blackboard (the program, not the slate). Between the two, education can move from its tree-killing past into an advanced system of communicative learning.

At the end of the spring semester or the beginning of summer (I have no concept of time around finals), I opened an e-mail from one of my English instructors. He sent it to everyone in the class to let us know which books to buy and how to find our fall syllabus on Blackboard. Over the summer, he kept in contact with the class and before we met him, we knew to finish one novel and a PDF chapter from a text he posted to Blackboard. By the time I met him on the first day of class, I had already placed the syllabus, all of the PDF and the online texts into the appropriate folder on the 1-Gig memory card in my phone. From there, I can open the files with various PDF and e-book reading software to view them at my leisure. No more sitting at home under a lamp with 50 lbs. of books and binders. I have everything I need for his class at any given moment with a paperback novel and my phone. Being a pre-tech person, I still mark up the novels and print the texts if I feel I will have excessive notes, but for the most part I have no need of paper outside of taking notes in class. (Notebook PCs solve that problem, but that’s another issue.)

Another instructor e-mailed his class to explain that we had a Pod cast waiting for us and should listen to it before the first session. Again, we all logged into blackboard, downloaded the file and learned enough about the class, the instructor and his views on the topic to attend the first day without any questions about what we would be doing. This instructor didn’t hand out a syllabus, instead left it up to us to check Blackboard and either print it out or bookmark it for future reference.

Yet a third instructor teaches his class nearly paper free. He does assign textbooks, but that’s it. Everything is done online through Blackboard, blogging or e-mail. Outside of class notes, no reason to have paper comes to mind. I downloaded all of his online texts and PDFs on the first day of class. Why print them out if I can carry them in my pocket?

Keeping everything in my PDA phone offers the convenience of text messaging or e-mailing these professors as questions arise. I no longer have to wait until I get home or to the library to finish assignments – the phone has a slide-out keyboard and the ability to communicate with fold-out keyboards via Bluetooth or infrared. Type, save for editing later or send immediately. Between GPRS and Wi-Fi, my options are limitless.

I remember life before this educational power duo. Depending on student reports of instructor personalities and waiting for the first day of classes to determine if the course load would be stressful. Rushing home or to the nearest computer and essentially chaining myself to it to finish an assignment, then rushing back to the professor’s office to turn in an essay. Ugh! I don’t miss those days. Between hearing instructors voices, getting a head start on readings, knowing exactly what to expect from a class and carrying what equates to chapters and articles from 32 different sources on a card that barely fills the space it takes to write “1 Gig memory card,” I am able to prepare for class without chaining myself to a desk. Heck, I can read in line at the grocery store, while waiting on dry cleaning, during lunch or anyplace I like.

I’m not a hugely technical person, but I would definitely consider the PDA phone and Blackboard technology. Neither would exist without humankind’s ability to create outside of nature’s limits, yet both of them are changing my educational process, and in turn, my life.