"The Classroom of the Future": An Inappropriate Use of Tech or The New Way of Education?

Hello everyone. I have found an article that you may find helpful, problematic, or disturbing, depending on your point of view. In this article, which you can view here, there are some classrooms that have students learning by a computer. What makes this classroom so different is that the students are grouped together based on the results of the lesson the previous day and they are all given a lesson to learn and a quiz after the instruction is given to see if they have learned anything. What really makes this classroom different is that a computer based algorithm is telling the students where to sit, telling the teachers what to teach, and is giving the student feedback. In some cases, a disembodied computer voice assists to give the lesson, and a teacher will only comment on what the computer asked or will fill in the students answers, if need be.

In the example given in the article, a math class is used to show how the classroom works. The students, totaling about 100 per area, are sorted into groups of 20 or so. The groups are based on if they have learned the previous lesson. After the teacher and/or computer delivers the lesson to them they are given an "exit slip", a kind of small quiz to see if they have really learned the lesson or not. After the information from the slip is calculated, the computer uses an advanced algorithm, much like the ones used on Google searches, to see in what group the student should sit in the next day. The teacher is then given this information and is told what lesson they need to be teaching the next day. The process then repeats over again.

I feel that this article represents an interesting logical conclusion to the idea of blended education. In this case, education is still blended but I think it is fair to say that the computer is doing more work than the teacher. On some level, I think this isn't such a bad thing. When I look at how this math class is run, I can see some advantages. For those who do not want to take those higher math classes, like me, it would be an advantage to take classes using these computers, since I would be able to work at my own pace, and at my own level until I grasped the concept and then moved onto the next one. As a teacher, I would help with the more mundane tasks of grading, and that is always a plus!

However, I can see this as a problem for those of us who do like math. The idea that a computer will be trying to teach us a subject one loves can seem a little disturbing. Also, the cost of having this software for the school can be great. What are some other disadvantages? What do you guys think?