Will traditional classrooms disappear in the future due to technology

Since the end of the eighteenth century, the world has witnessed a lot of developments and innovations in technology that have changed people’s lives so much better and easier. For instance, the birth of the Internet plays a crucial role in uniting communities and helping people to communicate; the improvements of computers have brought in a large amount of new jobs and reduced work time. Applying technology in classes is still new to the public because not all schools have enough budget to purchase cutting-edge machines and facilities. However, when considering the development speed of the world, the perspective of technological classrooms will definitely be within human’s reach.

Some updates in supporting tools of traditional classrooms are computers, projectors, loudspeakers and even inductive boards. Despite seeming helpful, they are, by some means, opening the possibility of virtual classrooms which require the Internet, personal computers, webcams, headphones and do not require students to go to school. The most obvious example is online education during the COVID-19 pandemic as governments have promulgated the regulation of social distancing.

First of all, it is clear that online studying appears to be more straightforward and economical. While traditional education expects students to be present at school and to bring with them piles of textbooks, students when studying online are just obliged to be online on time. This allows distant students to save a lot of time and money travelling in comparison to traditional one, especially for students from other provinces or countries. Secondly, recent situations happening in the world have revealed that online studying helps to prevent the community infection of respiratory diseases such as flu and most lately, COVID-19 caused by the coronavirus, and by so the chance of infection within schools is zero percent.

On the other hand, many criticisms are also given on this idea, coming from parents, teachers and even students. For the start, parents believed that they had to spend a great deal of money to prepare equipment and using computers too frequently could influence their children to spend more time indoors. In addition, teachers complained that they found it difficult and inconvenient to check their pupils’ progress and activities in class, as video quality would not always be excellent and pupils would not always obey what they were told. Besides, a large number of students also claimed that they preferred going to school because they wanted to meet friends and to exchange some issues on lessons with teachers after class directly.

Without a doubt, humans need to adapt themselves to new ways of living with technology so as to have the best efficiency in work. Nevertheless, that does not mean using technology and being in the virtual world are always the most appropriate. The rise of assistants such as Google Meet, Schoology and Microsoft Teams in recent months has proved the possibility of online studying and many educators hope that it will continue to develop in the future.

Author: Nguyen Thanh Nam, High School for Gifted Students