Why Technology Is Good For Education?
Technology makes it easier for students to find information quickly and accurately. Search engines and e-books are partially replacing traditional textbooks. Instead of personal tutors, students can get one-on-one help through educational videos – anytime and anywhere – and massive open online courses (MOOCs).
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Why technology is useful in education?
6. It Allows Students To Improve Themselves Both Mentally And Physically – The benefits of using educational technology also include the improvement of learners’ mental and physical health. By using these tools, students are able to enhance their learning and their cognitive skills, which in turn helps them improve their academic performance as well as their physical health.
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What are 3 benefits of using technology in education?
Educational Technology Challenges – BuiltIn reports that 92 percent of teachers understand the impact of technology in education. According to Project Tomorrow, 59 percent of middle school students say digital educational tools have helped them with their grades and test scores.
These tools have become so popular that the educational technology market is projected to expand to $342 billion by 2025, according to the World Economic Forum. However, educational technology has its challenges, particularly when it comes to implementation and use. For example, despite growing interest in the use of AR, artificial intelligence, and other emerging technology, less than 10 percent of schools report having these tools in their classrooms, according to Project Tomorrow.
Additional concerns include excessive screen time, the effectiveness of teachers using the technology, and worries about technology equity. Prominently rising from the COVID-19 crisis is the issue of content. Educators need to be able to develop and weigh in on online educational content, especially to encourage students to consider a topic from different perspectives.
- The urgent actions taken during this crisis did not provide sufficient time for this.
- Access is an added concern — for example, not every school district has resources to provide students with a laptop, and internet connectivity can be unreliable in homes.
- Additionally, while some students thrive in online education settings, others lag for various factors, including support resources.
For example, a student who already struggled in face-to-face environments may struggle even more in the current situation. These students may have relied on resources that they no longer have in their homes. Still, most students typically demonstrate confidence in using online education when they have the resources, as studies have suggested.
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How useful is technology for teaching and learning *?
Technology ushers in fundamental structural changes that can be integral to achieving significant improvements in productivity. Used to support both teaching and learning, technology infuses classrooms with digital learning tools, such as computers and hand held devices; expands course offerings, experiences, and learning materials; supports learning 24 hours a day, 7 days a week; builds 21 st century skills; increases student engagement and motivation; and accelerates learning. The links on this page are provided for users convenience and are not an endorsement. See full disclaimer, Virtual or online learning: 48 states and the District of Columbia currently support online learning opportunities that range from supplementing classroom instruction on an occasional basis to enrolling students in full-time programs.
- These opportunities include dual enrollment, credit recovery, and summer school programs, and can make courses such as Advanced Placement and honors, or remediation classes available to students.
- Both core subjects and electives can be taken online, many supported by online learning materials.
- While some online schools or programs are homegrown, many others contract with private providers or other states to provide online learning opportunities.
Full-time online schools: The following online or virtual schools enroll students on a full-time basis. Students enrolled in these schools are not attending a bricks and mortar school; instead they receive all of their instruction and earn all of their credits through the online school.
The Florida Virtual School – An online school that provides full-time learning opportunities to students in grades K-12. Districts can also work with Florida Virtual School to provide blended learning opportunities to students by enabling them to access online courses from school sites. Additional link here, Utah Electronic High School – An 18-year-old online high school providing a range of courses to students year round. The school can award diplomas to students who are home-schooled, have dropped out, or are ineligible to graduate from a traditional high school for specific reasons. North Carolina Virtual Public School – An online high school offering 120 courses to students both during and after the school day. The courses offered include Advanced Placement and honors courses, world languages, electives, credit recovery, and online college courses. The school also provides test preparation and career planning services to students.
District operated
Karval Online Education – A public K-12 online school for Colorado residents that provides a free computer for the family to use while the student is enrolled and provides reimbursement opportunities to offset Internet and other educational expenses. Dual credit courses are available to juniors and seniors. Campbell County Virtual School – This school serves Wyoming students in grades K-6. Families of enrolled students are loaned a computer and receive subsidized Internet access, as well as materials including CDs, videos, instructional materials, and hands-on tools and resources to complement the interactive online elements of the program. Salem-Keizer Online – This online Oregon high school is an accredited program of Roberts High School in the Salem-Keizer Public School District in Oregon. The school provides 24/7 learning opportunities to students living within the boundaries of the school district and who are not enrolled in their neighborhood public school. Tuition is only required for students enrolled in summer school courses.
Charter operated
Guided Online Academic Learning Academy – An online public charter high school in Colorado for students ages 14-21. The Academy offers more than 200 courses to students as well as a variety of support services, activities to support student-to-student interactions, and drop-in centers to facilitate enrollment, counseling, assessments, and other services.
