Smt. A.H.D.Pushpa Latha ,

Lecturer in Botany, Visakha Government Degree College for Women, Visakhapatnam.

Email ID : [email protected]

Abstract :

Technology has the ability to enhance relationships between teachers and students. There are many reasons why technology is a key aspect of learning.  Technology is everywhere.  To survive in higher education and business world students must know technology. Today technology in teaching is of great importance because of the use of information and communication technologies.  With the help of various applications for distance education, the internet,  teacher and students themselves,  they see the advantage of educational technology. The range of possible benefits pervaded practically all areas of activities in which knowledge and communication play a vital role. It is involved from improved teaching and learning processes to better student outcome, increased student engagement and seamless communication with teachers and parents. There is a significant gap between knowledge and skills students learn in institution. Technology may bridge that gap. This paper deals with role of technology and it’s importance in education.

Key words: technology, teaching and learning processes, information and communication technologies.

Introduction

The era of 21^st century is regarded as era of technology. Technology, today, plays a very important role in our life. Technology is seen as a basis of growth of an economy. An economy which is poor in technology can never grow in today’s scenario. This is because technology makes our work much earlier and less time consuming. The impact of technology can be felt in every possible field one such field is education.

Technology can be powerful tool for transforming learning. It can help affirm and advance relationship between educators and students reinvent our approaches to learning and collaboration, shrink long standing equity and accessibility gaps and learning experiences to meet the needs of all learners. Our schools, colleges and other educational institutions should be incubators of exploration and invention. Educators should be collaborators in learning, seeking new knowledge and constantly acquiring new skills alongside their students.

Technology-Enabled Learning in Action

Learning principles transcend specific technologies. However, when carefully designed and thought fully applied, technology has the potential to accelerate, amplify and expand the impact of powerful principles of learning. Because the process of learning is not directly observable, the study of learning often produces models and conclusions that evolve across time.

Following are the ways by which technology can improve and enhance learning, both in formal learning and in informal settings.

1. Technology can enable personalized learning or experiences that are more engaging and relevant. Mindful of the learning objectives, educators might design learning experiences that allow students in a class to choose from a menu of learning experiences—writing essays, producing media, building websites, collaborating with experts across the globe in data collection—assessed via a common rubric to demonstrate their learning. Such technology-enabled learning experiences can be more engaging and relevant to learners. The Early Learning and Educational Technology Policy Brief released jointly with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in October 2016 align with the Uses of Technology to Support Early Childhood Practice and the National Education Technology Plan (NETP). It supports a vision that 1) all young children will have adults in their lives who are well-informed on how to use technology to support learning at various ages; and 2) all young children will

have opportunities to learn, explore, play, and communicate through a multitude of approaches, including the use of technology. The Department of Education provides guidance, with recognition that that technology use should never displace the role of unstructured, unplugged, interactive, and creative play and that these principles may evolve for families and educators in regards to the active use of technology with early learners over time.

Technology can help organize learning around real-world challenges and project-based learning – using a wide variety of digital learning devices and resources to show competency with complex concepts and content. Rather than writing a research report to be read only by her biology teacher and a small group of classmates, a student might publish her findings online where she receives feedback from researchers and other members of communities of practice around the country. In an attempt to understand the construction of persuasive arguments, another student might draft, produce, and share a public service announcement via online video streaming sites, asking his audience for constructive feedback every step of the way.

Technology can help learning move beyond the classroom and take advantage of learning opportunities available in museums, libraries, and other out-of-school settings. Coordinated events such as the Global Read Aloud allow classrooms from all over the world to come together through literacy. One book is chosen and participating class rooms have six weeks in which teachers read the book aloud to students and then connect their classrooms to other participants across the world. Although the book is the same for each student, the interpretation, thoughts, and connections are different. This setting helps support learners through the shared experience of reading and builds a perception of learners as existing within a world of readers. The shared experience of connecting globally to read can lead to deeper understanding of not only the literature but also of their peers with whom students are learning.

