The use of technology in education

The use of technology in education

            Technology is being used increasingly in education, and therefore it is extremely important that practitioners work to ensure this is used in a beneficial way. Donaldson (2015) has heavily involved digital competency in his ‘Successful Futures’ report. He speaks about the importance of children learning how to correctly and creatively use technology – as this is a vital skill in the modern workplace. (Donaldson, 2015)
            Issues generally develop regarding the use of technology in schools when the technology is used in activities that it does not actually benefit. For example, in placement I recently witnessed children creating a piece of writing on iPads, rather than writing on paper. The issue here is that children are missing out on valuable handwriting practise, as well as the fact that any spelling mistakes are instantly corrected. This issue is linked closely with the SAMR Model, and the idea that there are five different levels of how effective the use of technology can be; an ‘original idea’ with uses no technology, ‘substitution’ which involves something being unnecessarily replaced by tech, ‘augmentation’ which means an activity is improved with the use of tech, ‘modification’ where the task is ‘redesigned’ using tech, and ‘redefinition’ where a completely original and technology reliant task is created. The issue I explained above is an example of substitution. (Romrell, Kidder, & Wood, 2014)
            However, when used in the correct way, technology is a valuable aspect of education today. Anything from the augmentation level of the SAMR model onwards is a useful way of using technology.
Furthermore, technology can be used to bring people from all over the world together, and this includes students. One example of this is the ‘Flat Classroom Project’ by teachers Vicki Davis and Julie Lindsay. This project involved students ‘separated by 8,500 miles and 11 time zones’ collaborating together in a research project using a variety of technology methods such as video calls and wiki documents. (Peters & ISTE, 2009)
The project can be linked closely with a recent lecture I attended in university which involved a video call with Cheery School in Nairobi. After learning about the life of the students at this school, we spent time as a course to create videos for the children, as well as a day of fundraising for their school. This is just a small snippet of how much of a positive resource technology can be.

References

Donaldson, G. (2015). Successful futures: Independent review of curriculum and assessment arrangements in Wales. Welsh Government.

Peters, L., & International Society for Technology in Education. (2009). Global education : Using technology to bring the world to your students(First ed.).

Romrell, D., Kidder, L. C., & Wood, E. (2014). The SAMR model as a framework for evaluating mLearning. Online Learning, 18(2).




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