Introduction

Education Today

For over a century, education has remained largely unchanged. Classrooms full of students 

deferring to the wisdom of an all-knowing professor has, is, and many believe, will continue to be 

the accepted mode of instruction. Despite many technological advances and the introduction of 

new pedagogical concepts, the majority of today's classrooms continue to utilize this traditional 

mode. Educators have thrived in a bubble immune from advancements in technology, but the 

increasing rate of change of these advances now look to be threatening to burst this bubble. 

The world is changing -- it is getting both smaller and bigger at the same time. Our world shrinks 

as technologies now allow us to communicate both synchronously and asynchronously with peers 

around the world. Conversely, the explosion of information now available to us expands our view 

of the world. As a result of the ability to communicate globally and the information explosion, 

education must change. Most educators might not want to change, but the change is coming -- it 

is a matter of when not if. The challenge is to prepare the children of today for a world that has 

yet to be created, for jobs yet to be invented, and for technologies yet undreamed. As we will see, 

the driving forces of Moore's Law, Metcalfe's Law, technology fusion, and a changing world 

economy are redefining the way our children need to be taught. The current teaching paradigm of 

the teacher as the possessor and transferor of information is shifting to a new paradigm of the 

Disclaimer: The research materials are collated from web based resources.teacher as a facilitator or coach. This new teacher will provide contextual learning environments that engage students in collaborative activities that will require communications and access to 

information that only technology can provide. 

It is no secret that education is slow to change, especially in incorporating new technologies. This 

is described by Jukes and McCain (1997) as paradigm paralysis, the delay or limit in our ability to 

understand and use new technology due to previous experiences. It takes new experiences to 

replace the old ones, and this simply takes time. Unfortunately, education can no longer take the 

time it wants. The trends in technology are creating a future that is arriving faster than education 

is preparing for it. We must therefore ask what are these trends and how will education adapt to 

them? To answer these questions, the techniques of H.G. Wells will be used. Wells, the father of 

futures studies, "had a gift for seeing how all the activities of humankind -- social, cultural, 

technological, economic, political -- fit together to produce a single past, and by extension a 

single future" (Wagar, 1993, pg. 52). First we will take a brief look at our past to formulate an 

understanding of the trends of today. This will be followed by a detailed analysis of these trends. 

Finally, we will peek into the crystal ball and predict the future of technology and education.