teacher with traditional technology essay

5 Practices of Truly Tech-Savvy Teachers

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The pandemic has been referred to as the biggest educational experiment in history. And it’s not over yet. But already, emerging evidence strongly suggests that teachers and other K-12 educators will continue using technology well after the pandemic recedes.

An EdWeek Research Center survey of more than 1,000 of the nation’s district leaders, school leaders, and teachers in August revealed several ways educators plan to continue incorporating technology into instruction: in the classroom, at home, and for student needs such as unfinished learning.

But it’s one thing to use technology, and another to apply it effectively. As technology grows in relevance to teaching and learning in K-12 schools, it’s critical that teachers be prepared to do the latter and that recruiters know how to identify them.

Education Week caught up with select teachers and instructional coaches who shared their thoughts on some essential practices to effectively implement technology into the practice of teaching. Some were discovered or honed during the pandemic. All offer lessons for job seekers wanting to present in-demand knowledge and skills, as well as districts and schools that are seeking truly tech-savvy teachers.

Lead with learning, not technology

Tech guru Adam Suarez provides common-sense advice that nevertheless may have gotten buried during the pandemic, as teachers rushed to provide virtual instruction to students.

“Lead with learning, never with tech,” said Suarez, a technology integration coach at Cutler-Orosi Joint Unified School District in Orosi, Calif., and co-author of The Complete EdTech Coach.

When people ask him for best practices insofar as using technology in education, Suarez demurs.

“There is no concrete definition of a best practice when it comes to technology. It depends on where you work, who your students are, and many other variables,” he said.

Suarez provides a few examples of how tech can enhance a teacher’s learning objective, rather than the other way around. An app like Quizlet or Nearpod can check students’ understanding of a lesson, for example. “You can use these tools to hold all kids accountable and see what they know in real time,” he said.

It’s simple to personalize learning with certain tech tools, he explains. With a learning management system like Google Classroom, for instance, teachers can assign different versions of the same assignment structured to students’ individualized learning needs.

Depth of knowledge over superficiality

Teachers who are looking for jobs may attempt to wow prospective employers with the breadth of technology tools they have at their disposal. More impressive, say some, is demonstrating a narrow yet deep expertise with technology.

Eric Langhorst teaches 8th grade American History at Discovery Middle School in Liberty, Mo. He regularly uses social media to tweet, blog, and otherwise communicate information about his profession.

Ruminating on his own experience incorporating technology into his teaching, Langhorst said: “I would rather utilize one or two tools really well than five or six and just scratch the surface.”

Recognize when technology complements or trumps traditional options

Countless teachers couldn’t wait to return to the classroom. But some recognized during the pandemic that, in some circumstances, technology strategies complement or even trump traditional ways of doing things.

One such strategy that Langhorst leaned on during the pandemic were virtual field trips, in which he’d introduce his students to creative professionals and their work via a video conferencing method.

Those who livened up his history lessons included an illustrator who created artistic works for the Lewis and Clark Museum and a sculptor who made a statue of Harriet Tubman. Pre-pandemic, says Langhorst, it was far more challenging to find professionals willing or able to use video conference technology for these virtual encounters. The pandemic forced people to get more comfortable with technology; hence, Langhorst plans to continue incorporating these virtual field trips and outside guests into his classroom lessons.

He also realized other technology-driven benefits during the pandemic. Introverted students, often hesitant to speak up in class, were utilizing virtual chat boxes to ask and respond to questions posed in class. “For a lot of kids, it opened up kind of a back channel,” Langhorst said.

The pandemic also made it easier for parents to engage in their child’s academic life, says Langhorst. Notoriously challenging to schedule, meetings for students with individualized education programs, or IEPs, began happening over Zoom or other virtual platforms during the pandemic, oftentimes in the middle of the school day, a practice Langhorst hopes continues. He also joins countless other educators praising virtual back-to-school nights, another invention of the pandemic.

Embrace the expertise of younger, “digital native” teachers

The sudden rise in technology use has created a flipped scenario of sorts in which young, new teachers are likely to possess more expertise than their more-veteran colleagues—at least as it relates to technology.

“They are coming out right now with way more online teaching experience, tech savvy, and skills, than any other teacher ever before,” said Kari Vogelgesang, associate director at the Teacher Leader Center in the University of Iowa’s College of Education. “They’ve had to access their own education and do their field experiences online.”

Andrew Arevalo, a 4th-grade teacher at McCabe Elementary School in El Centro, Calif., concurs.

“They are, for the most part, digital natives,” he said. But, he acknowledges, today’s new teachers will likely need the same type of support their predecessors did with things like classroom management, discipline, and other basic first-year classroom essentials.

Vogelgesang calls the unique situation “a really cool opportunity.”

“Let’s come together and do a mix and match of professional learning communities where we learn from each other,” she suggests, adding, “We’re going to have to be really clever about how we learn from and listen to each other.”

Use technology to collaborate with colleagues

The pandemic did create new pathways for teacher collaboration, if not the time for it. Teachers’ days tend to be jam-packed. There’s little time for lunch or bathroom breaks let alone brainstorming sessions with colleagues. But, says Suarez, teachers stayed in constant contact during the pandemic shutdowns thanks to video conferencing services like Zoom and Google Meet.

“For many, [this technology] has broken down the silos of traditional teaching where teachers lock themselves in their rooms and do their own thing,” Suarez said.

As this example illustrates, the pandemic forced educators to rethink many of the ways they do things, some of which could lead to permanent changes.

“I think this pandemic is going to finally give us a push,” Vogelgesang said. “I am so hopeful that we see some major changes and adjustments.”

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• July 26, 2023

Balancing Traditional Teaching Methods with Technology Integration in the Classroom

Itopia team, while traditional teaching methods have long been the foundation of education, cloud technology can enhance the learning experience and better prepare students for the challenges of the future..

At itopia CloudApps Classroom , we believe in striking a harmonious balance between traditional teaching practices and cloud technology integration to create a supportive, innovative, and positive learning environment. In this post, we will explore the benefits of combining the best of both worlds and offer strategies for achieving this balance in the classroom.

Understanding the Value of Traditional Teaching Methods

Traditional teaching methods have a rich history and have been proven effective over time. They provide essential human interaction between teachers and students, fostering a sense of community and promoting active engagement. The following are some valuable aspects of traditional teaching:

• Personal Connection: Face-to-face interactions allow teachers to connect with students on a deeper level, understanding their individual strengths, weaknesses, and learning styles. This personal connection helps build trust and encourages open communication.
• Hands-On Learning: Traditional methods often involve hands-on activities, experiments, and real-world examples, allowing students to apply theoretical knowledge in practical scenarios.
• Classroom Management: In a traditional classroom setting, teachers can maintain better control over the learning environment, ensuring focused attention and discipline among students.
• Social Development: Traditional classrooms facilitate social interactions, teamwork, and peer learning, promoting important social and emotional skills.

