Technology in Classroom

Using today’s technology in today’s classrooms to teach for tomorrow’s world

We need not talk about Literacy,
But, focus on “Learning Literacy,”

We need not amuse about Literacy Skills,
But, occupy ourselves on “Literacy Habits,”

We need not exaggerate about Lifelong Learning,
But, teach our students on “Learning Lifestyle.”

For decades, education has been an easy institution to define. It consisted of a set of acknowledged literacy skills, a definable body of knowledge, and the pedagogies for teaching those skills to students within limited information environments. Today, for the first time in decades, people are questioning our teaching and learning methodologies. Even some movies are focusing on teaching methods. Adapting to a world that is changing faster than our imagination is the need of the hour. We are in a situation to rethink what is to be educated, and how the content should be delivered, as the border between teacher and student starts to disappear from the information perspective.

Today, the world is a different place. Our sense of the future has changed, our students learn differently, and the very nature of information has changed. Technology has advanced at a rate that would have puzzled us when we were growing up. This time of change forces us to ask two fundamental questions.

1. What do children need to be learning today?

2. How do they need to be learning it?

People have created advanced machines that provide us with opportunities that could not have been imagined only a few years ago. With these gadgets, a new and exciting vision for the classroom is changing our definitions of teaching, learning, and being educated in this century.

The future world will be a place that is governed by information. Do we really prepare ourselves to prepare for the student’s future?

Accessing,

Processing,

Building with, and

Communicating that information will be a major part of our daily occupational, professional, and personal work and play.

Schooling in the information-filled world doesn’t mean 3Rs (Reading, Writing and Arithmetic) alone. It should be much more than the basics of literacy. In this information flooded and technology rich world, avoiding technology in class room situation may provide disappointing result in the future for the teachers, students and schools.

We are in a position to master how the literacy must expand to harness a rapidly changing information landscape where content and knowledge are increasingly networked, shared and streamlined by many people.

We were taught to read what some body handed to us. Our students will read from a global digital library that anyone can publish, just about anything they want, and for just about any reason. Then what is the role of teachers in this context? The teachers must ensure the value of information, its accuracy and its reliability. Moreover we must ensure that we are not mere consumers of information but participants in a global information community.

Students have witnessed an emerging new information environment and have had a hand in shaping its landscape, utilizing technologies that have defined their culture. The outside-the-classroom information experiences of present day students are deep, diverse, rich, and compelling — and understanding these information experiences may be a key to modifying our method of teaching in our classrooms.

It is often said that “the future is not what it used to be.” In this information-driven world, where jobs are created and become obsolete in only a few years (eg., refer jobs in IT sector), preparing our children for a future that we can not even imagine has become one of our society’s greatest challenges. This is the right time to think class rooms from the different perspective.

Our classrooms — what they look like, how the furniture is arranged, what teachers and students do, what is taught, how it is taught, and why — are all modeled after old and outdated stories that are still being told by many teachers. We must change these stories and tell new ones, based on a new world, an unpredictable future, almost unlimited opportunities, a new kind of student, and compelling new learning experiences that have never been possible before.

Perhaps the most important question in education that we face today is, “What do our children need to be learning, to be ready for an unpredictable future?”

Social networking sites dramatically changed how people interact with the rest of the world. People record their experiences, share these images, audio, and video with each other and the world, and become archivers, explorers, and curators of their own lives. This engaging and interactive presentation demonstrates many techniques for using these amazing technologies to capture the world of data, images, audio and video and bring it into our classroom for exploration and interpretation.

We should guide students how they can employ text, data , images, captured and archived audio and video to learn vocabulary words, explore math concepts, enhance reading comprehension, motivate better writing, experiment and express their learning in social studies and science, and learn to use information as a raw material — not merely as an end product. Numerous websites offer content to be downloaded freely. (youtube, Wikipedia, etc.,)

Most of the students are good at blog, and they are well versed in downloading music and videos, and they can spend hours in online chat rooms. But how good are today's students at interpreting the words and images they encounter in our increasingly tech-driven world? How well can they communicate in multimedia formats what they are learning in the classroom?

