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Technology is
being used everywhere and in everything. Several devices have been introduced like laptops and
tablets. Each of them have their own versions with even more advanced apps. Such devices help
us finish loads of work with ease, but using such devices even in fields of education might affect
the habits of students.
Schools have started introducing the idea of using tablets for taking down notes, writing simple
tests and completing their projects. This gets the mind of a student completely in technology and
they tend to forget the use of books. Earlier students did not have the idea of using internet to
browse information about different topics and were dependent completely on books which
resulted in a very good vocabulary, but students these days do not have much of a good
vocabulary.
They start to expect everything just by a touch on the screen. The students finish their work just
for the sake of it and actually don't show any interest in it. Technology is good enough provided it
is used in the right field and in the right age.
Sneha
Class 9, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavans Public School, Hyderabad
EVER since the world has turned into a global village, the gap between people or
rather the classes has been widened. Technology has brought revolutionary changes in
our society. It has brought the entire world to our finger tips.
Today, a person living in the US or in any other country can easily communicate with his
family members or friends. Yes, communications is much faster now and a time-saving
process. But, the emotions, the feelings and the attachment linked with writing a letter has all
been lost during the last couple of decades. Social sites like Facebook and tweeter are the
modern ways of sharing our feelings with our near and dear ones.
These modern means of communication appear to be meaningful ways of communication but
in reality have negative effects. The privacy of a person exists nowhere on these so-called
social sites. But the irony is we still praise the West for providing us such a great platform for
communicating with our family and friends.
Almost every technology has a bright and dark side to it, its positive and negative
repercussions. About a couple of decades back, communicating with a relative or friend was
not as easy as it is today. We used to correspondence once a twice a month to inform them
about the latest happenings. We were deeply involved in the communication process. We
were so excited while speaking to our parents or friends while calling them from abroad. But
today, such emotions can hardly be witnessed.
Inevitably, we are technologically advanced but we have been morally and spiritually
weakened. We are heading towards cultural decadence ever since technology has become a
part of lives. It seems as if we have sunk into an ocean of nothingness.
With the help of the latest technology, fake IDs can easily be made. Besides, you can post
malicious content to defame a relative or friend. You can also do it out of jealousy or if you
want to take revenge for something.
Determining whether technology is a boon or bane is not easy. However, I believe it has more
evil effects than good.
WAQAR ABRO Karachi
It is interesting that both scientific research and life experiences underpin the necessary concept
that having meaning and purpose are fundamental needs for our human psyche. Brain health is
important but for what purpose? I would argue it is to discover meaning in ones life and to
continue to learn and grow as a human being.
My concern and caution with all the cool technology coming out for brain fitness is that we lose
the human factor. Its great to play a video game to increase cognitive functioning but its not so
great if our personal focus becomes playing the video game to the detriment of the relationships
in our lives. Living with teenage boys I experience this danger everyday.
Its cool to have all this monitoring equipment to know when individuals are struggling but the
danger is that we allow it to isolate them or give us permission to ignore them counting on the
technology to alert us instead of a human to human interaction. A great innovation for a
retirement home or long term care facility is to have sensors to indicate when someone has fallen
or is trying to get out of bed. A great temptation is to no longer physically check on individuals,
relying instead on the sensors to do the job. What we gain in efficiency we lose in humanity,
when the individual in the room feels more isolated and alone because a sensor is not a
friendly face, a sensor does not ask us how we are feeling, in the end a sensor does not care.
So Im all for technology with the caveat that it enables human interaction and does not disable
it. A computer cannot care another human being can and those relationships are what give
life meaning.
Millions more for education! You've heard it before, and the results have
disappointed. Now, the Obama administration has announced a $4.35
billion Race to the Top fundand it could be different this time around. It's
the largest pot ever in the history of discretionary funding for education
reform for grades K through 12. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan calls
it "a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity" to address a fundamental problem:
Just 71 percent of students graduate from high school within four years.
And the numbers for minorities are worse: 58 percent for Hispanics and 55
percent for African-Americans.
This time around, can we restore the great American tradition of providing
a good free education, as we did in the 19th and 20th centuries? And can
we attune it to the need of our time for analytic thinking, problem solving,
independence, and the ability to seek out and assimilate new knowledge?
I believe we can if we focus on the right key.
There is unanimous agreement on what that key is: better teachers. On
average, children with a very good teacher will learn 1 years of material
in a school year. Those with a bad teacher will learn only half a year's
wortha difference of a year's learning in a single year. There is more
variation in student achievement between classrooms in the same school
than there is between schools. In other words, it is better to have a good
teacher in a bad school than a bad teacher in a good school. A teacher in
the top quartile of effectiveness can raise a student from the lowest
quartile of the national achievement distribution to the highest quartile,
an increase of 50 percentiles, in just three years.