The Benefits of Technology Integration

Incorporating technology into the classroom enriches the learning experience, enhances engagement, and prepares students for the technology-driven world. Some of the benefits of technology integration include:

• Personalized Learning: Technology enables personalized learning experiences, allowing students to progress at their own pace and access resources tailored to their needs and interests.
• Access to Vast Resources: Technology provides students with access to a vast repository of educational content, including interactive simulations, multimedia resources, and online libraries.
• Collaborative Opportunities: Technology fosters collaboration among students, enabling them to work on group projects, share ideas, and engage in discussions regardless of their physical location.
• Real-Time Assessment: Technology facilitates real-time assessment, enabling teachers to monitor student progress and provide timely feedback for personalized support.

Strategies for Balancing Traditional Teaching and Technology Integration

• Blend Teaching Approaches: A balanced approach involves combining traditional teaching methods with technology integration. Teachers can deliver in-person lessons, incorporate technology for multimedia presentations, and utilize online resources to supplement learning.
• Professional Development: Providing teachers with comprehensive professional development on technology integration equips them with the skills and confidence to effectively leverage technology in the classroom.
• Purposeful Integration: Integrate technology with a clear purpose in mind. Ensure that technology tools enhance learning objectives and complement traditional teaching methods.
• Student-Centered Learning: Empower students to take ownership of their learning journey by using technology for research, collaboration, and self-assessment.
• Foster a Supportive Environment: Create a supportive and positive classroom atmosphere that encourages students to explore and experiment with technology without fear of failure.

Balancing traditional teaching methods with technology integration in the classroom is crucial for creating a comprehensive, effective, and dynamic learning experience. By embracing the best of both worlds, educators can create a student-centered environment that fosters collaboration, critical thinking, and prepares students for success in the technology-driven future. 

itopia CloudApps Classroom’s secure and seamless access to industry apps facilitates this balance, ensuring that students and teachers can explore the power of technology while preserving the essential elements of traditional teaching for a well-rounded educational experience. Together, we can create a bright future for education, where tradition and innovation harmoniously coexist to empower the next generation of learners.

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REALIZING THE PROMISE:

Leading up to the 75th anniversary of the UN General Assembly, this “Realizing the promise: How can education technology improve learning for all?” publication kicks off the Center for Universal Education’s first playbook in a series to help improve education around the world.

It is intended as an evidence-based tool for ministries of education, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, to adopt and more successfully invest in education technology.

While there is no single education initiative that will achieve the same results everywhere—as school systems differ in learners and educators, as well as in the availability and quality of materials and technologies—an important first step is understanding how technology is used given specific local contexts and needs.

The surveys in this playbook are designed to be adapted to collect this information from educators, learners, and school leaders and guide decisionmakers in expanding the use of technology.  

Introduction

While technology has disrupted most sectors of the economy and changed how we communicate, access information, work, and even play, its impact on schools, teaching, and learning has been much more limited. We believe that this limited impact is primarily due to technology being been used to replace analog tools, without much consideration given to playing to technology’s comparative advantages. These comparative advantages, relative to traditional “chalk-and-talk” classroom instruction, include helping to scale up standardized instruction, facilitate differentiated instruction, expand opportunities for practice, and increase student engagement. When schools use technology to enhance the work of educators and to improve the quality and quantity of educational content, learners will thrive.

Further, COVID-19 has laid bare that, in today’s environment where pandemics and the effects of climate change are likely to occur, schools cannot always provide in-person education—making the case for investing in education technology.

Here we argue for a simple yet surprisingly rare approach to education technology that seeks to:

• Understand the needs, infrastructure, and capacity of a school system—the diagnosis;
• Survey the best available evidence on interventions that match those conditions—the evidence; and
• Closely monitor the results of innovations before they are scaled up—the prognosis.

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The framework.

Our approach builds on a simple yet intuitive theoretical framework created two decades ago by two of the most prominent education researchers in the United States, David K. Cohen and Deborah Loewenberg Ball. They argue that what matters most to improve learning is the interactions among educators and learners around educational materials. We believe that the failed school-improvement efforts in the U.S. that motivated Cohen and Ball’s framework resemble the ed-tech reforms in much of the developing world to date in the lack of clarity improving the interactions between educators, learners, and the educational material. We build on their framework by adding parents as key agents that mediate the relationships between learners and educators and the material (Figure 1).

Figure 1: The instructional core

Adapted from Cohen and Ball (1999)

As the figure above suggests, ed-tech interventions can affect the instructional core in a myriad of ways. Yet, just because technology can do something, it does not mean it should. School systems in developing countries differ along many dimensions and each system is likely to have different needs for ed-tech interventions, as well as different infrastructure and capacity to enact such interventions.

The diagnosis:

How can school systems assess their needs and preparedness.

A useful first step for any school system to determine whether it should invest in education technology is to diagnose its:

• Specific needs to improve student learning (e.g., raising the average level of achievement, remediating gaps among low performers, and challenging high performers to develop higher-order skills);
• Infrastructure to adopt technology-enabled solutions (e.g., electricity connection, availability of space and outlets, stock of computers, and Internet connectivity at school and at learners’ homes); and
• Capacity to integrate technology in the instructional process (e.g., learners’ and educators’ level of familiarity and comfort with hardware and software, their beliefs about the level of usefulness of technology for learning purposes, and their current uses of such technology).

Before engaging in any new data collection exercise, school systems should take full advantage of existing administrative data that could shed light on these three main questions. This could be in the form of internal evaluations but also international learner assessments, such as the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), and/or the Progress in International Literacy Study (PIRLS), and the Teaching and Learning International Study (TALIS). But if school systems lack information on their preparedness for ed-tech reforms or if they seek to complement existing data with a richer set of indicators, we developed a set of surveys for learners, educators, and school leaders. Download the full report to see how we map out the main aspects covered by these surveys, in hopes of highlighting how they could be used to inform decisions around the adoption of ed-tech interventions.

The evidence:

How can school systems identify promising ed-tech interventions.

There is no single “ed-tech” initiative that will achieve the same results everywhere, simply because school systems differ in learners and educators, as well as in the availability and quality of materials and technologies. Instead, to realize the potential of education technology to accelerate student learning, decisionmakers should focus on four potential uses of technology that play to its comparative advantages and complement the work of educators to accelerate student learning (Figure 2). These comparative advantages include:

• Scaling up quality instruction, such as through prerecorded quality lessons.
• Facilitating differentiated instruction, through, for example, computer-adaptive learning and live one-on-one tutoring.
• Expanding opportunities to practice.
• Increasing learner engagement through videos and games.

