short literature review sample

short literature review sample

The Impact of Technology on Education

1. Introduction

Information Technology (IT) is a term that encompasses all forms of technology used to create, store, exchange, and use information in its various forms to include business data, voice conversations, still images, motion pictures, and multimedia presentations. Information technology is one of the most rapidly changing and evolving areas in our society today. Advances in this field have had a major impact on education. The use of IT in education can be classified into two broad categories. The first being a class in IT, which is used to teach students on how to use IT effectively. The second is the use of IT as a medium of instruction and a tool to aid learning in all other subject areas. In today’s society it is becoming increasingly more important for students to develop a good understanding and solid foundation in the use of IT. This statement is backed by the New Zealand curriculum framework, which states “The future for many New Zealanders will be associated with IT, and these learners must have the knowledge, understanding, and skills to use IT effectively.” With the increasing occurrences of IT classes students are being introduced to them at a younger age, prolonged exposure will result in students adopting a more positive and accepting attitude towards IT. The use of IT as a medium of instruction and a tool to aid learning is happening more prevalently in today’s society with recent attempts of integrating it into all subjects areas of a curriculum. IT offers a wide variety of media that use audio, video, text, and animated presentations to enable students to learn in their own way and pace. It also provides the opportunity for interactive learning. Research has shown that today’s students are comfortable with the use of IT and prefer to learn and complete tasks using it (Koehler, S., & Mishra, P., 2009). Because of the wide acceptance of IT by students, teachers see this as an opportunity to engage their students in learning by making subjects more interesting and meaningful. An example of this could be a teacher using an interactive physics simulation to better explain a concept. This allows students to both visually and physically interact with the simulation. From this research, it is evident that by using IT as a tool, it can be used to motivate and engage learners in a more meaningful way.

2. Benefits of Technology in Education

E-learning solutions allow the integration of audio, video, graphics, and text content. Since various learning styles of different learners are addressed, it increases the retention of knowledge. It’s possible to get vast experience from prominent experts located anywhere in the world. This creates commercialization of knowledge and also connects worldwide scholars in a virtual community. With the current economic depression, e-learning can offer cheaper methods to learning new and existing technologies. E-learning through educational technology requires engaging activity on the part of the learner. One such activity is collaborative concept mapping. Viable software to make this product is available; concept mapping allows learners to organize their thoughts and be able to understand the interrelationships between concepts. The method of constructing concept maps enables many students to comprehend new information, which can later be probed with instructors to reveal a student’s depth of understanding of the subject material.

3. Challenges of Implementing Technology in Education

Globalisation is a second factor in the increased challenges of technology in education. As higher and global standards for education and technology integration develops, it becomes a greater challenge to locate and retain highly skilled staff. The future image of a technology-oriented school is not consistent with the current image and demands a change for the better of students. This can be unsettling for education systems. An interesting point, noted by A. L. Pijanowski citing H. Rubin, is that the truly global technology applications can ‘erode sovereignty of smaller states by changing who makes the decision’. This suggests that changing to global educational standards can challenge the current distribution of power in education systems.

First and foremost, schools face considerable challenges integrating technology into the curriculum. Given the lack of knowledge about the educational applications of technology, it is not surprising that the most common obstacle is a lack of vision of how to implement it. Even if educators are clear on what they hope to achieve, the means are often unclear. Once they do have a clear view, teachers often understand that the actual integration of technology is time consuming and frustrating. It is rarely used to its full potential as professional development is often inadequate or non-existent. In a climate where budget cuts are ordinary, schools find it a great challenge to justify and fund technology programs that will achieve educational aims. Too often, the purchase of technology is made with no vision of a systemic plan or a proven belief in its educational value. If a clear vision of the desired end result drives the next purchase, the technology is more likely to succeed in providing an increase in student learning. A more pressing difficulty is that schools have at various levels of implementation of technology. It can be confronting for staff whose own children use technology at home and in the community, to try and bridge the gap at school. This can result in a great resentment as they try various methods to ‘catch up’.

4. Strategies for Successful Integration of Technology

If you are at early stages of using technology at this level, start at a more concrete level of defining what you hope to achieve. The SAMR model is a useful way to progress towards more transformative uses of technology, and Ruben Puentedura has a good concise outline of how you might apply this concept to practice on his website.

Too often, according to Dwyer, educators think of educational technology as the electronic delivery of educational content, for example a presentation in PowerPoint or an electronic document. This is too limiting a concept. Educational technology can be used to support all facets of teaching and learning. This might include the development of critical thinking skills, promoting cooperative learning, or the development of multimedia presentations which demonstrate a new understanding of a concept. By identifying the use of technology with what you wish to achieve, you can be more specific in planning the use of technology and can design exercises which are more targeted to your aims.

4.1 Align technology with your goals

Before you can plan effective ways to use technology, you might need to identify what you want to do. Knowing what you want to achieve makes it easier to plan ways to use technology for that purpose. These strategies are not intended to be a complete list, but rather a starting point for effectively integrating technology into an educational environment. By examining your own teaching or training objectives and working through these strategies, you can develop a plan to help improve student learning and the effectiveness of your instruction.

5. Conclusion

Society changes every single day and it’s an inherent cultural quality of human beings search for a better and that better is only achievable through learning. IQ once meant a lot for job employment and a high IQ score meant a person went to a prestigious school. That ideology is not valid anymore and what determines success now in society today in job employment is EQ. It is EQ that will allow a person to be adaptable and flexible to the demands of the job and attain the job. EQ comes from education and the future generations must understand that in order to succeed in the future days where the present generations are old, they must be learned and skilled and only with the advent of technology enhanced and facilitated by ICT can this be possible.

In the plethora of evidence and touched on various issues, my aim with this dissertation was not to compile an exhaustive list of the positive and negative impact of ICT in education, only to provide an insight. An insight that will make someone realize the impact of technology in our everyday lives is so powerful that the implementation for the use it in schools and the teaching and learning process is immense. The necessity is essential, think about the days of old when people used to write on stone, can we now realistically teach our kids in school to write with a piece of chalk on a blackboard?

In conclusion, the positive impacts of technology in education are seen and felt in various parts of the economy. Investment in education is a necessary component for the acquisition of knowledge and the development of countries. The information industry is becoming an important part in the economy and with efficiency and effectiveness, the information using technology will provide learning for children and adults to satisfy the demand of the lifelong learning process. ICTs are expected to empower learners and teachers by providing resources to enhance learning and teaching. This will also increase the skill required in these future generations for the new information age.