Technology can help learners pursue passions and personal interests. A student who learns Spanish to read the works of Gabriel García Márquez in the original language and a student who collects data and creates visualizations of wind patterns in the San Francisco Bay in anticipation of a sailing trip are learning skills that are of unique interest to them. This ability to learn topics of personal interest teaches students to practice exploration and research that can help instil a mind-set of lifelong learning. Technology access when equitable can help close the digital divide and make trans-formative learning opportunities available to all learners. An adult learner with limited physical access to continuing education can up skill by taking advantage of online programs to earn new certifications and can accomplish these goals regardless of location.

Physical Spaces and Technology-Enabled Learning

Blended learning and other models of learning enabled by technology require educators to rethink how they organize physical spaces to facilitate best collaborative learning using digital tools. Considerations include the following:

• Are the design and layout of the physical space dynamic and flexible enough to facilitate the technology-enabled learning models and practices selected? Can a space in which an educator delivers whole-class instruction also be shifted to facilitate individual online practice and research?
• Do the physical spaces align in their ability to facilitate individual and collaborative work?

When practices such as project-based learning require students to be working together with multiple devices for research and presentation building, is the space as useful as when individual learners need time and space to connect with information and experts online for personalized learning?

• Can the physical spaces and tools be shaped to provide multiple contexts and learning experiences such as Wi-Fi access for outdoor classrooms? Are library spaces able to become laboratories? Can a space used as a history lecture hall for one class become a maker space for engineering the next period?

Factors affecting technology in education

1. Jung talks about the enormous challenge teachers are facing in our society due to the rapid expansion of knowledge. The modern technologies are demanding that teachers learn how to use these technologies in their teaching. Hence these new technologies increase the teachers’ training needs. Gressard and Loyd (1985) asserted that teacher’s attitudes toward computers are a key factor in the successful implementation of ICT in education. They pointed out that teachers do not always have positive attitudes towards computers and their poor attitudes may lead to a failure of the computer- based projects. Also the most commonly cited barriers are:

• lack of time;
• lack of access;
• lack of resources;
• lack of expertise and
• lack of support.

Another barrier given by Butler and Sellbom (2002) and Chizmar & Williams (2001) is reliability. Reliability included hardware failures, incompatible software between home and school, poor or slow internet connectivity and out of date software which are available mostly at school while the students/educators are having more up-to-date software at home.

Impact of ICT on education

In educational context, ICT has the potential to increase access to education and improve its relevance and quality. Tinio (2002) asserted that ICT has a tremendous impact on education in terms of acquisition and absorption of knowledge to both teachers and students through the promotion of:

Active learning:

ICT tools help for the calculation and analysis of information obtained for examination and also students’ performance report are all being computerized and made easily available for inquiry. In contrast to memorization-based or rote learning, ICT promotes learner engagement as learners choose what to learn at their own pace and work on real life situations’ problems.

Collaborative and Cooperative learning:

ICT encourages interaction and cooperation among students, teachers regardless of distance which is between them. It also provides students the chance to work with people from different cultures and working together in groups, hence help students to enhance their communicative skills as well as their global awareness. Researchers have found that typically the use of ICT leads to more cooperation among learners within and beyond school and there exists a more interactive relationship between students and teachers (Grégoire et al., 1996). “Collaboration is a philosophy of interaction and personal lifestyle where individuals are responsible for their actions, including learning and respect the abilities and contributions of their peers.” (Panitz, 1996).Creative Learning: ICT promotes the manipulation of existing information and to create one’s own knowledge to produce a tangible product or a given instructional purpose.

Integrative learning:

ICT promotes an integrative approach to teaching and learning, by eliminating the synthetic separation between theory and practice unlike in the traditional classroom where emphasis encloses just a particular aspect.

Evaluative learning:

Use of ICT for learning is student-centred and provides useful feedback through various interactive features. ICT allow students to discover and learn through new ways of teaching and learning which are sustained by constructivist theories of learning rather than students do memorization and rote learning.

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