Figure 2: Comparative advantages of technology

Here we review the evidence on ed-tech interventions from 37 studies in 20 countries*, organizing them by comparative advantage. It’s important to note that ours is not the only way to classify these interventions (e.g., video tutorials could be considered as a strategy to scale up instruction or increase learner engagement), but we believe it may be useful to highlight the needs that they could address and why technology is well positioned to do so.

When discussing specific studies, we report the magnitude of the effects of interventions using standard deviations (SDs). SDs are a widely used metric in research to express the effect of a program or policy with respect to a business-as-usual condition (e.g., test scores). There are several ways to make sense of them. One is to categorize the magnitude of the effects based on the results of impact evaluations. In developing countries, effects below 0.1 SDs are considered to be small, effects between 0.1 and 0.2 SDs are medium, and those above 0.2 SDs are large (for reviews that estimate the average effect of groups of interventions, called “meta analyses,” see e.g., Conn, 2017; Kremer, Brannen, & Glennerster, 2013; McEwan, 2014; Snilstveit et al., 2015; Evans & Yuan, 2020.)

*In surveying the evidence, we began by compiling studies from prior general and ed-tech specific evidence reviews that some of us have written and from ed-tech reviews conducted by others. Then, we tracked the studies cited by the ones we had previously read and reviewed those, as well. In identifying studies for inclusion, we focused on experimental and quasi-experimental evaluations of education technology interventions from pre-school to secondary school in low- and middle-income countries that were released between 2000 and 2020. We only included interventions that sought to improve student learning directly (i.e., students’ interaction with the material), as opposed to interventions that have impacted achievement indirectly, by reducing teacher absence or increasing parental engagement. This process yielded 37 studies in 20 countries (see the full list of studies in Appendix B).

Scaling up standardized instruction

One of the ways in which technology may improve the quality of education is through its capacity to deliver standardized quality content at scale. This feature of technology may be particularly useful in three types of settings: (a) those in “hard-to-staff” schools (i.e., schools that struggle to recruit educators with the requisite training and experience—typically, in rural and/or remote areas) (see, e.g., Urquiola & Vegas, 2005); (b) those in which many educators are frequently absent from school (e.g., Chaudhury, Hammer, Kremer, Muralidharan, & Rogers, 2006; Muralidharan, Das, Holla, & Mohpal, 2017); and/or (c) those in which educators have low levels of pedagogical and subject matter expertise (e.g., Bietenbeck, Piopiunik, & Wiederhold, 2018; Bold et al., 2017; Metzler & Woessmann, 2012; Santibañez, 2006) and do not have opportunities to observe and receive feedback (e.g., Bruns, Costa, & Cunha, 2018; Cilliers, Fleisch, Prinsloo, & Taylor, 2018). Technology could address this problem by: (a) disseminating lessons delivered by qualified educators to a large number of learners (e.g., through prerecorded or live lessons); (b) enabling distance education (e.g., for learners in remote areas and/or during periods of school closures); and (c) distributing hardware preloaded with educational materials.

Prerecorded lessons

Technology seems to be well placed to amplify the impact of effective educators by disseminating their lessons. Evidence on the impact of prerecorded lessons is encouraging, but not conclusive. Some initiatives that have used short instructional videos to complement regular instruction, in conjunction with other learning materials, have raised student learning on independent assessments. For example, Beg et al. (2020) evaluated an initiative in Punjab, Pakistan in which grade 8 classrooms received an intervention that included short videos to substitute live instruction, quizzes for learners to practice the material from every lesson, tablets for educators to learn the material and follow the lesson, and LED screens to project the videos onto a classroom screen. After six months, the intervention improved the performance of learners on independent tests of math and science by 0.19 and 0.24 SDs, respectively but had no discernible effect on the math and science section of Punjab’s high-stakes exams.

One study suggests that approaches that are far less technologically sophisticated can also improve learning outcomes—especially, if the business-as-usual instruction is of low quality. For example, Naslund-Hadley, Parker, and Hernandez-Agramonte (2014) evaluated a preschool math program in Cordillera, Paraguay that used audio segments and written materials four days per week for an hour per day during the school day. After five months, the intervention improved math scores by 0.16 SDs, narrowing gaps between low- and high-achieving learners, and between those with and without educators with formal training in early childhood education.

Yet, the integration of prerecorded material into regular instruction has not always been successful. For example, de Barros (2020) evaluated an intervention that combined instructional videos for math and science with infrastructure upgrades (e.g., two “smart” classrooms, two TVs, and two tablets), printed workbooks for students, and in-service training for educators of learners in grades 9 and 10 in Haryana, India (all materials were mapped onto the official curriculum). After 11 months, the intervention negatively impacted math achievement (by 0.08 SDs) and had no effect on science (with respect to business as usual classes). It reduced the share of lesson time that educators devoted to instruction and negatively impacted an index of instructional quality. Likewise, Seo (2017) evaluated several combinations of infrastructure (solar lights and TVs) and prerecorded videos (in English and/or bilingual) for grade 11 students in northern Tanzania and found that none of the variants improved student learning, even when the videos were used. The study reports effects from the infrastructure component across variants, but as others have noted (Muralidharan, Romero, & Wüthrich, 2019), this approach to estimating impact is problematic.

A very similar intervention delivered after school hours, however, had sizeable effects on learners’ basic skills. Chiplunkar, Dhar, and Nagesh (2020) evaluated an initiative in Chennai (the capital city of the state of Tamil Nadu, India) delivered by the same organization as above that combined short videos that explained key concepts in math and science with worksheets, facilitator-led instruction, small groups for peer-to-peer learning, and occasional career counseling and guidance for grade 9 students. These lessons took place after school for one hour, five times a week. After 10 months, it had large effects on learners’ achievement as measured by tests of basic skills in math and reading, but no effect on a standardized high-stakes test in grade 10 or socio-emotional skills (e.g., teamwork, decisionmaking, and communication).

Drawing general lessons from this body of research is challenging for at least two reasons. First, all of the studies above have evaluated the impact of prerecorded lessons combined with several other components (e.g., hardware, print materials, or other activities). Therefore, it is possible that the effects found are due to these additional components, rather than to the recordings themselves, or to the interaction between the two (see Muralidharan, 2017 for a discussion of the challenges of interpreting “bundled” interventions). Second, while these studies evaluate some type of prerecorded lessons, none examines the content of such lessons. Thus, it seems entirely plausible that the direction and magnitude of the effects depends largely on the quality of the recordings (e.g., the expertise of the educator recording it, the amount of preparation that went into planning the recording, and its alignment with best teaching practices).

