There is a generation gap between children and teachers that can make it hard for them to relate to each other. Teachers are used to paperback books and abacuses, while the youth understand e-readers and Justin Bieber. That is why teachers are getting new techniques and technology to help them capture the interest of their students, enabling them to provide a better education for the next generation.

Some of these new teaching tools are very unique. There are things that wouldn’t look out of place in the next Star Trek movie being used to teach today’s kids. It is almost enough to make us want to go back to school and use them. Almost. Here are five of the best examples of space age in education news in the current state.

eTextbooks

We all have memories of lugging around backpacks all day at school, packed with numerous thousand-page textbooks that seemed to be necessary to actually learn things. While our generation has strengthened, if somewhat curved, backs, our children need no longer feel our pain. Technology has come to the rescue.

Some schools are in the process of moving their textbooks from a brick like format to a digital format. This is great for several reasons. First off, a whole bunch of textbooks can be placed on one digital e-reader. This saves a lot of space. This also makes the textbooks easier to read, with pages being able to be saved, and not having to buy used textbooks where the previous owner thought it would be funny to cross out random sentences.

Social Networks