The impact of technology is felt in every aspect of human life and education is no exception. Nonetheless, modern education is no different from traditional education. Laurentius de Voltolina, a 14th-century artist, depicted a university lecture in medieval Italy. From the scene, it is no different from the modern-day educational environment as a teacher is seen lecturing in front of the room as students sit in rows and listen. It is an indication that classrooms in the contemporary world still look similar to traditional days. However, one aspect that has tremendously changed is the infusion of technology in education. Modern-day classrooms have tablets, laptops or smartphones instead of books. There is also the use of smartboards and internet among other technological features. Technology has profoundly changed the educational field by expanding access to education, changed the roles of teachers and learners, improved communication, and collaboration. However, for many years’ students, parents, teachers and policymakers alike have been assessing the prospective benefits of technology in education compared to its perils and consequences. The debate is unrelenting than ever as curricula progressively integrate technology and educators tryout new teaching approaches.
A change in the pedagogical approach and classroom organization is enabled through the implementation of technology in education. Therefore, the determination of the negative impacts of technology in education is vital, as it will permit for its successful implementation. According to a study by Jackson & Makarin (2016), the standard technological tool introduced in schools is the online registry system. The main advantage of this tool is that it lets the teachers, students, and parents have access to the progress reports. The statistics from these reports can be used in helping students with poor academic performance through increased tutoring. Jackson & Makarin (2016) also found out that there is elevated educational attainment in students whose math teachers accessed online support and inquiry-based lessons using technology in middle schools. This was very beneficial to the weaker teachers. Technology helps teachers in outlining lessons plans that will improve the overall student educational attainment. This is through ensuring that ineffective teachers attain a much higher instructional provision effectiveness (Jackson & Makarin, 2016).
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When it comes to educational matters, parents have different expectations whereby others care about tangible results and others about the child’s overall happiness and development. Technology will allow the parents to have a much higher influence over their child’s education. Technology enables the storing of information using different formats and provides approaches that assist in the learning process. Technology can also help in offering a platform that can help connect the student’s home and school such as Schoolze. The application lays down a foundation for engagement between the parent and the school. The parents can communicate with teachers via instant messaging and this boost educational attainment for pupils.
Efficient learning is supported through effective student engagement. However, facilitating learners’ engagement is not always an easy task. According to a research by Blasco-Arcas et al. (2012), students who used clickers in the classroom had higher results in assignments and overall examinations. Moreover, the school dropout rate for such children was meager. For an educator to fully understand what contributes towards student disengagement, it is essential to know what disengages them. Some of the causes include lack of interest, context, and understanding. However, technology is the remedy to these problems as it offers interactive materials, provisions of relevancy and context and helps in the explanation of any challenging aspects. Technology will, therefore, make learning materials easily accessible at the right time and place, and this assists the students in the adjustment of their learning activities spacing and pace.
In traditional learning environments, an educator could control class organization from a central point. The class organization has a substantial impact on the learning and teaching process from a didactic and managerial position. However, with increased technological advancements and adoption in education, it has a positive effect on the class organization by providing tools that help in the enhancement of individual work, general instruction, and group work. These tools will, therefore, enable educators in managing classrooms settings that are more diverse. Examples of such tools include the learning management systems, which comprise of authoring and resource bank tools. The LMS allows educators in gathering results from students and assigning tasks to the individual via whiteboards (Cavus & Alhih, 2014). Such tools enable students to have a more active approach to learning. The students will have an ability to develop autonomy and control over the learning process and through this, they become more motivated as they can make various learning choices.
Technology is also crucial as it increases access to many learning resources. There are various integration techniques in regards to education such as the addition of digital resources into existing ones and conversion of analog learning materials into digital print. The availability of digital learning materials has boosted educations as they are easily distributed. More importantly, technology has made it easier for children with special needs to have a higher chance of educational attainment. Assistive technology is used in special education whereby it helps in the maintenance, increase, and improvement of a student’s functional abilities (Maor, Currie& Drewry, 2011). Through assistive technology, educators can also customize the learning instructions for students with special needs.
Hamalainen & Cattaneo (2015) carried out Finnish-Swiss-Belgian research to determine the impact of technology on the changing roles of educators. Traditional teaching methodologies have been substantially changed following increased technological advancement, especially in education. The use of technology in education transforms the roles of teachers from the old-style provider of knowledge into a facilitator who should guide the students throughout the learning process.
Murchu (2005) carried out a study on a sample of 500 in-service educators from different elementary schools to ascertain the role of teachers following the adoption of new technologies. The researcher states that despite the increased technological advancement in education, most of the traditional roles of teachers have been maintained such as discussion leader, information giver, lecturer, class director and leader. The first teacher’s role in using technology includes an instructional designer. This is the most common role adopted by teachers whereby the educator must design, plan and organize their educational environments to integrate and effectively use technology. The educator must ensure that he/she takes into consideration all available resources to make sure that all student needs are met and well-designed instructional strategies are implemented to satisfy those needs.