These studies also raise three important questions worth exploring in future research. One of them is why none of the interventions discussed above had effects on high-stakes exams, even if their materials are typically mapped onto the official curriculum. It is possible that the official curricula are simply too challenging for learners in these settings, who are several grade levels behind expectations and who often need to reinforce basic skills (see Pritchett & Beatty, 2015). Another question is whether these interventions have long-term effects on teaching practices. It seems plausible that, if these interventions are deployed in contexts with low teaching quality, educators may learn something from watching the videos or listening to the recordings with learners. Yet another question is whether these interventions make it easier for schools to deliver instruction to learners whose native language is other than the official medium of instruction.

Distance education

Technology can also allow learners living in remote areas to access education. The evidence on these initiatives is encouraging. For example, Johnston and Ksoll (2017) evaluated a program that broadcasted live instruction via satellite to rural primary school students in the Volta and Greater Accra regions of Ghana. For this purpose, the program also equipped classrooms with the technology needed to connect to a studio in Accra, including solar panels, a satellite modem, a projector, a webcam, microphones, and a computer with interactive software. After two years, the intervention improved the numeracy scores of students in grades 2 through 4, and some foundational literacy tasks, but it had no effect on attendance or classroom time devoted to instruction, as captured by school visits. The authors interpreted these results as suggesting that the gains in achievement may be due to improving the quality of instruction that children received (as opposed to increased instructional time). Naik, Chitre, Bhalla, and Rajan (2019) evaluated a similar program in the Indian state of Karnataka and also found positive effects on learning outcomes, but it is not clear whether those effects are due to the program or due to differences in the groups of students they compared to estimate the impact of the initiative.

In one context (Mexico), this type of distance education had positive long-term effects. Navarro-Sola (2019) took advantage of the staggered rollout of the telesecundarias (i.e., middle schools with lessons broadcasted through satellite TV) in 1968 to estimate its impact. The policy had short-term effects on students’ enrollment in school: For every telesecundaria per 50 children, 10 students enrolled in middle school and two pursued further education. It also had a long-term influence on the educational and employment trajectory of its graduates. Each additional year of education induced by the policy increased average income by nearly 18 percent. This effect was attributable to more graduates entering the labor force and shifting from agriculture and the informal sector. Similarly, Fabregas (2019) leveraged a later expansion of this policy in 1993 and found that each additional telesecundaria per 1,000 adolescents led to an average increase of 0.2 years of education, and a decline in fertility for women, but no conclusive evidence of long-term effects on labor market outcomes.

It is crucial to interpret these results keeping in mind the settings where the interventions were implemented. As we mention above, part of the reason why they have proven effective is that the “counterfactual” conditions for learning (i.e., what would have happened to learners in the absence of such programs) was either to not have access to schooling or to be exposed to low-quality instruction. School systems interested in taking up similar interventions should assess the extent to which their learners (or parts of their learner population) find themselves in similar conditions to the subjects of the studies above. This illustrates the importance of assessing the needs of a system before reviewing the evidence.

Preloaded hardware

Technology also seems well positioned to disseminate educational materials. Specifically, hardware (e.g., desktop computers, laptops, or tablets) could also help deliver educational software (e.g., word processing, reference texts, and/or games). In theory, these materials could not only undergo a quality assurance review (e.g., by curriculum specialists and educators), but also draw on the interactions with learners for adjustments (e.g., identifying areas needing reinforcement) and enable interactions between learners and educators.

In practice, however, most initiatives that have provided learners with free computers, laptops, and netbooks do not leverage any of the opportunities mentioned above. Instead, they install a standard set of educational materials and hope that learners find them helpful enough to take them up on their own. Students rarely do so, and instead use the laptops for recreational purposes—often, to the detriment of their learning (see, e.g., Malamud & Pop-Eleches, 2011). In fact, free netbook initiatives have not only consistently failed to improve academic achievement in math or language (e.g., Cristia et al., 2017), but they have had no impact on learners’ general computer skills (e.g., Beuermann et al., 2015). Some of these initiatives have had small impacts on cognitive skills, but the mechanisms through which those effects occurred remains unclear.

To our knowledge, the only successful deployment of a free laptop initiative was one in which a team of researchers equipped the computers with remedial software. Mo et al. (2013) evaluated a version of the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) program for grade 3 students in migrant schools in Beijing, China in which the laptops were loaded with a remedial software mapped onto the national curriculum for math (similar to the software products that we discuss under “practice exercises” below). After nine months, the program improved math achievement by 0.17 SDs and computer skills by 0.33 SDs. If a school system decides to invest in free laptops, this study suggests that the quality of the software on the laptops is crucial.

To date, however, the evidence suggests that children do not learn more from interacting with laptops than they do from textbooks. For example, Bando, Gallego, Gertler, and Romero (2016) compared the effect of free laptop and textbook provision in 271 elementary schools in disadvantaged areas of Honduras. After seven months, students in grades 3 and 6 who had received the laptops performed on par with those who had received the textbooks in math and language. Further, even if textbooks essentially become obsolete at the end of each school year, whereas laptops can be reloaded with new materials for each year, the costs of laptop provision (not just the hardware, but also the technical assistance, Internet, and training associated with it) are not yet low enough to make them a more cost-effective way of delivering content to learners.

Evidence on the provision of tablets equipped with software is encouraging but limited. For example, de Hoop et al. (2020) evaluated a composite intervention for first grade students in Zambia’s Eastern Province that combined infrastructure (electricity via solar power), hardware (projectors and tablets), and educational materials (lesson plans for educators and interactive lessons for learners, both loaded onto the tablets and mapped onto the official Zambian curriculum). After 14 months, the intervention had improved student early-grade reading by 0.4 SDs, oral vocabulary scores by 0.25 SDs, and early-grade math by 0.22 SDs. It also improved students’ achievement by 0.16 on a locally developed assessment. The multifaceted nature of the program, however, makes it challenging to identify the components that are driving the positive effects. Pitchford (2015) evaluated an intervention that provided tablets equipped with educational “apps,” to be used for 30 minutes per day for two months to develop early math skills among students in grades 1 through 3 in Lilongwe, Malawi. The evaluation found positive impacts in math achievement, but the main study limitation is that it was conducted in a single school.

Facilitating differentiated instruction

Another way in which technology may improve educational outcomes is by facilitating the delivery of differentiated or individualized instruction. Most developing countries massively expanded access to schooling in recent decades by building new schools and making education more affordable, both by defraying direct costs, as well as compensating for opportunity costs (Duflo, 2001; World Bank, 2018). These initiatives have not only rapidly increased the number of learners enrolled in school, but have also increased the variability in learner’ preparation for schooling. Consequently, a large number of learners perform well below grade-based curricular expectations (see, e.g., Duflo, Dupas, & Kremer, 2011; Pritchett & Beatty, 2015). These learners are unlikely to get much from “one-size-fits-all” instruction, in which a single educator delivers instruction deemed appropriate for the middle (or top) of the achievement distribution (Banerjee & Duflo, 2011). Technology could potentially help these learners by providing them with: (a) instruction and opportunities for practice that adjust to the level and pace of preparation of each individual (known as “computer-adaptive learning” (CAL)); or (b) live, one-on-one tutoring.

