The Perfect Classroom

What is our job? We're teachers and we need to figure out a way to get our students better prepared for society and their futures. The nice thing, and the difficult thing, is there's help out there. Technology can make lessons better; more "real" for the students. This means we have to access this technology and generally that means MONEY!
In a perfect world, every student would have their own computer with a high speed Internet connection. There would be no more paper textbooks as the textbooks would be interactive programs found on their computer. Every classroom would have an interactive board such as a Smart Board or a Promethian, along with a document camera. There would be a fluid interaction between instruction from a teacher and software programs that can quickly evaluate a student's current level of instruction and can work from there for further instruction.
This is the ideal situation for an ideal education, but were not there yet. Due to the speed at which technology is growing, we will probably never be there, but it needs to be a priority to get as much technology into a classroom as possible, and have enough instruction for the teachers to use it properly.

VISUAL Students

Some teachers teach the same way they were taught. Is that OK? Is that doing the students justice? I think it comes down to the question of, are the students today the same as students when we were in school. Sure there are some similarities, but overall the differences greatly outweigh the similarities. We were much more accustomed to learning from a textbook. Students of today are very visual. They are used to hundreds of channels of television, extremely realistic video games, and the Internet giving them they ability to see just about anything at any time. As a coach I've always heard that your strategies need to fit the abilities of the athletes you have on your team. If you don't have a quarterback with a good arm then you don't focus on a passing game. In the same respect, if students work best with visual learning, then you don't give them everything from a textbook. In fact, to get them to learn best, they need to be able to work mainly with methods that will work with them.
Technology and the Internet must be a large part of the classroom. As a science teacher, the Internet can be a wonderful source of visuals such as interactive diagrams, simulations, videos, and images. Whenever I am teaching a unit I try to incorporate as many of these visuals as possible. In some cases I create a WebQuest for the students to follow as they do the learning. Much like technology is always changing, so is my teaching. I'm always on the lookout for a better way for the students to learn, or a way in which they will be able to use more skills such as collaboration, or evaluating a scenario, or using higher level of thought. Teachers need to be able to shift our styles as better options become available.