Information and Communications Technology in Education

  “Technology is many things. It is the pencil we use. It includes the eraser for the white board in our classrooms”, (Cunningham). Before technology in education is simply this way. A very natural thing no one can question but not until modern world came.

Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded Microsoft on April 14, 1975. In 1980, Microsoft formed a partnership with IBM that allowed them to bundle Microsoft's operating system with IBM computers, paying Microsoft a royalty for every sale. It became largely successful. It develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of software products for computing devices. It became popular to every mankind. It is not only used for communication and fun but mostly it used for researches in school that’s why it became vital to every children and youth in and out of school. And this is technology.

            During the early 20^th century, technology became fundamental to mankind. People were totally hooked in to it and it was something like a virus widely spread in the whole world. Technology was used at school and businesses worldwide for such typing, researching, downloading/uploading, etc.

            In education, computers are always important, in teaching and learning process. School cannot get rid of growing demands of computers that were used by the students to study well. Example, instead of going to the library and read books, students prefer to do some research in the internet using their computers. With just one (1) click, the information they need is there. There’s no more writing but instead printing the document is easy. “Technology will provide students with access to information and the tools to produce substantial work”, (Forcier)

            Technology on the side of the teachers is truly a big help to make their work easily such us in grading, researching lessons on the internet, viewing educational movies, power point presentations, etc. “The computer is a valuable tool in teaching written and spoken communication to students who are culturally and linguistically different”, (Forcier).

Another thing that goes viral is the so called on-line education. This provides the students especially in master’s degree to go online education due to distance of work place and unavailability of time to attend the school during weekends. They used online education to submit assignments and to catch up with the activities they missed. However, according to (Kearsley), “One thing that is not very helpful in understanding online education is the way computers have been used in the past for learning application”.

 I can say that the rapid and continuous pace of change in technology is creating both opportunities and challenges for schools. At the same time, the pace of change creates significant challenges for schools.

Bibliography

Cunningham, C. Perspectives Instructional Technology for Teachers. Coursewise Publishing Inc.

Forcier, R. C. The Computer as an Educational Tool. New Jersey, Columbus, Ohio: Merill, an imprint of Prentice Hall.

Kearsley, G. On Line Education Learning and Teaching in Cyberspace. Wadsworth.