Computer-adaptive learning

One of the main comparative advantages of technology is its ability to diagnose students’ initial learning levels and assign students to instruction and exercises of appropriate difficulty. No individual educator—no matter how talented—can be expected to provide individualized instruction to all learners in his/her class simultaneously . In this respect, technology is uniquely positioned to complement traditional teaching. This use of technology could help learners master basic skills and help them get more out of schooling.

Although many software products evaluated in recent years have been categorized as CAL, many rely on a relatively coarse level of differentiation at an initial stage (e.g., a diagnostic test) without further differentiation. We discuss these initiatives under the category of “increasing opportunities for practice” below. CAL initiatives complement an initial diagnostic with dynamic adaptation (i.e., at each response or set of responses from learners) to adjust both the initial level of difficulty and rate at which it increases or decreases, depending on whether learners’ responses are correct or incorrect.

Existing evidence on this specific type of programs is highly promising. Most famously, Banerjee et al. (2007) evaluated CAL software in Vadodara, in the Indian state of Gujarat, in which grade 4 students were offered two hours of shared computer time per week before and after school, during which they played games that involved solving math problems. The level of difficulty of such problems adjusted based on students’ answers. This program improved math achievement by 0.35 and 0.47 SDs after one and two years of implementation, respectively. Consistent with the promise of personalized learning, the software improved achievement for all students. In fact, one year after the end of the program, students assigned to the program still performed 0.1 SDs better than those assigned to a business as usual condition. More recently, Muralidharan, et al. (2019) evaluated a “blended learning” initiative in which students in grades 4 through 9 in Delhi, India received 45 minutes of interaction with CAL software for math and language, and 45 minutes of small group instruction before or after going to school. After only 4.5 months, the program improved achievement by 0.37 SDs in math and 0.23 SDs in Hindi. While all learners benefited from the program in absolute terms, the lowest performing learners benefited the most in relative terms, since they were learning very little in school.

We see two important limitations from this body of research. First, to our knowledge, none of these initiatives has been evaluated when implemented during the school day. Therefore, it is not possible to distinguish the effect of the adaptive software from that of additional instructional time. Second, given that most of these programs were facilitated by local instructors, attempts to distinguish the effect of the software from that of the instructors has been mostly based on noncausal evidence. A frontier challenge in this body of research is to understand whether CAL software can increase the effectiveness of school-based instruction by substituting part of the regularly scheduled time for math and language instruction.

Live one-on-one tutoring

Recent improvements in the speed and quality of videoconferencing, as well as in the connectivity of remote areas, have enabled yet another way in which technology can help personalization: live (i.e., real-time) one-on-one tutoring. While the evidence on in-person tutoring is scarce in developing countries, existing studies suggest that this approach works best when it is used to personalize instruction (see, e.g., Banerjee et al., 2007; Banerji, Berry, & Shotland, 2015; Cabezas, Cuesta, & Gallego, 2011).

There are almost no studies on the impact of online tutoring—possibly, due to the lack of hardware and Internet connectivity in low- and middle-income countries. One exception is Chemin and Oledan (2020)’s recent evaluation of an online tutoring program for grade 6 students in Kianyaga, Kenya to learn English from volunteers from a Canadian university via Skype ( videoconferencing software) for one hour per week after school. After 10 months, program beneficiaries performed 0.22 SDs better in a test of oral comprehension, improved their comfort using technology for learning, and became more willing to engage in cross-cultural communication. Importantly, while the tutoring sessions used the official English textbooks and sought in part to help learners with their homework, tutors were trained on several strategies to teach to each learner’s individual level of preparation, focusing on basic skills if necessary. To our knowledge, similar initiatives within a country have not yet been rigorously evaluated.

Expanding opportunities for practice

A third way in which technology may improve the quality of education is by providing learners with additional opportunities for practice. In many developing countries, lesson time is primarily devoted to lectures, in which the educator explains the topic and the learners passively copy explanations from the blackboard. This setup leaves little time for in-class practice. Consequently, learners who did not understand the explanation of the material during lecture struggle when they have to solve homework assignments on their own. Technology could potentially address this problem by allowing learners to review topics at their own pace.

Practice exercises

Technology can help learners get more out of traditional instruction by providing them with opportunities to implement what they learn in class. This approach could, in theory, allow some learners to anchor their understanding of the material through trial and error (i.e., by realizing what they may not have understood correctly during lecture and by getting better acquainted with special cases not covered in-depth in class).

Existing evidence on practice exercises reflects both the promise and the limitations of this use of technology in developing countries. For example, Lai et al. (2013) evaluated a program in Shaanxi, China where students in grades 3 and 5 were required to attend two 40-minute remedial sessions per week in which they first watched videos that reviewed the material that had been introduced in their math lessons that week and then played games to practice the skills introduced in the video. After four months, the intervention improved math achievement by 0.12 SDs. Many other evaluations of comparable interventions have found similar small-to-moderate results (see, e.g., Lai, Luo, Zhang, Huang, & Rozelle, 2015; Lai et al., 2012; Mo et al., 2015; Pitchford, 2015). These effects, however, have been consistently smaller than those of initiatives that adjust the difficulty of the material based on students’ performance (e.g., Banerjee et al., 2007; Muralidharan, et al., 2019). We hypothesize that these programs do little for learners who perform several grade levels behind curricular expectations, and who would benefit more from a review of foundational concepts from earlier grades.

We see two important limitations from this research. First, most initiatives that have been evaluated thus far combine instructional videos with practice exercises, so it is hard to know whether their effects are driven by the former or the latter. In fact, the program in China described above allowed learners to ask their peers whenever they did not understand a difficult concept, so it potentially also captured the effect of peer-to-peer collaboration. To our knowledge, no studies have addressed this gap in the evidence.

Second, most of these programs are implemented before or after school, so we cannot distinguish the effect of additional instructional time from that of the actual opportunity for practice. The importance of this question was first highlighted by Linden (2008), who compared two delivery mechanisms for game-based remedial math software for students in grades 2 and 3 in a network of schools run by a nonprofit organization in Gujarat, India: one in which students interacted with the software during the school day and another one in which students interacted with the software before or after school (in both cases, for three hours per day). After a year, the first version of the program had negatively impacted students’ math achievement by 0.57 SDs and the second one had a null effect. This study suggested that computer-assisted learning is a poor substitute for regular instruction when it is of high quality, as was the case in this well-functioning private network of schools.

