By: Jester James A. Alejan

Being born in an era of informational and technological advancement, those born past the dawn of the new millennium or the Generation Z are raised in an environment where anything they need to know and most of anything they want to do can be attained by a mere push of a button or as the even more advanced gadgets offer---a touch of a screen.

This then poses a new challenge to the existing and even to the up and coming teachers born under the previous generations. When information is gathered by students faster than the teacher finishes scanning the table of contents, how can we still be able to maintain a 'teacher' image without being deemed obsolete?

The first thing that we may be able to do in order to address this 'challenge' could be to keep up with the advancements. This may be easier said than done but knowing the difference between 'selfish' and 'selfie' can mean the difference between a boring and an engaging class discussion. The second would be to actually use these technological advancements to the advantage of the whole class. Growing up at a time when cell phones were nothing but a distraction, i was used to the banning of gadgets during class hours. However, now that smart phones offer more than covert conversations, such a policy may not be as necessary as it once have been (provided that use of gadgets benefit the student during the class). We might hate to admit it, but times have changed. Dictionaries and almanacs are no longer bound in bulky pages. Instead, they can be tucked away safely, neatly and conveniently in the phones as mere applications and can be of great use if the students get the right motivation to use them.

Of course, swimming with the tide does not necessarily mean abandoning all hope of giving the students of today a taste of the traditional 'old-fashioned' ways. Perhaps we just need to ease on the chalk for a bit and let the light of the LCD projector illuminate the way towards better learning. There is no school like the old school but it does not mean that it cannot be run with new tools.