Force multiplier. Teacher effects dwarf school effects and are much
stronger than class-size effects. We would have to cut the average class
almost in half to pick up the same benefit that a student gets after
switching from the average teacher to a teacher in the 85th percentile.
Halving the class size would require that we build twice as many
classrooms and have twice as many teachers, an impossible financial
challenge.
But how can we identify a potentially good teacher? How can average
teachers become better teachers? The secretary's special funding could
make a crucial difference by financing a national program exploiting the
electronic miracles of the Internet and video. We could escape geography
by using the technology to have the best teachers appear in hundreds of
thousands of disparate classrooms. This is a force multiplier. The
classrooms would be equipped with a large, flat-screen monitor with
whiteboards on either side; the monitor would be connected to a school
server that contains virtually all of the lessons for every subject taught in
the school, from kindergarten through 12th grade. The contents would use
animation, video, dramatization, and presentation options to deliver
complete lessons, to convey ideas in unique ways that are now
unavailable in conventional classrooms. The classroom teachers would
play the role of enhancers, answering questions and helping students
better understand the material covered electronically; they'd pause the
Those of us who remember the 1980s, when computers were first making their way into our
classrooms, probably also remember a great deal of bad software. As educators, we were
unfamiliar with the technology and uncertain about its possibilities. So we stepped back and let
software developers, hardware vendors, and other technicians define not only what we could buy
but also how those products would be used. In many ways, the technology drove the educational
process. And guess what? It didn't work very well!
Now, we've entered an era in which technology is no longer an intimidating novelty. Its use in
business and industry is both accepted and expected. And pressure abounds -- from the federal
government, from local school boards, and certainly from the popular press -- for educators to
get on board and see to it that students become technologically skilled.
But is mere technological skill enough?
Two points should be considered.
TECHNOLOGY AS A TOOL
Technology is a tool that can change the nature of learning.
First and foremost, educators want students to learn. It is certainly notenough to tell educators
that they need to use the boxes and wires that have invaded their schools simply because they
are expensive or because students need to know how to use the latest widget. If it's clear that
technological tools will help them achieve that goal, educators will use those tools.
The real world is not broken down into discrete academic disciplines. I've heard a number of
teachers say that they would like to be able to change the way they teach -- to find ways to
implement project-based, multidisciplinary lessons. Let's think about how that might happen
when technology is used to support learning.
Technology lends itself to exploration. But before technology can be used effectively, exploration
must be valued as important to both teaching and learning. In a technology-rich classroom,
students might search the Web for information, analyze river water, chart the results, and record
what they've learned on the computer.
In such an environment, acquiring content changes from a static process to one of defining goals
the learners wish to pursue. Students are active, rather than passive -- producing knowledge and
presenting that knowledge in a variety of formats.
In such an environment, educators can encourage a diversity of outcomes rather than insisting
on one right answer. They can evaluate learning in multiple ways, instead of relying
predominately on traditional paper and pencil tests. And perhaps most importantly, teachers and
students can move from pursuing individual efforts to being part of learning teams, which may
include students from all over the world.
Of course, active learning is rarely a clean, neat process. Students engaged in such a process
can create busy, noisy, and messy classrooms. It's important to recognize that this kind of
learning takes practice -- for both the teacher and the students.
Activities and learning environments must be carefully guided and structured so learners are fully
engaged in their learning. Students must learn that exploration doesn't mean just running around
doing what they want and ending up who knows where. Educators must recognize that if
students are investigating and asking questions, writing about what they're learning, and doing
those things in an authentic context, then they are learning to read and write and think.
WORKING TOGETHER
In order to successfully infuse technology into their classrooms, teachers must have the support
of all stakeholders in the educational community. They must resist the notion that learning to use
the "gadgets" is an end in itself.
They must provide desperately needed leadership to find the best ways of using technology to
enhance teaching and learning. They must expect and demand the best and most interesting
software to enhance their educational goals. They must be included in planning the technology
implementation -- and be encouraged to experiment with the available tools.
Finally, teachers must educate themselves on how to best use those tools to enhance teaching
and learning.
It is an exciting time to be teaching, and we must seize this moment to challenge ourselves, our
students, our administrators, and policymakers throughout the country to help all teachers make
the best use of the technology tools available to them.
Article by Lynn Schrum
Education World
Copyright 2005 Education World
Technology is more than hardware. Technology consists also of the designs and the
environments that engage learners. Technology can also consist of any reliable technique or
method for engaging learning, such as cognitive learning strategies and critical thinking
skills.