In recent years, several studies have sought to remedy this shortcoming. Mo et al. (2014) were among the first to evaluate practice exercises delivered during the school day. They evaluated an initiative in Shaanxi, China in which students in grades 3 and 5 were required to interact with the software similar to the one in Lai et al. (2013) for two 40-minute sessions per week. The main limitation of this study, however, is that the program was delivered during regularly scheduled computer lessons, so it could not determine the impact of substituting regular math instruction. Similarly, Mo et al. (2020) evaluated a self-paced and a teacher-directed version of a similar program for English for grade 5 students in Qinghai, China. Yet, the key shortcoming of this study is that the teacher-directed version added several components that may also influence achievement, such as increased opportunities for teachers to provide students with personalized assistance when they struggled with the material. Ma, Fairlie, Loyalka, and Rozelle (2020) compared the effectiveness of additional time-delivered remedial instruction for students in grades 4 to 6 in Shaanxi, China through either computer-assisted software or using workbooks. This study indicates whether additional instructional time is more effective when using technology, but it does not address the question of whether school systems may improve the productivity of instructional time during the school day by substituting educator-led with computer-assisted instruction.

Increasing learner engagement

Another way in which technology may improve education is by increasing learners’ engagement with the material. In many school systems, regular “chalk and talk” instruction prioritizes time for educators’ exposition over opportunities for learners to ask clarifying questions and/or contribute to class discussions. This, combined with the fact that many developing-country classrooms include a very large number of learners (see, e.g., Angrist & Lavy, 1999; Duflo, Dupas, & Kremer, 2015), may partially explain why the majority of those students are several grade levels behind curricular expectations (e.g., Muralidharan, et al., 2019; Muralidharan & Zieleniak, 2014; Pritchett & Beatty, 2015). Technology could potentially address these challenges by: (a) using video tutorials for self-paced learning and (b) presenting exercises as games and/or gamifying practice.

Video tutorials

Technology can potentially increase learner effort and understanding of the material by finding new and more engaging ways to deliver it. Video tutorials designed for self-paced learning—as opposed to videos for whole class instruction, which we discuss under the category of “prerecorded lessons” above—can increase learner effort in multiple ways, including: allowing learners to focus on topics with which they need more help, letting them correct errors and misconceptions on their own, and making the material appealing through visual aids. They can increase understanding by breaking the material into smaller units and tackling common misconceptions.

In spite of the popularity of instructional videos, there is relatively little evidence on their effectiveness. Yet, two recent evaluations of different versions of the Khan Academy portal, which mainly relies on instructional videos, offer some insight into their impact. First, Ferman, Finamor, and Lima (2019) evaluated an initiative in 157 public primary and middle schools in five cities in Brazil in which the teachers of students in grades 5 and 9 were taken to the computer lab to learn math from the platform for 50 minutes per week. The authors found that, while the intervention slightly improved learners’ attitudes toward math, these changes did not translate into better performance in this subject. The authors hypothesized that this could be due to the reduction of teacher-led math instruction.

More recently, Büchel, Jakob, Kühnhanss, Steffen, and Brunetti (2020) evaluated an after-school, offline delivery of the Khan Academy portal in grades 3 through 6 in 302 primary schools in Morazán, El Salvador. Students in this study received 90 minutes per week of additional math instruction (effectively nearly doubling total math instruction per week) through teacher-led regular lessons, teacher-assisted Khan Academy lessons, or similar lessons assisted by technical supervisors with no content expertise. (Importantly, the first group provided differentiated instruction, which is not the norm in Salvadorian schools). All three groups outperformed both schools without any additional lessons and classrooms without additional lessons in the same schools as the program. The teacher-assisted Khan Academy lessons performed 0.24 SDs better, the supervisor-led lessons 0.22 SDs better, and the teacher-led regular lessons 0.15 SDs better, but the authors could not determine whether the effects across versions were different.

Together, these studies suggest that instructional videos work best when provided as a complement to, rather than as a substitute for, regular instruction. Yet, the main limitation of these studies is the multifaceted nature of the Khan Academy portal, which also includes other components found to positively improve learner achievement, such as differentiated instruction by students’ learning levels. While the software does not provide the type of personalization discussed above, learners are asked to take a placement test and, based on their score, educators assign them different work. Therefore, it is not clear from these studies whether the effects from Khan Academy are driven by its instructional videos or to the software’s ability to provide differentiated activities when combined with placement tests.

Games and gamification

Technology can also increase learner engagement by presenting exercises as games and/or by encouraging learner to play and compete with others (e.g., using leaderboards and rewards)—an approach known as “gamification.” Both approaches can increase learner motivation and effort by presenting learners with entertaining opportunities for practice and by leveraging peers as commitment devices.

There are very few studies on the effects of games and gamification in low- and middle-income countries. Recently, Araya, Arias Ortiz, Bottan, and Cristia (2019) evaluated an initiative in which grade 4 students in Santiago, Chile were required to participate in two 90-minute sessions per week during the school day with instructional math software featuring individual and group competitions (e.g., tracking each learner’s standing in his/her class and tournaments between sections). After nine months, the program led to improvements of 0.27 SDs in the national student assessment in math (it had no spillover effects on reading). However, it had mixed effects on non-academic outcomes. Specifically, the program increased learners’ willingness to use computers to learn math, but, at the same time, increased their anxiety toward math and negatively impacted learners’ willingness to collaborate with peers. Finally, given that one of the weekly sessions replaced regular math instruction and the other one represented additional math instructional time, it is not clear whether the academic effects of the program are driven by the software or the additional time devoted to learning math.

The prognosis:

How can school systems adopt interventions that match their needs.

Here are five specific and sequential guidelines for decisionmakers to realize the potential of education technology to accelerate student learning.

1. Take stock of how your current schools, educators, and learners are engaging with technology .

Carry out a short in-school survey to understand the current practices and potential barriers to adoption of technology (we have included suggested survey instruments in the Appendices); use this information in your decisionmaking process. For example, we learned from conversations with current and former ministers of education from various developing regions that a common limitation to technology use is regulations that hold school leaders accountable for damages to or losses of devices. Another common barrier is lack of access to electricity and Internet, or even the availability of sufficient outlets for charging devices in classrooms. Understanding basic infrastructure and regulatory limitations to the use of education technology is a first necessary step. But addressing these limitations will not guarantee that introducing or expanding technology use will accelerate learning. The next steps are thus necessary.

“In Africa, the biggest limit is connectivity. Fiber is expensive, and we don’t have it everywhere. The continent is creating a digital divide between cities, where there is fiber, and the rural areas.  The [Ghanaian] administration put in schools offline/online technologies with books, assessment tools, and open source materials. In deploying this, we are finding that again, teachers are unfamiliar with it. And existing policies prohibit students to bring their own tablets or cell phones. The easiest way to do it would have been to let everyone bring their own device. But policies are against it.” H.E. Matthew Prempeh, Minister of Education of Ghana, on the need to understand the local context.

