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"Smart" Things To Do
In today’s technology-fueled world, where students seamlessly integrate smart phones, wireless connectivity, and streaming data into their everyday lives, it seems only natural--and quite necessary--that institutes of higher learning follow suit. NYIT has always been proactive when it comes to the integration of technology and teaching. The learning process, however, must continue to evolve as we search for new ways to define the classroom experience for the new multitasking, mobile generation.
Earlier this year at the YPulse 2008 National Mashup, a conference that focused on how teens use technology, media and marketing executives concluded that the future for young adults is--no surprise--mobile. Among the predictions: mobile phones will surpass the need for desktop computers among teens, and all-in-one devices such as the iPhone and similar smart phones/pocket computers will become everyday essentials.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs demonstrated technology’s potential as an educational tool over the summer when Apple upgraded its iTunes download service to provide third-party programs to iPhone and iTouch users. Educational software teaching music, anatomy, literature, math, and foreign languages were among the first applications available. Clearly, academics are not the only ones who want teachers and students to harness the marvels of new technology.
Today’s universities cannot simply add computer monitors to their classrooms and pass themselves off as technological institutions. Further-more, teaching methods that are “so last century” and do not take into account the willingness of today’s youth to wrap their lives around technology will lead to major disconnects between students and teachers.
At NYIT, we adopt the technology that tomorrow’s college students know—technology that will allow us to teach them more effectively. In doing so, we are seeing dramatic changes that reach beyond the physical classroom. We see a redefinition of the classroom as technology allows us to reshape the role of education in a wireless global society.
The so-called “smart” classroom, draped with technology and other devices to facilitate learning, is becoming a normal part of education. But the value of “smart” has far less to do with how much technology is available than with how it is used. For example, many schools use technology to bring a conventional lecture to a wider audience. NYIT instead takes full advantage of the interactive nature of two-way video to extend the learning experience beyond the confines of a single classroom. Over the past decade, our professors have taught more than 130 courses per year from our video-conferencing classrooms connecting students at our two New York campuses to one another.
But that is still 20th-century thinking. Our plans today include using technology to foster greater interaction among students and professors from different regions and diverse backgrounds. Beyond engaging students in the classroom, we plan to offer full courses where students will have the opportunity to interact regularly with classmates around the world. We have already conducted a real-time business management course with students in Bahrain and New York. And during this semester, we are offering a political science seminar focused on the U.S. presidential election that will connect students from our campuses in Amman, Jordan, and New York.
This active exchange of ideas will offer unique learning experiences, as well as cross-cultural connections and new perspectives on the world—key to competing in the global marketplace. As NYIT alumni, you are first-hand witnesses to how technology can positively impact the educational experience.
Redefining what it means to be a 21st-century university is at the core of NYIT’s mission as the geographic barriers that once divided students, alumni, and professors worldwide vanish. No one can predict where our data-driven, global society will take us in the next decades, but technology will pave the digital roads to wherever we choose to go.
Sincerely,
Edward Guiliano, Ph.D.
President