How Technology Has Changed Education

How Technology Has Changed Education?
When students are using technology as a tool or a support for communicating with others, they are in an active role rather than the passive role of recipient of information transmitted by a teacher, textbook, or broadcast. The student is actively making choices about how to generate, obtain, manipulate, or display information. Technology use allows many more students to be actively thinking about information, making choices, and executing skills than is typical in teacher-led lessons. Moreover, when technology is used as a tool to support students in performing authentic tasks, the students are in the position of defining their goals, making design decisions, and evaluating their progress. The teacher's role changes as well. The teacher is no longer the center of attention as the dispenser of information, but rather plays the role of facilitator, setting project goals and providing guidelines and resources, moving from student to student or group to group, providing suggestions and support for student activity. As students work on their technology-supported products, the teacher rotates through the room, looking over shoulders, asking about the reasons for various design choices, and suggesting resources that might be used. The most common teacher-reported effect on students was an increase in motivation. Teachers and students are sometimes surprised at the level of technology-based accomplishment displayed by students who have shown much less initiative or facility with more conventional academic tasks. Teachers talked about motivation from a number of different perspectives. Some mentioned motivation with respect to working in a specific subject area, for example, a greater willingness to write or to work on computational skills. In many of these classes, students choose to work on their technology-based projects during recess or lunch periods. Teachers also frequently cite technology's motivational advantages in providing a venue in which a wider range of students can excel. Compared to conventional classrooms with their stress on verbal knowledge and multiple-choice test performance, technology provides a very different set of challenges and different ways in which students can demonstrate what they understand. A related technology effect stressed by many teachers was enhancement of student self esteem. Both the increased competence they feel after mastering technology-based tasks and their awareness of the value placed upon technology within our culture, led to increases in students' sense of self worth.
Another effect of technology cited by a great majority of teachers is an increased inclination on the part of students to work cooperatively and to provide peer tutoring. While many of the classrooms we observed assigned technology-based projects to small groups of students, as discussed above, there was also considerable tutoring going on around the use of technology itself. Collaboration is fostered for obvious reasons when students are assigned to work in pairs or small groups for work at a limited number of computers. But even when each student has a computer, teachers note an increased frequency of students helping each other. Technology-based tasks involve many subtasks, leading to situations where students need help and find their neighbour a convenient source of assistance. Students who have mastered specific computer skills generally derive pride and enjoyment from helping others. In addition, the public display and greater legibility of student work creates an invitation to comment. Students often look over each others' shoulders, commenting on each others' work, offering assistance, and discussing what they are doing. Experiences in developing the kinds of rich, multimedia products that can be produced with technology, particularly when the design is done collaboratively so that students experience their peers' reactions to their presentations, appear to support a greater awareness of audience needs and perspectives. Multiple media give students choices about how best to convey a given idea. In part because they have the capability to produce more professional-looking products and the tools to manipulate the way information is presented, students in many technology-using classes are reportedly spending more time on design and audience presentation issues. Students, even at the elementary school level, are able to acquire an impressive level of skill with a broad range of computer software. Although the specific software tools in use will likely change before these students enter the world of work, the students acquire a basic understanding of how various classes of computer tools behave and a confidence about being able to learn to use new tools that will support their learning of new software applications. Teachers for the observed classes and activities at the case study sites were nearly unanimous also in reporting that students were able to handle more complex assignments and do more with higher-order skills because of the supports and capabilities provided by technology.

How Technology Has Changed Education

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

How Technology Has Changed Education

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

How Technology Has Changed Education

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

How Technology Has Changed Education?

You might also like