2. Consider how the introduction of technology may affect the interactions among learners, educators, and content .

Our review of the evidence indicates that technology may accelerate student learning when it is used to scale up access to quality content, facilitate differentiated instruction, increase opportunities for practice, or when it increases learner engagement. For example, will adding electronic whiteboards to classrooms facilitate access to more quality content or differentiated instruction? Or will these expensive boards be used in the same way as the old chalkboards? Will providing one device (laptop or tablet) to each learner facilitate access to more and better content, or offer students more opportunities to practice and learn? Solely introducing technology in classrooms without additional changes is unlikely to lead to improved learning and may be quite costly. If you cannot clearly identify how the interactions among the three key components of the instructional core (educators, learners, and content) may change after the introduction of technology, then it is probably not a good idea to make the investment. See Appendix A for guidance on the types of questions to ask.

3. Once decisionmakers have a clear idea of how education technology can help accelerate student learning in a specific context, it is important to define clear objectives and goals and establish ways to regularly assess progress and make course corrections in a timely manner .

For instance, is the education technology expected to ensure that learners in early grades excel in foundational skills—basic literacy and numeracy—by age 10? If so, will the technology provide quality reading and math materials, ample opportunities to practice, and engaging materials such as videos or games? Will educators be empowered to use these materials in new ways? And how will progress be measured and adjusted?

4. How this kind of reform is approached can matter immensely for its success.

It is easy to nod to issues of “implementation,” but that needs to be more than rhetorical. Keep in mind that good use of education technology requires thinking about how it will affect learners, educators, and parents. After all, giving learners digital devices will make no difference if they get broken, are stolen, or go unused. Classroom technologies only matter if educators feel comfortable putting them to work. Since good technology is generally about complementing or amplifying what educators and learners already do, it is almost always a mistake to mandate programs from on high. It is vital that technology be adopted with the input of educators and families and with attention to how it will be used. If technology goes unused or if educators use it ineffectually, the results will disappoint—no matter the virtuosity of the technology. Indeed, unused education technology can be an unnecessary expenditure for cash-strapped education systems. This is why surveying context, listening to voices in the field, examining how technology is used, and planning for course correction is essential.

5. It is essential to communicate with a range of stakeholders, including educators, school leaders, parents, and learners .

Technology can feel alien in schools, confuse parents and (especially) older educators, or become an alluring distraction. Good communication can help address all of these risks. Taking care to listen to educators and families can help ensure that programs are informed by their needs and concerns. At the same time, deliberately and consistently explaining what technology is and is not supposed to do, how it can be most effectively used, and the ways in which it can make it more likely that programs work as intended. For instance, if teachers fear that technology is intended to reduce the need for educators, they will tend to be hostile; if they believe that it is intended to assist them in their work, they will be more receptive. Absent effective communication, it is easy for programs to “fail” not because of the technology but because of how it was used. In short, past experience in rolling out education programs indicates that it is as important to have a strong intervention design as it is to have a solid plan to socialize it among stakeholders.

Beyond reopening: A leapfrog moment to transform education?

On September 14, the Center for Universal Education (CUE) will host a webinar to discuss strategies, including around the effective use of education technology, for ensuring resilient schools in the long term and to launch a new education technology playbook “Realizing the promise: How can education technology improve learning for all?”

file-pdf Full Playbook – Realizing the promise: How can education technology improve learning for all? file-pdf References file-pdf Appendix A – Instruments to assess availability and use of technology file-pdf Appendix B – List of reviewed studies file-pdf Appendix C – How may technology affect interactions among students, teachers, and content?

About the Authors

Alejandro j. ganimian, emiliana vegas, frederick m. hess.

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Center for Teaching

Teaching thoughtfully with (and without) technology.

This article was originally published in the Fall 2000 issue of the CFT’s newsletter, Teaching Forum .

By John Rakestraw

The first time I entered a university classroom as an instructor, I carried a wealth of classroom experience with me. I had spent many years as a student, and during that time I had observed many different teachers do many different things to enable (and sometimes stand in the way of) the learning of their students. As a beginning teacher I didn’t think very carefully about all of these experiences, but many of the things I did as an instructor in those early years drew on my experiences as a student.

To pick one simple example, when I approached a chalkboard to illustrate a point on my first day of class as an instructor I had behind me years of many teachers using the chalkboard in a variety of ways. Some of them brought their students to the board regularly. Others reserved it as a surface on which they would write the main points of a lecture. Still others used it to collect and then organize student comments during a class discussion. When I entered the classroom on my first day of teaching, I hadn’t thought consciously about all of those different teachers using a chalkboard, but their uses still informed my use of the board as an instructional tool. I picked up on the medium of instruction even while I was focusing on the content of instruction.

The chalkboard example can carry another point. Some technologies are so deeply ingrained in our teaching practice that we’re reluctant to think of them as technologies that we choose to use in teaching. That’s because we find it difficult to think of teaching without them. Their use is so pervasive that they’re considered to be part of the teaching itself, rather than a use of technology in teaching.

However, there were several things I didn’t see any of my instructors do that many of today’s students see. I did not see any of my instructors turn on a personal computer to show students a web site that might provide useful information. Nor did I see an instructor use PowerPoint slides to enhance a lecture presentation. Nor did I see an instructor set up an electronic bulletin board discussion area.

In short, when I began as an instructor to use these new technologies in teaching, I was working largely in the absence of models. It was natural, therefore, not only to model my uses of new technologies on uses of old technologies, but also to seek some models from uses outside the academy. The first syllabus I put on the World Wide Web was, for the most part, an electronic version of paper course syllabi I’d been handing out for years. The first on line discussion forum I hosted for a class was a rather clumsy attempt to recreate on line the same sort of free-flowing discussions I had facilitated to good effect in face-to-face encounters in the classroom. I realize now that it was clumsy in part because I hadn’t thought carefully about the many different factors standing underneath a strong classroom discussion. Such factors might include the recording and structuring of student comments on a chalkboard. It might also include something so subtle as an encouraging glance at a student on the verge of jumping into the discussion.

My not thinking carefully about what underlies a good classroom discussion was especially problematic in light of the fact that many of these new technologies are used rather uncritically in other areas. Thus, for example, the online discussion forums that many professors are using in the classroom are also used outside the academy by students and others in decidedly non-rigorous ways.

All of this leads me to one of the more interesting characteristics of current discussions about using new technologies effectively in education. As we think and talk about how to use these new technologies in teaching, we often move rather quickly into thinking and talking about how to teach. These reflections and discussions, it seems to me, are important whether we decide to use a particular technology or not. I’m convinced not only that we should use technology for the sake of the teaching rather than for the sake of the technology, but also that our discussions about technology in teaching are most rewarding, finally, when they lead us to new insights about teaching.

