The development of technology has seen its application become diversified and has made it impact every area of our lives. Education is one of the areas that has been impacted significantly by education. When talking about education and the classroom, one must first acknowledge that the modern student is already highly interested and engaging in the use of technology. This has created amazing opportunities that teachers, schools, and students can benefit from. While the use of technology in the classroom can be beneficial to students, its integration can be challenging as teachers can find several challenges of integrating technology in the classroom. This paper considers the reasons why technology is used in education, how it is used, my experience with technology in the classroom and how I plan to use it in the future.
Reasons Why Technology is Used in Education
The modern student engages with technology on a daily basis through the use of computers, smartphones, and even television. Students find technology quite interesting and would be more engaged when using technology in the classroom. Educators can thus leverage technology and create a classroom environment that is engaging and personalized so as to meet the emerging educational needs of students in the current generation (Rich, 2010). With the use of technology in the classroom, students are expected to be more engaged and will find learning enjoyable and more fun. It can enable active participation among students which was difficult to achieve in the traditional lecture environment.
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Technology in the classroom through the use of the internet enables students to have 24/7 access to a wide variety of information. The internet has enabled global communication and created new access to information. Students can use the information to accomplish a lot through adequate research. Social networking platforms, if used correctly, can also enable information sharing. Teachers can also make use of virtual classrooms and issue and monitor student assignments.
Technology can also enable students to develop useful life skills such as critical thinking, collaborating with others, communication and leadership, and solving complex problems. Effective use of technology can enable students to develop practical skills such as the use of presentations, writing emails, online etiquette, and proper research by differentiating reliable and unreliable sources.
How Technology is Used in Education
Technology can be used in education in different ways. One way in which technology can be used is through the use of software geared to help students use technology in different ways. Price-Dennis, Holmes, and Smith (2015) observed an effective use of technology in the classroom through the use of apps and Web 2.0 platforms that enabled students to document their ideas. An application called Corklous was used to enable students to record their thoughts through a color-coded electronic sticky note and share it on the board with other students. The collaborative nature of the application enabled students to develop and share ideas easily for their social change projects. The use of such a technology was found beneficial in improving textual understanding, the thought process, and the ability to persuade peers among the students (Price-Dennis, Holmes, & Smith, 2015).
Students can engage in difficult projects and use technology to solve the tasks. Price-Dennis, Holmes, and Smith (2015) observed the use of technology among several students. The study showed that students undertook challenging projects and it was facilitated through the use of technology. The students were able to research a topic, select images for their presentation, create bullet points for their powerpoint. They wrote, revised, and rehearsed their talk. Throughout the steps, they relied on conferences with their teacher who instructed them throughout the entire process. For the final presentation, the students used a computer monitor as a teleprompter, designed and installed a background set, set the microphone and performed sound checks, and greeted guests that attended the event.
There are other ways technology is used in education through the use of technologies such as a tablet, video conferencing, smartboards, and augmented reality (AR). Handheld devices enable students to have a greater degree of interaction with the material. Video conferencing allows for students to participate in the same lesson in different environments. This can be effective to ensure collaboration. Smartboards are innovative whiteboards that engage an interactive experience while augmented reality allows one to experience lessons through a virtual environment. All these technologies can enable improved gaining of knowledge, better understanding, collaboration when learning and students can learn at their own pace.
Personal Use of Technology in My Classroom
The only technology that I use in the classroom is the use of the Smartboard. I find myself unfriendly to some of the new technologies and this makes it difficult for me to use them. I only use the Smartboard because I find it easy to use and that it is effective in ensuring adequate interaction with the students. Some of the features of the Smartboard that I find useful with the use of the Smartboard is its digital ink with four pens of different colors and the dual-touch interactive feature. The use of colored pens makes the lessons interesting and grabs the attention of the students. The dual-touch interactive feature has created a fun environment where both I and my students can interact easily with the written texts and drawn objects.
How Smartboards Impacts Student’s Access
One of the ways that the use of Smartboards impacts student’s access is through socio-cultural access and ability access. The technology ensures socio-cultural access by enabling easy use by students from different social or cultural backgrounds. Ability access is made possible by ensuring that students have various disabilities to learn better. Every learning environment will have good auditory learners and visual learners. The use of the smartboards ensures that visual learners and students that have hearing impairment benefit. The use of visual presentation also enhances the learning ability of all students as visual images are more memorable than other forms of learning.
Smartboards also improve the participation of the students. The interactive feature of the smartboard allows for students to easily interact with the board when answering questions. This has created an environment where students feel that the environment allows for creativity and is fresh. The use of various images, video footage, and audio files when teaching also ensures that students can participate more in the classroom as they find it fun and enjoyable.
Future Use of Technology
With the practice and application of technology in the classroom, I would like to have a further integration of technology in the classroom where students can use technology by themselves in the classroom. I would like to have my students use technology similar to that which was indicated by Price-Dennis, Holmes, & Smith (2015) where students were able to use educational applications, create podcasts, create digital presentations, and organize discussion forums. Students should also be able to conduct the research by using various video materials such as TED talks. This should help the students develop adequate skills of collaboration and make them ready for the modern work environment that would require the use of technology for work.
Conclusion
The use of technology in education can be an effective tool to improve classroom interaction and ensure that students gain adequate life skills. Students today are highly interested and engage in technology and the use of technology in education will make learning become more relevant, applicable to their daily life, and education will be fun and enjoyable. Currently, I only use Smartboards in my classroom and this technology has been effective in ensuring socio-cultural access, ability access, and student participation. I would like to further integrate technology in the classroom for students to further interact with different technologies and so that they can be equipped with adequate life skills.
References
Price ‐ Dennis, D., Holmes, K. A., & Smith, E. (2015). Exploring digital literacy practices in an inclusive classroom. The Reading Teacher , 69 (2), 195-205.
Rich, E. (2010). How do you define 21st-century learning? Education Week , 4 (1), 32-35.
