2022

2022

THE IMPACT OF
TECHNOLOGY IN
EDUCATION

COMMUNICATION SKILLS
ANDRÉ SOBRAL GUTIÉRREZ

UNIVERSIDAD CARLOS III DE MADRID

If there is one thing that characterizes the most the 21st century, that is undoubtedly the advance
of technology. Technology is immersed in every area of our lives having a grand impact in
every realm of human endeavour. The invention of the Internet revolutionized everything,
altering how we communicate with our peers, how we discover information, how we work…
A question needs posing, what have been the consequences of the Internet and other tech tools
on the educational sector? The main purpose of this essay is to analyse the impact of technology
in the schooling sector, one I consider pivotal for the development of our society. Education
has been restructured by the emergence of digital tools changing the mainstream physical
method of learning and introducing a new remote student-based methodology called e-learning.
Gone are those days when we were forced to go to the library to find about a certain topic. We,
nowadays, have at our reach all the information imaginable within milliseconds. Additionally,
this alteration has been partly driven by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In this essay, we will first cover the conventional way of learning, paying attention to the
advantages and disadvantages of the methodology. Secondly, we will focus on the latter way
of learning, again analysing the advantages and disadvantages. Thirdly, we will talk about the
consequences of the covid pandemic on education. Lastly, a conclusion will be provided to
recap all the mentioned.

Education has always been part of the nature of society, being necessary to prepare the new
generations to understand the world fully. Since very little we are taught subjects like maths;
which develop our critic mind, history; which enhances our analytical spirit, literature: which
opens our eyes to the cultural world and science; which helps us to understand the empirical
rules that are present in our lives. The conventional way of learning and teaching has always
been the physical classes where a teacher explains the subject to a group of students. This
approach has both advantages and disadvantages.

On the one hand, the conventional way of learning is beneficial in certain aspects. Firstly, it
enhances the social abilities of the students since they learn to behave in public and to make
friends in person within the class. Secondly, it separates the students from digital devices which
can be harmful if they are overly used. Thirdly, students can ask directly questions to the
professors during the explanations.

On the other hand, the conventional learning method has several drawbacks. First, since classes
are presential students and teachers must commute to get there, therefore only persons from
the same area can be reunited. Secondly, it has high costs of schooling since you must pay for
the professor and the class materials. Thirdly, sometimes it can get boring because there is little
interaction.

Using technology in education has many benefits. Technology has changed the way we learn.
Through devices such as smartphones, laptops and tablets, our possibilities have become
broader and studying more interesting. The use of technology in education is beneficial in many
ways.

First, teachers’ productivity and efficiency have improved since digital tools make easier the
creation of teaching materials and there are more available on the Internet. Plus, if the classes
are online, they are only recorded once and viewed multiple times by an infinite number of
students. Regarding the assessment, they can opt to automatic ways of correcting tests.

Secondly, a reduced cost of scaling to more students since teachers can record themselves in
their houses once and teach online to grand numbers of people. Thus, tuition costs have
decreased, and education can be offered at a more affordable price for everyone. In addition,
resources have become more available and everyone with access to the internet can learn for
free watching videos or reading e-books.

Thirdly, the introduction of technology in education has encouraged more communication

between teachers, parents and students. Education apps like Google Classroom helps in the
exchange of information between the individuals allowing instantaneous response without
having to be present in the same place. All of this promotes collaboration in classrooms by
breaking down barriers. Instead of relying on limited face-to-face social interaction, online
spaces allow collaboration to occur more naturally.

Fourthly, technology aids students to be ready for their future lives since digital tools are the
pen and paper of our time. Educational games for instance help children to become more
creative, inventive and flexible, they are an interesting way of learning skills necessary for
the future while having fun. Technological skills are highly demanded in the current
workforce, and they will be more for the future generations. Thus, it is imperative that
children develop these capacities at a young age.
With more and more technologies being introduced into the classroom today, there are still
many concerns about the consequences of rapidly integrating new technologies. Many of
these concerns are legitimate. This is because most teachers are unable to properly integrate
technology into their teaching methods. These are some drawbacks of using technology in
education.

Firstly, technology is not cheap and devices like laptops, tablets and phones are not
affordable by everyone. Technology required in the education includes internet services,
computer hardware, printers, Internet browsers etc. Acquiring all of these needs a lot of
money to invest in technology at every school.

Secondly, e-learning can sometimes be very distracting, with nobody paying attention to the
students they could lose their time being unfocused. Nowadays, phone addictions are very
high which is having a bad effect on student’s studies. Cell phones have become a great
source of distraction in the classroom and have brought problems like cyberbullying and
cyber harassment.

Lastly, despite it is true that the Internet can offer a lot of valuable information, it can also be
a cause of misinformation since the data is not checked sometimes. Many websites and online
sources offer information that is not veridic and intend to deceive and mislead its readers. As
learners and teachers, we must do a job of checking if the source is reliable, and the
information is credible by contrasting it with other sources.

Regarding the COVID-19 pandemic impact in the education, it has undoubtedly

revolutionized it, disrupting established learning methods and introducing a new modern
technological method called e-learning. When the lockdown guidelines arrived, we couldn't
leave our homes, so we couldn't go to school. All education centres around the world were
closed, paralyzing the entire learning process. Worldwide, over 1.5 billion students and 630
million teachers were absent from the classroom (Statista Research Department, 2022). This
situation forced us to find new plausible alternatives to conduct classes without a physical
presence. As a result, the rise of e-learning became the norm, accelerating the adoption of
technical tools in the education sector.

To cut long story short, presential and virtual learning are two valid ways in the educational
sector, having each of them their positive and negative points. On the one hand, conventional
learning allows students to interact socially with their peers and to ask questions directly to
professors. Plus, it is a good opportunity to get away from the devices. However, it can be
boring and obsolete for our time, costly and time-consuming. On the other hand, e-learning is
more efficient for professors, more scalable, more adequate for our time and less time-
consuming. However, e-learning can be very distracting, devices are not cheap and
information online may not be veridic. In addition, the covid pandemic accelerated the
process of integration of technology in education. Balancing all the mentioned, I consider the
most appropriate way of education a mix of both alternatives, integrating the positive aspects
of both.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
UNESCO. (September 22, 2020). Students and teachers affected by the coronavirus pandemic

worldwide in 2020 (in billions) [Graph]. In Statista. Retrieved December 07, 2022, from

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1227531/students-and-teachers-affected-by-the-

coronavirus-pandemic-worldwide/

European Commission, Directorate-General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture, (2022).

Impacts of COVID-19 on school education, Publications Office of the European Union.

https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2766/201112

Hueso, L. C. (2020). La enseñanza digital en serio y el derecho a la educación en tiempos del

coronavirus. Revista De Educación Y Derecho= Education and Law Review, (21), 8.