Impacts of Educational Technology

The era of the twenty-first century is often considered an era of technology. Technology
is very important to our lives these days. It is considered the foundation of a growing economy.
A technology-poor economy can never grow under the present scenario. It's because
technology makes our job a lot easier and less time-consuming. There is a common focus on
raising student achievement while integrating technology as a tool. Policymakers and educators
are renewing their commitment to programs and instructional practices that to enhance
maximum effects on instruction and student outcomes. Due to the large use of technology in
the world in which we live, the use of technology in teaching and learning is essential if we are
to make a lasting impact on how students learn. Now, with the onset of the Common Core
Standards and their emphasis on technology, the use of technology will become an even bigger
priority in schools (Cristen, 2009).
According to the latest insights as to how exactly modern students of today prefer to
use technology and how their learning get an impact if they use technology, it was revealed
that the use of modern equipment technology and tools, the learning and interactivity of
students increases. They also find it much more interactive, as well as full of interesting areas,
when aided by technology. The transfer of knowledge becomes very easy and convenient, as
well as effective. What this means is, that our minds now tend to work faster when assisted
with the use of modern technology, be it any part of life, here we talk about education. It is no
secret that the use of technology in the classroom, kindergarten through grade 12 and in higher
education has been a controversial debate over the past two decades. Parents, teachers, policy
makers, and students alike have weighed and argued the potential benefits versus the risks and
consequences of classroom technology, not only referring to the devices many students
personally own, but also when referring to the integration of tools into every education
experience. Technology positively impacts student learning. Technology is such that students
are more committed, so students often keep more information because new people have
arrived. Technologies are rapidly occurring globally, so technology is relevant to students.
Technology provides meaningful learning experiences. Technology also offers hands-on
learning. Opportunities that can be integrated into all school curricular areas, including
mathematics, reading, science, and social studies as well as other academic subjects. It gives
students opportunities to collaborate with their peers resulting in learning from each other.
These factors combined can lead to a positive impact on student learning and motivation.
Many studies have shown the advantages of using technology in classroom instruction.
Technology can be used as a tool for establishing meaningful projects to engage students in
critical thinking and problem solving. Technology can be used to restructure and redesign the
classroom to produce an environment that promotes the development of higher order thinking
skills (Kurt, 2010). Technology also increases student collaboration. Collaboration is a highly
effective tool for learning. Students cooperatively works together to either create projects or
they can learn from each other by reading the work of their peers (Keser, Huseyin, & Ozdamli,
2011). One study that was conducted to determine whether Wiki technology would improve
students’ writing skills in a college English as a foreign language writing class showed benefits to
using Wiki technology. Students were invited to join a Wiki page where they would write and 5
post passages and then read and respond to the passages of their fellow classmates. Students
participating in the study reported that their receiving immediate feedback from the instructor
was a benefit of using this form of technology. Students in the study also reported learning
vocabulary, spelling, and sentence structure by reading the work of their classmates (Lin &
Yang, 2011). Using computers and the internet has become an integral part of our daily lives.
Therefore, one of the greatest vehicles for the 21st century is using technology for effective and
permanent learning. The internet affects peoples’ lives by increasing communication,
expanding educational services, and increasing quality along with personal interaction. More
emphasis has been placed on seeking, evaluating, organizing using and sharing information with
others. The internet is the greatest source for information and the best way to quickly share
and exchange information with others, The internet sharpens one’s ability to search and
analyze information (Tutkun, 2011).
In the present day, students are not dependent on pen and paper. In this modern era of
technology, computers and other devices have substituted the use of pen and paper. These
high tech devices offer many advanced features to the user which is much more helpful than
using pen and paper, but the maintenance of these devices costs a fortune to the owner. The
maintenance requires a huge amount of money, and the update of the outdated software also
takes a fair amount of money. So, we can say that technology has made education expensive.
The advancement of technology is making the student lazy. It gives them the power and
the opportunity to control everything with a few clicks of the mouse. Cheating is illegal, but
technology has made it easy with all the resources contained in it. There are many situations
where the students can cheat very easily without getting caught in an examination hall students
can use their smartphones for cheating. With the advancement of technology, smartphones are
provided with many developed features and with internet accessibility, so it becomes easy for
the students to find the answers with the help of the internet. Devices like laptops, desktops,
tablets, and smartphones have already replaced the use of a normal pen and paper. Due to this,
all the important assignments and documents are typed and saved into the respective folders,
hence the writing down on paper is eliminated. Due to no writing or very little writing, people
lose the habit to write, hence the handwriting becomes worse than it was before. Research has
also revealed that using these machines instead of writing has slowed down the thinking
process of the students and brings a fair amount of lethargy in the students with the
advancement of technology, teachers are incapable of teaching students with modern
techniques. The teachers know the primitive way of teaching the students by interacting with
them. Research has proved that interactive teaching is the best way for students to learn. With
the use of technology and advanced devices, the interaction part is totally eliminated. The
students only study the topics by themselves and do not discuss any topic. Software and
hardware devices are made by human beings, as humans can make errors, so the technology or
devices made by human beings can also have some errors in it. These errors cause a loss of
time. Problems like server issues and connectivity problems take a huge amount of time to get
fixed, hence it disturbs the normal flow of teaching and causes frustration for both the teacher
and the student. With speedy development and improvement in the technology, website
owners are eager to rank their websites higher on different search engines. So the owners are
mostly concerned about ranking and are least concerned about the contents on the website.
This is the reason many websites contain wrong information on various topics that are pasted
or copied from different sources without verifying the authenticity of the content. Due to this
wrong information, the learners are often misguided which can severely harm their educational
development.
Technology has a positive impact on education and at the same time may also pose
negative effects. Technology integration is becoming more common in public and private
schools. It is shown to be effective in all age groups and is also shown to be helpful for students
with special learning needs. Teachers and students should take advantage of this in the good
light and eliminate the drawbacks which are pulling back many of students as well as schools
from achieving excellence. It is thus time for every country to introduce a more
technologically equipped education sector in the future.