My mom actually passed along a very interesting blog post to me which I thought I would share to you all. It is called 14 things that are obsolete in 21st century schools, and is written by Ingvi Hrannar Ómarsson- who is an Icelandic elementary teacher & Entrepreneur. I found this article very interesting as he details things he believes are no longer needed in modern schools, and there is a strong theme of creating connections and educating through and with technology. I recognize a lot of the things the author finds obsolete as things which existed in my elementary school, which reminds me of my recent challenge to myself to always keep moving forward. Here is the list of what things he thinks are now obsolete:
1. Computer Rooms
2. Isolated classrooms
3. Schools that don’t have WiFi
4. Banning phones and tablets
5. Tech director with an administrator access
6. Teachers that don’t share what they do
7. Schools that don’t have Facebook or Twitter
8. Unhealthy cafeteria food
9. Starting school at 8 o’clock for teenagers
10. Buying poster-, website- and pamphlet design for the school
11. Traditional libraries
12. All students get the same
13. One-Professional development-workshop-fits-all
14. Standardized tests to measure the quality of education
I encourage you to check out his blog post to see the reasoning behind each of these ideas. Do you think there are any other things that are obsolete in the 21st century classroom that he missed?