Technology has changed so many things in our life, and one of those things is education. In the 21st century, because of technology, learners have received their
education in a more creative way, which helped them understanding the material more clearly. On the other hand, learners in the 20th century did not have this feature. Students in the 21st century use computers, smartphones, tablets among other devices. It has made our lives much easier in and outside the school. There are many positive effects with
using technology in the classroom, including access to many helpful materials, enhanced collaboration, and helping students focus.
Most students and teachers have access to technology. In fact, According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 97 percent of teachers have access to computers in their classroom, and 93 percent of students had access to the internet. (2009). And now we see that students and teachers can benefit from technology , because technology gives them access to many helpful materials like videos, images, sound files and best of all, the internet. In fact, there are websites that provide helpful lists of good resources (Edudemic, 2014). Teachers can use many types of multimedia such as images, videos and sound files to help them getting the student to understand the lecture more clearly, and it has been scientifically proven that the photographic memory in the human mind is more capable in memorising things than the regular memory, so images and videos help students a lot because it helps them memorise things easier and faster, saving them time and energy to do other useful things. Another example of the helpful materials, and this is especially good for the students of science majors, is the advanced apps such advanced calculators that can help student solve and show student how to solve hard mathematical problems and give them similar exercises to practice on, and there are much more apps that can help students learn both better and easier. According to Tami Strang (2014), said in his article that the 80% of students say the move towards implementing digital technologies in the classroom has subsequently increased their academic performance, and 70% say it has improved their engagement with their courses.
Another example about the positive effects of technology in the classroom is making collaboration between students a very good experience. With the cloud services, that we’re seeing nowadays, collaboration between students has never been easier. in the past, if you wanted to take some important papers from you classmate you would have to go to his place, which might be far from you, just to get some important papers that you need to study from, but now, you can create a folder for you and your classmates so that all the students that you’ve invited to participate in this cloud class get to see each others notes, exercises and so and so anytime, anywhere and discuss them together. this is very convenient and helps students a lot.
Many people think that technology distracts students, but in my opinion, I think that it helps them focus. Computers organises the student’s files, so that students no longer need to worry about losing some important papers, students can get access to the presentations or the video files that were used in the class, his home works can be submitted online in a secure, easy system and his grades can be monitored very closely by him, he will basically be up to date with everything about his studies, so i think that this helps the student focus rather than be distracted or confused, and according to Timothy Huneycutt (2013), she basically say the same thing that technology helps students focus but from a different from prospective, she thinks that technology save a lot of time, which helps students keeping focused on a project much longer than they would with books and paper resources.
Like it or not, technology in education is the future of education. Whether you think that it is good or bad, it is something that will certainly be happening. What we have to do now is to study how to integrate Technology into education properly in order to avoid it’s bad effects. I think that the best way of integrating technology into into education is by first, studying which devices suits education the best, second, to study the estimated budget for this move and prepare for it financially, third, incorporation with the device manufacturers in order to make the best devices for education by making it education focused only and insuring that it’s easy to use, and last but not least, teaching teachers and students how to use these devices and get the most benefits out of it in order to make their education journey easier and better.
After reading this article we start to think in a different way about technology in education. we can see how technology is beneficial for both teachers and students because it gives them access to many helpful materials, enhances collaboration, and helps students focus. I think if we started integrating more and more technology into education then that would be very much beneficial because of the fact that students nowadays are very much familiar with technology and they love it very much because it made their life easier, and now hopefully it will make their school life easier too.
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