Introduction
“Technology is a life art. It is a soaring exercise of the human imagination”. – Daniel Bell
Everything in our world has good and bad effects on us; technology does too. The way we use it will determine what result it would bring to us. Moreover, technology nowadays is an essential factor. Every passing day there are new devices or software being brought to our life to make it easier and improve it. However, it is important to highlight that even though technology plays a big role in making our life easy, it is not the only role it has. Technology is highly important, especially in the education sector. The more advanced it is, the more it benefits the student at every level. There are a lot of factors that show how useful technology is for education. In this essay, we are going to discuss the use of technology offers significant advantages to education as it allows the student to improve their skills, increase collaboration, and creative and advanced learning.
Improving Skills
The “Old fashion” pencil and paper methods of learning are still needed in the classroom. But technology introduces lots of great tools that can improve the student and the Teachers in their skills. Technology helps students to think differently, taking technology-based projects, time management, and problem-solving, for example. These types of projects encourage the students to look at the project from every technological aspect. And it can easily let the students ask the teachers questions when they post assignments progressively. This will encourage the students to practice association skills by getting online activates, for example, working on different projects by participating with others by sharing documents on their virtual learning (Raja & Nagasubramani 2018). It can be easy for them to do research, or it makes everything accessible for the students so they can find all the information that they need in their education journey. We all have twenty-four hours per day, but when it comes to the teachers, the time passes quickly. Time management is crucial in getting everything done. This could be accomplished by keeping track of your time using trusted online resources or even app’s to enhance the ways of teaching and to keep the students more committed. Grading software and online assessment can help teachers save a lot of time, and it can help the student who is struggling by helping them.
Increasing Collaboration
Student collaboration is essential to the learning process: it facilitates an exchange of ideas and teaches students to amplify each other’s strengths and mitigate weaknesses and shortcomings. However, in-person communication is not always possible, which has been proven in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Natural and human-made disasters, as well as personal difficulties, can jeopardize collaborative efforts and estrange students from each other. Thankfully, technology helps to continue communication, no matter life circumstances. Li and Lalani (2020) report that in 2020, an estimated 1.2 billion children were out of the classroom. If it had not been for technologies such as Skype, Zoom, Google Classroom, and Microsoft Teams, they would have spent an indefinite amount of time out of school. According to Li and Lalani (2020), online learning has not only been a decent replacement for intramural education but even showed increased information retention and time efficiency. Technologies in education make sure that no-one is left behind and can be a part of and an active participant in the learning process.
Creative and Advanced Learning
Creativity is defined as the ability to modify existing ideas to create something new. In the educational context, being creative may mean developing a new strategy by synthesizing existing knowledge. Technology has proven to be a significant facilitator of creativity in students by offering them a wide range of media for independent research and self-expression. Yalcinalp and Avci (2019) show that today, educators benefit from all key emerging technologies beyond those that are developed specifically for learning purposes. The scholars’ review revealed that education has widely accepted web blogs, 3D modeling, documentaries, and science fiction films, podcasts, and many other media and technologies. Every student can find a tool that fits their particular need and becomes a vehicle for self-expression. By being exposed to the world of tech, they gain access to new knowledge upon which they build their own ideas.
The Adverse Effects of Technology in Education
For all its advantages, technology might have been responsible for some unwanted changes in how the human brain works. According to Bhad (2017), the Internet has already shortened the average attention span, manipulating dopamine levels in humans. These days, people crave instant gratification and entertainment with a minimum amount of effort. Learning requires discipline and the ability to concentrate for extended periods of time. In this case, the use of technology may have an adverse impact on learning capacities by disrupting the learner’s attention by offering him or her superficial dopamine rewards. However, these changes may prove to neither inherently good nor bad. A shorter attention span may mean an enhanced ability to skim through texts and other media, which is a valuable skill in the age of information overflow. It is possible that evaluating a text by quickly scrolling through it will become a sign of advanced digital literacy in students.
Conclusion
For the last few decades, the field of education has been benefitting from technological advancement. However, there is still a debate on whether the advantages of technology outweigh the disadvantages. Firstly, technology helps to increase skills in students by granting them access to knowledge for which teachers used to be the only source. Now students can consult with online books and learning platforms anytime they choose, which promotes independent learning. Technology has made student collaboration possible, no matter the circumstances, be it natural disasters or personal problems. In addition, different tools and media offer students many opportunities to find their true identity and express themselves in creative ways. Though technology does have some impact on attention span, it may actually be forming new skills necessary for the new age of digital literacy.
Reference List
Bhad, J 2017, ‘Attention Spans in the Age of Technology’, National Alliance on Mental Illness. Web.
Li, C & Lalani, F 2020, ‘The COVID-19 pandemic has changed education forever. This is how’, World Economic Forum. Web.
Raja, R & Nagasubramani, PC 2018, ‘Impact of modern technology in education’, Journal of Applied and Advanced Research, vol. 3, no. 1, pp.33-35.
Yalcinalp, S & Avci, Ü 2019, ‘Creativity and emerging digital educational technologies: A systematic review’, Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology-TOJET, vol. 18, no. 3, pp.25-45.