Such questions underlie a new effort among researchers and edu-tech experts to ensure that students' critical-thinking and communication skills keep pace with their technological sharpness. It's not enough for students to master Word, PowerPoint and Excel. They need to think critically about how they translate data and information into effective communication.

Being literate in our digital world mirrors our traditional sense of literacy. We'll continue to access (read), process (arithmetic), and communicate information (write). But, like it or not, this information age requires skills that force the 3 R's (reading, writing, and arithmetic) to evolve into the 4 E's (expose, employ, express, and ethics on the Internet).

Change is constant!

Technology in Education

“The rate of change in the society in which we live forces us to redefine how we shall educate a new generation”.

- Jerome S. Bruner

There may be some second opinion about that statement, but over the years, educators in search of excellence in their profession, used many innovative ideas and implemented technological solutions to make the learning process an easier one. As of today, use of computers in class room situation is considered as biggest technological implementation by many people. Multimedia contents, Educational resources in CDs / DVDs and Internet are considered as a next level of learning experience. That is true in many ways but will it help students or educators to unleash their creativity in the classroom situation? Does this situation resemble ‘copying’ and ‘pasting’ action or giving ‘exploring’ experience? Does this technological implementation introduce advanced resources for the beginners in that subject? These questions have many answers. Today’s technological products engage students with ocean of knowledge. There is no second opinion about it. But in reality, only very few people collect pearls and many lose themselves in it, just like a boat crew who loose their magnetic compass on their journey. Unguided and uncontrolled knowledge will bring unacceptable level of disturbances in the society. In the words of Galbraith, technology is defined as "the systematic application of scientific or other organized knowledge to practical tasks". At various times in the history of education, technology has been introduced in the hope that it would enhance teaching and learning. Most significant educational technology is perhaps the 'blackboard' which persists today and might be around for many decades!

Kofi Annan once said, “We must ensure that information and communication technologies are used to help unlock the door to education.” Many world leaders also share this same thought about technology across the globe. But the implementers of technology products have their own interpretation. One such interpretation is as follows. "Experts have observed that the learning styles of the youth today have changed. It is said that they easily get bored reading materials from printed books and prefer dynamic digital materials, and then it is important that teachers adapt their teaching pedagogies to suit current learning styles of their students".

The question that arises before us is, whether the technology is about ‘unlock the door to education’ or ‘learning styles of the youth’? The answer depends upon the perception of the educators and their expertise in dealing with technology. We cannot totally ignore the technology in educating today’s youth. They are acquiring most of their knowledge from outside the class room, mainly from internet. The role of educator in today’s world has been changed from the source of knowledge to moderator of knowledge. While we unlock the door of education by using the technology to suit the learning styles of today’s youth, we should not forget the human factor involved in the process of education. Understanding the student’s mindset and his ambition helps the educators to mould the student in right direction. Using information and communication technology equipments in the class room alone will not make any remarkable change in the student’s learning ability. It is the human care that makes many things possible. As an educator we must ensure that the technology should not create a gap between the educators and students.

The master chef is none other than who uses the same ingredient but produces better quality of food. The same is applicable for a good teacher. Appropriate use of technology makes a learning process easier and happier for all the students.

The next level of technology implementation by an educator should focus on evaluation method. The conventional method of evaluation says the total score alone. By using technology we should go ahead with, chapter wise performance and skill wise performance. This analysis about a student will help the educators as well as the learners to find out in which chapters they are strong and weak. This will help the educators to refocus on their strategy of teaching a particular chapter.

Analysing the student’s ability in terms of different levels of skills (knowledge, understanding, application and synthesis) will help the student to realize their true potential. The next level of technology at any educational institution should focus on this aspect. Replacing the blackboards with projector alone is not the only way to claim we are using advanced mode of teaching. The analysis of each student in different skill level and chapter wise performance of individual student and class as a whole is a way of using technology in educational institution.