Blended learning: Blended learning opportunities incorporate both face-to-face and online learning opportunities. The degree to which online learning takes place, and the way it is integrated into the curriculum, can vary across schools. The strategy of blending online learning with school-based instruction is often utilized to accommodate students’ diverse learning styles and to enable them to work before or after school in ways that are not possible with full-time conventional classroom instruction.
- Online learning has the potential to improve educational productivity by accelerating the rate of learning, taking advantage of learning time outside of school hours, reducing the cost of instructional materials, and better utilizing teacher time.
- These strategies can be particularly useful in rural areas where blended or online learning can help teachers and students in remote areas overcome distance.
State operated
Michigan Virtual School – Michigan’s students are able to take online classes and access online learning tools from their middle and high schools via this virtual school. Michigan Virtual also provides full-time learning opportunities to middle and high school students. Districts in the state work with the virtual school to grant course credit and diplomas to students.
District operated
Walled Lake Consolidated School District – This Michigan district’s online summer school credit recovery program was expanded to include online learning opportunities during the school year. Students can now enroll in up to two online courses each semester while continuing to attend school for at least four hours a day. Eleventh and twelfth graders may also choose to enroll concurrently in postsecondary courses via a partnership with a local community college. The credit recovery program reduced per-student costs by 57 percent and the district estimates that by offering two online courses during the school year it has been able to save $517 per student on instructional costs. Riverside Virtual School – This school makes interactive courses available to students in Southern California and to other students in rural schools in the state. Students in grades 6-12, including those who are homeschooled, may enroll full-time.
School operated
San Francisco Flex Academy – This high school is a five-days-a-week hybrid school that provides an online curriculum that personalizes learning and enables students to move through courses at their own pace. These online courses are taken at the school site and are supported by credentialed teachers. Rocketship – This elementary charter school network in California is a hybrid school model. Each day, students attend the Learning Lab where they use computers to support their individual learning needs. These Labs do not require certified teachers, enabling Rocketship to reinvest the savings in training, Response to Intervention, higher teacher salaries, facilities, and academic deans. While students are in the Lab, teachers are engaging in planning. Carpe Diem Collegiate High School – Carpe Diem is a hybrid school in Arizona that offers computer-assisted instruction and onsite teacher facilitators. This model enables students to progress as they demonstrate mastery. iPrep Academy – This Miami-Dade County Public School offers a teacher-facilitated virtual curriculum to 11 th graders. Its motto is “learn anytime, anywhere at” and at the students’ own pace. The curriculum includes Advanced Placement and honors courses, distance learning opportunities that enable students to engage with their peers from around the world, and applies real word experiences to learning.
Open educational resources: Open educational resources are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain and are freely available to anyone over the Web. They are an important element of an infrastructure for learning and range from podcasts to digital libraries to textbooks and games.
Open High School of Utah – This school uses open educational resources to create an open source curriculum. To create this curriculum, teachers gather and sort through open source materials, align them with state standards, and modify the materials to meet student needs. CK-12 – CK-12 FlexBooks are customizable, standards-aligned, digital textbooks for grades K-12. They are intended to provide high-quality educational content that will serve both as core text and provide an adaptive environment for learning. Leadership Public Schools (LPS) – In each of the four LPS schools, teachers work together to utilize open-source materials to meet the specific learning needs of their students. Through a partnership with CK-12, LPS has developed College Access Readers, a series of online books with literacy supports embedded in them to meet the individual needs of students, from advanced to under-performing students. Khan Academy – The Khan Academy is a not-for-profit organization providing digital learning resources, including an extensive video library, practice exercises, and assessments. These resources focus on K-12 math and science topics such as biology, chemistry, and physics, and include resources on the humanities, finance, and history. Mooresville Graded School District – This North Carolina district launched a Digital Conversion Initiative to promote the use of technology to improve teaching and learning. In addition to the use of laptop computers and other technologies as instructional tools, the Initiative led to a shift to digital textbooks which are aligned to the state’s standards. Vail Unified School District – This Arizona district has replaced textbooks with a digital learning environment that enables every school in the district to take advantage of an online tool to create digital textbooks and support effective teaching.
Use digital resources well: Schools can use digital resources in a variety of ways to support teaching and learning. Electronic grade books, digital portfolios, learning games, and real-time feedback on teacher and student performance, are a few ways that technology can be utilized to power learning.
High Tech High – High Tech High (HTH) is a network of eleven California charter schools offering project-based learning opportunities to students in grades K-12. HTH links technical and academic studies and focuses on personalization and the connection of learning to the real word. To support student learning and share the results of project-based learning, HTH makes a wealth of resources available online, including teacher and student portfolios, videos, lessons, and other resources. New Technology High School – At this California school, student work is assessed across classes and grades, and feedback is made available to students via online grade books. These grade books are continually updated so that students can see how they are doing not only in each course, but also on each of their learning outcomes, averaged across all their courses. Electronic learning portfolios contain examples of students’ work and associated evaluations across all classes and grades. New Tech High is part of the national New Tech Network, Quest to Learn – This school, located in New York, utilizes games and other forms of digital media to provide students with a curriculum that is design-led and inquiry-based. The goal of this model is to use education technologies to support students in becoming active problem solvers and critical thinkers, and to provide students with constant feedback on their achievement.
