This is a great thought-piece Andrew.

I’ve also envisioned a world where the traditional teaching model as most of knew it will be flipped on its head by much of the technology that you mentioned.

We already see it now in the classrooms. The students no longer need or want a single source of information feeding them facts that they can look up for themselves online. This is the sad truth that many teachers are afraid to acknowledge.

As a soon to be math teacher myself, I’m interested to see how this plays out in the next few decades. Whether we like to admit it or not, the effectiveness of our current education model is questionable, uneven, and based largely on what zip code that students reside in. This is just one of the many issues plaguing our enduring and resistant to change education system, that keeps teachers leaving the profession and classrooms around the country without teachers to help guide students.

As you know, building relationships with students is one of the best things that we can do as teachers to help them not only learn more, but to also justify our uniquely human role as educators that would be difficult for technology to replace. That role will expand in the coming decades whether we like it or not, because many students already take advantage of the numerous methods available online to teach themselves whatever they want to know, sometimes while they are in class.

I think going along with this trend instead of fighting against it, will make life easier and better for us and students in the future.