The second role of an educator is the trainer. However, this role, the educator can ensure that skill development occurs by providing individual instruction. The teachers should train the learners on how to use the respective technologies. The third role of an educator acts as a collaborator. This involves sharing and learning with the students as one. The fourth role is acting as a team coordinator whereby the educator will assign the students with various assignments and support the students during the entire learning process. The final role is the mentoring and assessment specialist whereby the teachers will assess the student’s performance and help in improving their performance (Murchu, 2005).
However, despite the technology being involved in almost every sector of education, there are still teachers that struggle with its use and feel like they are left behind. Moreover, others tend to develop some form of resistance towards using technology in their classrooms and prefer to rely on traditional-based instructional strategies. The first strategy in helping such educators is by building a technical team (Johnson et al., 2016). The integration of technology is very stressful for educators who might lack the required technical awareness. It is vital to have a support team that is available and flexible to assist the struggling educators’ when rolling out any form of technology. The team should comprise of administrators, support staff and teachers who will work across multiple grade levels to support the struggling teachers.
Additionally, there should be a professional scaffold development of educators. In most cases, technology is introduced in learning institutions, yet the teachers have minimal professional development (Ertmer et al., 2012). There is a need to have in place a feasible plan that will help teachers struggling with technology. This should be based on surveys carried out amongst educators and determine which technology areas they would become trained. The professional development programs can be headed by the administrators who should use a helping tone rather r than an authoritative one. Once the teachers feel like they are being supported, they will be more than willing to incorporate the technology.
It is vital to certify that the utilization of technology is made easier for teachers. This is enabled through the assigning of a technology resource teacher who will work diligently with teachers and students in the classroom (Hodge, 2017). The work of the technology resource teacher is to help in modeling of lesson plans for the students, showing educators how to use the various technical resources and providing one-on-one training. The technology resource teacher will look for multiple resource materials and avail them to the teachers who can use them in gaining an in-depth awareness of the technology.
With each new day, there is an improvement in technology an indication it is not bound to stop any time soon. In future, there is bound to be better simulations and models that will assist educators during the explanation of processes that occur faster or slowly or big and small ideas and be able to demonstrate them in a physical classroom setting (Dev, 2016). There is also bound to become an improvement in global learning whereby students will have an ability to set up lessons with others form another nation. This will allow the students to have the ability to learn the cultural ideologies of other students from across the globe. The emergence of epistemic games can allow students to engage in real life simulations to solve real-world problems (Shaffer et al., 2005). This will boost creative learning by giving students real-life skills and knowledge. The digitization of everything whereby students will not need to pass classroom notes or carry around notebooks is also likely to occur in the future. Virtual reality is a developing topic in education, and it is bound to help in engaging students in any subject.
The funding of future technology in education will be supported through technology donor programs. The educator will compile a technology wish list and post them on the internet whereby donors can search through the various profiles and choose to dominate to one that matches their interest. The educators can also use sites such as grants.gov and search for technology grants that can assist their respective schools. Moreover, educators can seek assistance from the community and parents by setting up fundraising events. These events will see the parents and members of the community proving monetary resources to the school, which is later used in funding technology.
References
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Cavus, N., & Alhih, M. S. (2014). Learning management systems use in science education. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences , 143 , 517-520.
Dev P. (2016) Simulation: A View into the Future of Education. In: Weaver C., Ball M., Kim G., Kiel J. (eds) Healthcare Information Management Systems. Health Informatics . Springer, Cham
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Jackson, C. K., & Makarin, A. (2016). Simplifying Teaching: A Field Experiment with Online" Off-the-Shelf" Lessons . National Bureau of Economic Research.
Johnson, A. M., Jacovina, M. E., Russell, D. G., & Soto, C. M. (2016). Challenges and solutions when using technologies in the classroom. In Adaptive educational technologies for literacy instruction (pp. 13-30). Routledge.
Hämäläinen, R., & Cattaneo, A. (2015). New TEL environments for vocational education–teacher’s instructional perspective. Vocations and Learning , 8 (2), 135-157.
Hodge, C. A. (2017). Virginia's Instructional Technology Resource Teacher Program: Ten Years Later, What We Know,-Where Do We Need to G o?
Maor, D., Currie, J., & Drewry, R. (2011). The effectiveness of assistive technologies for children with special needs: a review of research-based studies. European Journal of Special Needs Education , 26 (3), 283-298.
Murchú, D. Ó. (2005). New teacher and student roles in the technology-supported, language classroom. International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning , 2 (2), 3-10.
Shaffer, D. W., Squire, K. R., Halverson, R., & Gee, J. P. (2005). Video games and the future of learning. Phi Delta Kappan , 87 (2), 105-111.