Technologies should function as intellectual tool kits that enable learners to build
more meaningful personal interpretations and representations of the world. These tool kits
must support the intellectual functions that are required by a course of study.
and contexts
o
for reflecting on what they have learned and how they came to know it
Causal
Causal reasoning is one of the most basic and important cognitive processes that
underpin all higher-order activities, such as problem solving. Hume called causality
the cement of the universe (Hume, 1739/2000). Reasoning from a description of a
condition or set of conditions or states of an event to the possible effect(s) that may
result from those states is called prediction. A baseball pitcher predicts where the ball
will go by the forces that he or she applies when pitching the ball. When an outcome
or state exists for which the causal agent is unknown, then an inference is required.
That is, reasoning backward from effect to cause requires the process of inference. A
primary function of inferences is diagnosis. For example, based on symptoms,
historical factors, and test results of patients who are thought to be abnormal, a
physician attempts to infer the cause(s) of that illness state. Thinking causally is also
required for making explanations. Explaining how things work requires learner to
identify all the causal connections among the things being explained.
Causal thinking is really more complex than learners understand. In order to be able
to understand and apply causal relationships, learners must be able to quantify
attributes of causal relationships (direction, strength, probability, and duration) as
well as be able to explain the underlying mechanisms describing the relationship
(Jonassen & Ionas, 2007). Why does a force applied to a ball cause it to move in
certain direction?
Analogical
If you distill cognitive psychology into a single principle, it would be to use analogies
to convey and understand new ideas. That is, understanding a new idea is best
accomplished by comparing and contrasting it to an idea that is already understood.
In an analogy, the properties or attributes of one idea (the analogue) are mapped or
transferred to another (the source or target). Single analogies are also known as
synonyms or metaphors. One word conveys attributes to the other, often using the
word like or as as a connector. Following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, New Orleans
was said to be inundated with a toxic gumbo. Gumbo is a complex New Orleans
style soup that contains a variety of ingredients. The waters that surrounded New
Orleans contained a complex variety of toxic substancesthus metaphor as
analogy.
People most commonly think of syllogism as analogies. A syllogism is a four-part
analogy. For example, love is to hate as peace is to . The analogy makes
sense only if the structural characteristics of the first analogy can be applied to the
second.
In using technologies to represent their understanding, students consistently are
required to engage in the comparisoncontrast reasoning required to structurally
map the attributes of one or more idea to others, that is, to draw an analogy.
Expressive
Using technologies as tools to learn with entails learners representing what they
know, that is, teaching the computer. To do so, learners must express what they
know. Using different tools requires learners to express what they know in different
ways. Technologies can be used to help learners express themselves in
writing. Learners can express themselves using a variety of tools, such as
databases, spreadsheets, and expert systems, each tool requiring different forms of
expression. Ttechnologies can support verbal expression, while chapter 9 focuses
on visual expressions. Contrast these varieties of expressions to those required by
state-mandated tests, where students only form of expressions is the selection of
answer a, b, c, or d.
Experiential
Experiences result in the most meaningful and resistant memories. We can recall
with clarity experiences that we have had many years before. The primary medium
for expressing experiences is the story. Stories are the oldest and most natural form
of sense making. Stories are the means [by] which human beings give meaning to
their experience of temporality and personal actions (Polkinghorne, 1988, p. 11).
Cultures have maintained their existence through different types of stories, including
myths, fairy tales, and histories. Humans appear to have an innate ability and
predisposition to organize and represent their experiences in the form of stories.
Learning with technologies engages stories in a couple ways. First, the experiences
that students have while using technologies to represent their understanding are
meaningful and memorable. Second, students may seek out stories and use
technologies to convey them.
Problem Solving
Using technologies to express and convey learner knowledge all entail different
kinds of problems solving. Learning with technologies requires that students make
myriad decisions while constructing their representations. Deciding what information
to include and exclude, how to structure the information, and what form it should take
are all complex decision-making processes. Students also engage in a lot of design
problem solving while constructing their interpretations. They also must solve ruleusing problems in how to use software. When learners are solving problems, they
are thinking deeply and are engaged in meaningful learning. What they learn while
doing so will be so much better understood and remembered than continuously
preparing to answer multiple-choice test questions.
Nothing is perfect in this world. Everything has its pros and cons. In the present world it
is difficult to survive without the use of technology.
Few examples of technology will help to understand.
1) Information System Technology :- If proper use of the Internet is done then we can get
all the information with the help of it. Other side it can also spoil the life of many people
by uploading improper things about them.
2) Cellular Phones :- It is a boon as it helps to communicate easily and quickly and now a
days use of cellular phones is much more than just communication. We can almost find
everything in it but on the other side the radiation rays harms the health of the people.
In Short, Technology is definately a boon if it is used after taking proper precautions.
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