A brief discussion of the how technology affects the classroom.
As the world progresses, technology becomes more and more integrated into our daily lives. In fact, in many areas, our lives would come to a grinding halt without it. Our finances, consumer goods, and even our basic necessities are firmly dependent on technology to maintain balance and supply. Education is no different, and in the classroom, whether K-12 or collegial, technology is abundant. It is vastly depended upon to regulate and facilitate everything from the enrollment of students, classroom environment, laboratory experiments, research, interactive discussions, to global discussions of advanced learning principles in interactive classrooms.
I teach adult learners in a private vocational business college. We rely heavily on computer, software, and other technological advances to teach our students business, medical, and legal principles, so that they can become a highly marketable employment candidate. In the environment in which I teach, my students are exposed, via hand on computer tasks, to a variety of business, medical, and legal, media and experience, which would not be available to them if technology were not a part of our daily lives. Learning new software and computer skills, and information, this way is easy, fun and convenient. In my area of teaching, technology is a very valuable tool, but in some educational arenas, my deepest fear, and at times realization, is that it has become a teaching replacement.
Technology has been a boon to education, but it has also been a hindrance as well. The desire for convenience and efficiency has, I fear, sacrificed some of the abilities of society to perform basic learning tasks, i.e., do basic math without the aid of a calculator, or write without
the benefit of a word processor, with spelling and grammar correction capabilities. In my classes, I have experienced, and I must admit that I myself have become this way to a degree, adult students who cannot add, subtract, multiply or divide basic numbers in their head, or with pencil and paper. It is disturbing to see, that while technology has provided us with great educational aids for teaching the young, and older student, we seem to have forgotten how to teach, and learn, the way our parents did.
Our nation, as a whole, has become too dependent on technology to educate ourselves. Technology does not educate, but rather it facilitates the learning experience. Educators are those who inspire others to learn, and continuously seek knowledge, which is something that technology can, and will, never do. I do not advocate that we discontinue the use of technology in the learning experience, but before we employ all of the technology at our disposal to process and mold the minds of those whom we teach, I suggest that we become less dependent on technology to be the teacher, and more reliant upon it the tool it was meant to be.
©1999 Lloydene F. Hill
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