The Importance Of Technology In Education

In the digital era, the teaching process has undergone tremendous changes in order to become more efficient. These changes are possible because of the technology that has been implemented in schools. The implementation of technology has sparkled uneasiness and many people are afraid that the students will be distracted and not pay attention to the instructor. An old Romanian saying says “you cannot teach an old dog new trick”. This is how the uneasiness of the people can be easily summed up. People tend to have prejudice and are always afraid of new things and they tend to reject without even questioning if there are any benefits from the change. The people’s fear may be justified but we should be asking the question whether if the technology is working in favor of the education or if it is just a silent killer of the education process and then come to a conclusion.

The beginning of the technological era made people realize that the traditional ways of learning can be improved. Integrating the new technology in the teaching process aimed to accomplish different goals: develop communication skills and social skills, develop creativity and stimulate academic curiosity, critical thinking and systematic thinking, efficient management of the assimilated material etc. required in today’s society. At first they classical chalk boards were being replaced, then slowly but surely multimedia materials were introduced in the class. Educational radio and television programs were becoming more common and so were movies. Even though the multimedia was becoming more common in classroom the opinion of the people was that they were “hostile to what has been called book-learning or its handmaiden, school learning,” (Postman, 422). As the technolog...

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... but also a change in the structure of the educational system. The evaluation can be included in the teaching process, offering students a permanent feedback to guide them. We must appreciate the value of these technologies, but the danger that lurks in the darkness, from my point of view, is replacing the person teaching with a machinery. Technology must not be considered a teacher by itself. It is a mean of teaching, a way to facilitate the teaching and learning process. Indeed we have tons of information in an instructive environment, to a level never seen before, but what will happen with this instructive environment of education? Can technology “format” my character hard drive? This is not a rhetorical question but more of an answer and as Malcolm Forbes describes it “the purpose of education is to replace an empty mind with an open one”( Malcolm Forbes Quote).