the educational essay examples

the educational essay examples

The Impact of Technology on Education: Challenges and Opportunities

1. Introduction

However, successful competition in this area is not easy. The successes of companies in the education field are not the same as those found in disruptive innovation in the for-profit sector. Furthermore, many potential promising devices, those that might have a significant impact on developing expertise, garner little private-sector interest. It is not hard to understand why technology is so crucial to today’s educational environment. Imagination and vision are crucial ingredients for policy success of any sort. On the other hand, unthinking adoption of technology, without evidence and patience, will not buy success. When it comes to the design of better educational technology, imaginative innovations are necessary.

It is difficult to find a more exciting field in contemporary education than education technology. From innovation on devices that support flips, classroom ideas, hybrid learning, the expansion of online courses, and professional development for educators, it is hard to find an area in most nations where innovation on educational devices is not being carried out. In the past fifteen years, nearly a billion dollars have been poured into American educational innovation companies. Other nations have also been investing heavily and looking for strategies that can help support educational success through technology. Accompanying this type of spending are dreams of rapid improvements in educational achievement and societal success.

2. The Evolution of Educational Technology

Educational technology refers to the use of technology in educational settings. The term can also involve the study of using technology in learning and teaching, including methodical understanding. The academic discipline of educational technology contends with better-supported teaching and learning methods. This field has become a rich and creative research domain, with training and publication outlets globally. Educational technology has formed an initiative to bridge the gap towards technology that supports effective and proper learning in educational settings. In this pursuit, the relevancy of the technology as well as the understanding of the core learning rules should be considered. The goal of educational technology is to boost students and instructors’ performance by expanding and distributing technological abilities and resources.

Technological advancement has been influencing our lives since the beginning of the twenty-first century, introducing both reformative alternatives and considerable attention among society. Educational technology is constantly evolving, and teachers of today are navigating this continuously dynamic landscape. But getting the right balance between embracing technology in the classroom and avoiding onscreen time is not the easiest task for educators. This chapter discusses what educational technology is, how it has progressed, and can develop from here. Additionally, it reflects substantially on the effect technology has on the lives of those working in the education sector and the society in which they live.

3. Challenges in Implementing Technology in Education

In an environment where teachers already feel pressure, adding technology to the teaching process appears to be for many another extra burden. Lack of time, computer and software availability, professional development, and evolving standards and guidelines contribute to the sense of lack of control educators face. As defined earlier, these are not only characteristic of the education system; it also involves the way technology is developed and implemented. The technological system has its own complex challenges that add complexity to the already problematic educational system. Periodic curves, lifespan and complexity of the systems, obsolescence, rapid pace with which the Internet changed, its spread and diffusion, faster release of new versions of the software, technical problems, and multitude of components add to the teachers’ challenges.

In any educational technology implementation, teachers are the most important factors in students’ experiences with technology. They are the essential preparers, implementers, and key to how students access information on the web to deepen their knowledge on content. As a vital member of the educational ecosystem, the roles of teachers contribute to preparing younger generations for our complex and demanding knowledge-based global economy. In parallel to their educators’ importance and the challenges education presents, teachers face multiple obstacles. These include, but are not limited to, a unique student population, special student needs, limited pedagogical training, increased social and academic expectations and demands for accountability, multiple intelligences, being placed under a magnifying glass with standardized testing, and a wide gap in technology skill levels with their students.

4. Opportunities and Benefits of Technology in Education

Students have always looked for ways to get out of their research papers. But when it comes to citing sources in assignment notes, plagiarism prevention, and accessing assignments online, it’s hard to pass on the benefits of technology. When using the internet, students stay focused on their learning topics instead of wandering into the sea of information available on the internet, thanks to specifically designed support resources.

Research made simple

Online tools, such as applications and social media, offer educational support that was overwhelming to students in the past. Close to half of K-12 teachers said that they were using some type of education technology in the classroom. This provided students with real-time support on homework, instant access to vast stores of information, and interactive media experiences that provided a true history, science, or math lesson. Multimedia learning tools provide multiple benefits to eager young minds. Educators can project reviews, reports, eBooks, animations, and photos to the classroom presentation, keeping students focused on the lesson.

Exposure to Technological Tools

While the educational benefits of technology are hotly debated, consider the following areas of focus when addressing this question in terms of an educational context.

Opportunities and benefits of technology in education

5. Future Trends and Recommendations

These exponential growth trends, whether of software capacity, hardware capability, large application memory, or the personal “shrink-wrap” hardware appliances, are causes for most innovation-related time/economics/quality of life accomplishment examples. Still, many are concerned about the economic and political impacts of rapid change when costs/time schedules are reduced by 100 factors. As a result of all this, it is becoming clear that the traditional drive to create more routine yet challenging unrealized tasks to prepare students to be “hire-ready” is falling short due to the accelerating expansion of available tools for each service.

It took about 50 years to develop adequate text storage in manuals. We upgraded to today’s rich multimedia. In the business world, this level of functionality would certainly be lost when systems were disconnected for a day. The Internet grew without anyone driving, the result being that the five-year dot com bubble was the payoff. It will take a long time for all the politics to be resolved by very rich and powerful entities.

In this era of globalization and instant information dissemination, hardware and software are changing at even faster rates. What used to take ten years now takes two years, changing every 18 months for the same power, every CPU generation. Examples of exponential growth during recent years are depicted in the following description: