well, teaching in a digital medium, I can not escape it obviously.. however, because we record each and every class via a mic and the movement on the screen, we find that student retention is much higher than when we just wrote on the board in the past.. however, this is only true when the revisit those videos.. this leads to a lot of comments like "did you watch the videos" when answering questions in class
Honestly though, with this process, we've also limited the amount of one on one time within class to those who simply don't understand, as opposed to those who didn't hear, or weren't paying attention, or late.. or missed class.. etc. This makes us tonnes more efficient in our teaching. An additional element to all of this tech is when we have a few schools branching out to the outer areas of the community where students find the commute difficult and can not find accomodations closer. We find these schools offering online classes where students log in to a domain and see a webcam and screen cam image of what's being done in class and the teacher can take over their screen and help them.. if you were to enhance that to a point where you can see their whole body as well as the ability to transfer screens and so on.. you can communicate more effectively.. the only thing that can't be done this way is purely physical. For example, it's unlikely that martial arts would be taught this way
Anyway, I'm 38 now.. I'm positive this direction provides a lot of potential in enhancing learning.. and so I doubt your "too old" excuse works
Just a matter of different views
I think that from a point of what you teach, something like google earth should be highly valuable as a tool. I mean, while forcing ones imagination to work for them can be good.. if they do it for everything the won't have any worldly knowledge to ground it in. If a person runs through a text book describing every type of stone and dirt sample in existence.. it's unlikely that when he get's out into the field he'll be as well trained as someone who has worked virtually with such materials. to be able to see them, and see how they change rather than simply read about it. Those kids learning about dinosaurs in their "natural" environment is a great tool to make them have fun (increases interest and thus retention) and if such info was accurate, if they were to have a time machine and go back they would be considerably more prepared
