by Alexander Darracott

Created on: February 19, 2009

The basic premise of education and learning in the classroom has always had the same principles and values; that is, a good education will lead into higher education institutions, better employment prospects and a better quality of life. What has changed over the past number of decades is how the education and learning should be delivered to students. From the chalk and blackboard days of when I was at school to the wizzy-wig of Interactive Whiteboards, learning portals and huge computer suites, the delivery of Learning has been revolutionised by Information Technology.

In order to assess the current use of technology in modern day classrooms it is always useful to assess the technology of the past. Technology in its basic form is the application of theory to physical development: electrical theory; the discovery of the Electron, led to the development of computing technology, and other products that need to use electricity to function. With this definition of technology in mind, technology has always been in existence within the classroom: it has simply been the subject of continuous improvement.

Prior to the 15th century AD, during the Dark and Middle ages before printing technology arrived, there was little means of teachers to visually represent the learning to their pupils. Learning at this point therefore adopted a very hands-on, practical approach. Topics such as Mathematics and other Sciences were out of favour; instead, young people were learning a craft: ship building, brick layering, agriculture, horticulture and fishing. The notion that education and learning were about learning and developing new ideas and concepts, as was heavily promoted during the times of Socrates' learning method, was not of any relevance in society; instead, it was replaced by a system that spoonfed children with the same information and knowledge in order to produce a workforce that suited society at the time. Essentially, children and young people were being built like machines to work in a society that provided little in the way of freedom of individual thought and analysis. Albert Einstein certainly buckled the trend by refusing to learn what was thought at the time as conventional knowledge, instead challenging common knowledge and successfully developing new knowledge famously illustrated in his Theory of Relativity.

By the middle of the Victorian times, teachers began to have the technology that allowed for a richer visual learning experience. Chalkboards had arrived

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