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>> Amanda Lenhart: I think what's really different
about how students are learning today is really the kinds of tools that they have
to pursue learning in a lot of different forms, and by that I mean learning both informally,
so pursuing kind of a low-risk low-stakes environment --
how to learn how to play the guitar, how to knit a sweater, how to hack your favorite game.
But also they have a lot of tools that they are comfortable with in the home environment,
that they can then -- we're just now starting to bring into the school environment.
[ Silence ]
There's a lot of potential possible changes on the horizon.
It's -- you know, one thing I've learned in my job over the years is never prognosticate
when it comes to technology, because you'll be wrong.
But certainly I think the move towards integrating online tools,
online content into the classroom by flipping the classroom,
that's something that I know people are starting to experiment with,
both in the K-12 as well as in higher education space.
I think certainly figuring out how to harness the devices
that students already use is something that I think will be really quite different
in the future in the classroom, but right now I think it's important to remember
that students don't always use technology in particularly radical ways.
I mean in your typical American high school they use it, but it's not anything
that would be particularly surprising to people who care a lot
about technology and are really interested in it.
[ Silence ]
Institutions like Dartmouth have big challenges ahead of them.
I mean certainly today's teachers tell us that the distraction component
of technology use is big and real, and figuring out how to manage
that in the classroom setting is I think a challenge that's ahead.
Some of that can be done by putting things like lectures,
and more sort of boring content delivery as something that you do on the side perhaps
through video, and bringing engaging tasks into the classroom,
whether that's peer collaborative learning.
I think that by universities really thinking broadly about how to include,
and creatively about how to include technology into the classroom, that's what's going
to carry you into the 21st century.
And certainly Dartmouth is well positioned as it moves forward.
It's doing a strategic plan, which already says it's thinking about how it wants to be
in the future in really critical ways.
And also Dartmouth is an elite institution that has a really strong sense of place.
And I think that's something to build on, and add technology into that as opposed to trying
to radically change that base model that you have.