Additional resources:
Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology, National Education Technology Plan 2010, U.S. Department of Education A National Primer on K-12 Online Learning, iNACOL The Rise of K-12 Blended Learning, Innosight Institute The Technology Factor: Nine Keys to Student Achievement and Cost-Effectiveness, Project RED Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A meta-analysis and review of online learning studies, U.S. Department of Education Florida Virtual School: Building the first statewide, Internet-based public high school, Innosight School of One – This math-based program for students in grades six through eight operates in three New York City middle schools. School of One uses technology to develop a unique learning path for each student and to provide individualized and differentiated instruction. The program uses data from student assessments to identify the skills that each student needs to work on. Inputs from teachers and from students provide information about how each student learns best. A computer algorithm uses the information about each student’s demonstrated mathematics skills and his or her learning preferences to generate individual “playlists” of appropriate learning activities.
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How technology will change education in the future?
How Technology will Change Education in the Future – January 24, 2019 Featured article by Sebastian Miller, Independent Technology Author Photo credit: Pixabay.com Technology has affected our lives one way or the other. It has also improved many sectors. However, education remains one the key sectors that have and would benefit more as technology continues to grow. With cheap broadband, improved infrastructure, among others, there is a high possibility that education will become more accessible and simpler for students and teachers.
We have already experienced these changes in the last couple of years. Now you can do your math assignment or find help with ease, something that was a bit difficult in the past. Here is how technology is changing education and what we can expect in the future.1. The use of Virtual Reality in schools will likely increase Virtual reality is not a new topic in the tech world.
It’s one of the tech advancements that have the potentials to transform education massively in the future. Samsung, Google, and other tech heavyweights have already started investing heavily in VR projects. So we can expect more improvements in this technology in the future.
- Virtual reality has had a tremendous impact in the gaming world.
- It has also proven itself as an impressive learning tool that can make teaching fun and engaging.
- Instead of teaching students the history of ancient Rome from a textbook, they can just put on the VR headset and experience Rome for themselves.
However, accessibility is one of the things that will make widespread acceptance and use of this VR technology possible. Many schools and students will adopt it to foster effective teaching and learning. With a mobile device and an app, one can make use of this technology.
- And since the number of teenagers who have access to a mobile device is dubbed to increase in the future, it won’t take long before every student has it on their device.
- There will also be more innovations like the virtual science lab that is currently available.
- This lab allows students to perform experiments using harmful chemicals and flames without having contact with any of them.
But the result remains the same as a real-life experiment conducted with the same materials. Such innovations will also give rise to discoveries because students and aspiring scientists will be able to experiment with ease.2. Artificial intelligence AI is one tech innovation that will have more impact on education in the future.
- It will not only make learning effective for students but help teachers to perform their duties efficiently.
- Artificial intelligence such as Professor Einstein (a robot) is already making waves in the educational sector.
- The robot helps science students by lecturing and helping them to understand science subjects.
It has the potential to make complex science subjects look so easy for students, too. In addition to that, the robot has the capacity to make learning fun and engaging. It does not only provide answers to questions but uses a funny facial expression that makes learning less of a chore for students.
Chatbots and grading assistants are already helping teachers with their complex administrative work. The latter assist teachers to grade their students’ work, allowing them to focus more energy on teaching their students.3. Improved way of storing and delivering contents There is a call by environmentalists to reduce human activities that contribute to global warming.
And that includes the reduction of tree felling. Schools depend heavily on paper for writing, which in turn leads to tree felling, which doesn’t support the agenda of environment-conscious governments. But this will likely change in the future. And it will happen will the help of technology.
In other words, technology will change how teachers and students receive and send information. There will be a shift from the traditional system of using pen and paper to digital. Cloud services which provide a smooth, safe and cost-effective way of storing information will continue to gain relevance.
It will become the best option for teachers and students to store data of any size. The advantage of storing and delivering contents digitally besides preservation of trees or reduction of paper waste is that there will be no need for re-printing. And it would be easier to update documents whenever one pleases.
Conclusion According to the weekly essay, education will experience massive changes in the future because of tech advancements. Teachers will have access to technology that will enable them to teach effectively. Students will also have access to technology that would make learning more effective too.
Technology, The best or worst thing for education | Scott Widman | [email protected]
The only thing that is of great concern is for teachers and students to embrace educational tech tools and learn how to use them. If that can happen, then the world can expect a massive transformation of education in the future. SOCIAL BUSINESS
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