Guest post by Carl Hooker, Director of Innovation & Digital Learning in the Eanes Independent School District: When I was in elementary school, I remember vividly arguing with my teacher about simple calculations. I had just received one of those awesome Casio calculator watches and was using it to complete some of the worksheet-heavy curriculum the teacher was pushing on my fourth grade mind. She told me, “You know, when you grow up, you won’t be walking around with a calculator in your pocket all the time.” Little did she know how far off she was as now we walk around with super-computers in our pockets. While this didn’t eliminate the need to know the process behind mathematical calculations, it does mean we can spend less time on memorization and more on practical application. Flash-forward to this week and Google’s announcement of their Pixel Bud headphones and its ability to translate between 40 different languages and you start to see some implications for World Languages classes in the future. The truth is, technology will continue to tackle the low-hanging fruit on the Bloom’s tree. That’s not going to stop anytime soon. We can already ask Alexa or Siri or Google just about any basic fact-based question out there and get an answer. Schools need to realize this now and begin to transition teaching and learning to more application, analyzation, and creative uses for knowledge rather than just the internal memorization of it. After all….Se non cambiamo, il mondo cambia senza di noi.
