Technology and Education

2964 Words6 Pages

Technology and Education

Introduction

Can you imagine a classroom so technologically advanced that every student had access to flat-screen computers, palm pilots, high-tech laboratories, electronic toys, laptops, video games, on-line class sessions and help, chat rooms, and other emerging technologies? Wouldn't it be fun to learn in that type of an environment! Essentially, the purpose of this research paper is to explore and evaluate how public education effectively incorporates use of these and other advances in technology to meet classroom demands with innovative technique. I begin by examining how schools have used technology in the past in order to gain insight from where we have come. Secondly, I investigate how today's technology shapes an effective learning environment for students in order to better understand where we are now. Lastly, I will gaze into the looking glass and determine where we might be in the future of education and what role technology, teachers, parents, and schools will play. It is projected by futurists that by the year 2020 we will be able to enter information into a computer simply through “direct brain wave input.” (Withrow, 2000, p.1) Will you take time to stop and consider how this and other radical developments in technology will effect education?

Yesterday’s Eulogy

First things first, let us get an overview of technological developments from the past.

That’s right, literally back to the drawing board with the invention of the chalkboard in 1841(PBS, 2000). This instructional tool is so fundamentally important that teachers still use it today. I do not know of one classroom that doesn’t have a chalkboard, or some piece of equipment that functions as a chalkboard. And I canno...

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.... Journal of Biological Education, 36, 135-137. Retrieved December 4, 2002 from ERIC(EBSCO)

This full-text article demonstrates how to incorporate information and communication technology (ICT) with 12 and 13 year olds by using the internet.

Tinker, B. (1996) The whole world in their hands. Retrieved November 13, 2002 from http://www.ed.gov/Technology/Futures/tinker.html

This lengthy article is extremely informational regarding how technology, specifically information will effect education.

Trott, A. (1980). Aspects of educational technology volume XIV: educational technology to theyear 2000. New York: Nichols Publishing Company.

This book demonstrates the problems taken on by developing technologies and the implications in the school systems.It gives in depth explanations of the history, problem, and proposed solution to these learner issues.

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