About six-months ago, I was having an interesting conversation with a high-school history teacher, who also taught math and physics. I told him that the best way to learn a language was – and he interrupted me and said “immersion” – okay no secret there, we all know this right? Well, the point I wanted to make there was that the best way to teach history is also immersion, of course, the only problem is that history is in the past, as it has already occurred and as of yet, humans do not have the technology to travel back in time – remember I said; YET!
But what if all the sides of the classroom were graphene coated, with carbon nanotubes behind them? And what if each one of the walls was a giant display, and what if you were crossing the Delaware with George Washington, and there were boats depicted on all the walls, and they were quietly rowing across the river to attack the Red Coats? Do you think if you were sitting in a desk in the center of the classroom watching all the boats row along with you, and were listening to the conversations between the men, that you would remember what they said? Of course you would remember, and that’s how we should be teaching history through immersion.
Now then, let’s take this to a higher level, in the classroom of the future, why should we just teach history, and language (or ESL) using such technologies? Why not take it up and notch, why not teach mathematics and physics the same way? And why not bring the display upon the walls into the center of the classroom, using holographic imagery? We have the technology to do this now, but it would probably be too costly, especially at a time when we are trying to cut our schools budgets.
Nevertheless, there would be more learning going on if the teachers did not have to spend all their time trying to keep control of the classroom, and the technology could entertain the students and keep their interest. Thus, they would advance quicker and theoretically be able to skip grades, thus, saving the school money.
When students were working on solving problems in trigonometry, calculus, or quadratic equations – each of the objects they were trying to determine could be holographically displayed. In other words it’s not just hieroglyphics with numbers and letters in the form of complex and complicated equations anymore.
Instead, the math comes alive, it means something, and it represents something important. It makes the problem real, a lot more real than merely a word problem, asking the children to visualize and image it in their brain. In this way they can see and visualize it, and therefore, their spatial reasoning will take off, and that part of their brain will begin to expand, giving them a lot more potential for higher math in the future.
Then when they go home and they’re working on their electronic iPad type tablet textbooks, they will begin to see mathematics in a whole new light; holographic light that is. Indeed I hope you will please consider all this and think on it.
Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Nationwide Franchise Chain, and now runs the Online Think Tank. Lance Winslow believes writing 23,500 articles by mid-day on June 23, 2011 is going to be difficult because all the letters on his keyboard are now worn off..
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