Where will these new technologies — and others yet to be developed — take us in teaching and learning? How will learning encounters of the future be different from those in classrooms today? No one knows. I will suggest, however, some caution in assessing the full effectiveness of these new technologies and their impact on teaching on the basis merely of the way we are using them today. Imagine an attempt to assess the impact of the automobile on late 20th century culture on the basis of what the Model T could and couldn’t do in the early 1900s. Far better, I think, to continue the exploration and use of these new technologies, being careful to consider how and to what extent they facilitate good teaching and learning.

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Teaching With Technology or Traditionally? The Key is to Balance the Way Out

“One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings.

The curriculum is so much a necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.” – Carl Jung

Talking about teaching, the first thing that come to my mind is the teacher who always encouraged me to do better and not that tech stuff that helped me do better. The personal touch acts as the driving force to humans. Technology does make education better by opening new opportunities and making ways for better resources, communication, collaboration, enhancing various skills and a lot more good things. But in order to get the best out of it what plays a key role is the teacher guiding and helping us to do that and believing in us that we can do that.    

There is no doubt that technology is essential but one thing that must be clear is that tech integration does not aim to eliminate the private touch to teaching. Humans can’t be replaced with machines.

Check out the pointers below to get a gist of what role does technology plays in various teaching models. In other words, to what extent does the technology-aided means of learning enhance learning and add value to the conventional materials? How are they supposed to supersede or excel the learning effectiveness of traditional methods of teaching?

Here, students bring their own device to the classroom and integrate technology in their practices and have authority over their learning. With BYOD in practice, students not only have access to the device in the classroom but also when they are outside the class, hence a balance must be struck. The trick is to teach students use these devices optically.

While researching for what you’re reading, I referred this TeachThough’s article on The Brutal Authenticity of BYOD which talks of for Forsyth County Schools and their approach towards BYOD model of teaching.

Tim Clark, District Instructional Technology Specialist (ITS) for Forsyth County Schools, explained the shift that occurred once students brought in their own technology. “As the teachers began to introduce BYOD* into their classrooms, some fundamental changes began to occur. They no longer had to teach their students about technology in order to integrate technology effectively in their classrooms because the students were already the experts with their own devices.”

But there’s more. Clark also touts more important benefits of BYOD—those that lead to better learning.

“This change in practice (adopting a BYOD program) can evolve as the teachers allow themselves to become collaborators with their students in the learning process. When the students first bring in their technology devices, they are immediately engaged and want to explore all of the possible capabilities of the technology. This initial phase of exploration passes quickly as the students become more literate in their devices and learn how to connect them to the BYOD wireless network. The teacher and the students then begin to adapt their technologies to their current classroom practices.”

Check out the full post here .

Blended Learning

I find this approach to teaching of great use. Blend the use of multimedia, social media, offline teaching, online teaching and on-hands activities to make the best out of everything. In context to blended learning, Laura Fleming quotes, “The library today is a place where knowledge is created and not merely consumed.”

With various types of resources, students get to learn with what they find best. Also, the engagement is at best as they are being able to explore more in a very engaged manner. Also, the various approaches used in this teaching model are loved by most kids so practically they learn to use their technologies in efficient manner and for the good reasons.

Flipped Learning

Apart from hybrid learning this is another type of blended learning approach where a student is first exposed to new material outside of class, usually in the form of an online presentation. When the student attends sessions in classroom setting, the class time is used to apply the material in the form of problem-solving and discussion. In this scenario, the use of technology can be of great deal. With technologies like augmented reality, the experience of teaching can be taken to another level. Imagine studying about planets with augmented reality where education comes to life and the balance can be struck when students get to discuss about it with their peers and teachers in the classroom thereby pacing ways to communicate personally.  

We ourselves say that technology becomes obsolete and changes constantly, in such scenario the only constant is the teachers. They are the ones who are driving this learning spirit among students, day by day, motivating, pushing and guiding students to do better every day making them realize their dreams and achieve more than what they think they can. Living in this constantly changing world of web 2.0, it is important to use it and find a core purpose and focus on it else it will leave you confused and frustrated. You may try your hand at new technologies and in my opinion you should but before implementing it for all you have to be SURE.

What are your views on tech integration in education? Where do you find your balance?

Next Read: Balancing the Use of 21st Century Educational Technology with Real Life Experience in the Classroom

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Second Language Teacher Professional Development pp 3–12 Cite as

Introduction: Educational Technology in Teacher Education

• Michael Thomas 6 &
• Karim Sadeghi 7  
• First Online: 24 March 2023

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Part of the book series: Digital Education and Learning ((DEAL))

In this first chapter, we briefly survey the history of the use of educational technology in language teacher education and professional development. We identify different types of digital technologies that are commonly used in training language teachers and discuss the affordances these tools offer for running teachers’ professional development programmes. We also consider the challenges and concerns in using technology for such purposes in contexts with limited access to technological resources. The chapter ends with an outline of the chapters included in the rest of the volume.

• Computer-assisted language learning
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Thomas, M., Sadeghi, K. (2023). Introduction: Educational Technology in Teacher Education. In: Sadeghi, K., Thomas, M. (eds) Second Language Teacher Professional Development. Digital Education and Learning. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12070-1_1

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Using a Personalized Instructional Playbook to Revitalize Your Teaching

This type of guide helps teachers choose appropriate technology to go along with a particular instructional strategy.

In today’s educational landscape, where technology plays such a pivotal role, integrating instructional strategies with technology is increasingly important. As an instructional technology resource teacher, I have a primary role of supporting teachers in effectively integrating technology into their classroom instruction. The shift to remote learning in 2020 necessitated a rapid and often uncomfortable adaptation to technology use in teaching.

Creating an instructional playbook emerged as a pathway to support teachers with leveraging technology, not just as a supplementary tool but as a crucial component in enhancing impactful teaching strategies, ensuring that technology’s role in education is purposeful and powerful.

A Collaborative Beginning

Inspired by researcher Jim Knight’s The Instructional Playbook , I sought an existing playbook that would resonate with my role as an instructional technology coach. However, I realized that most resources did not fully encapsulate the nuanced relationship between technology and instructional strategy, particularly in the post-pandemic era of heightened technology usage in education.

This gap led to a collaborative effort with educators and coaches across North America to create a playbook that purposefully integrates technology with instructional strategies, enhancing my approach to teaching.

Creating the Playbook

The essence of a well-crafted instructional playbook lies in its ability to be both concise and comprehensive, outlining evidence-based teaching strategies crucial in assisting teachers and students. These strategies should form the foundation of a district’s professional development program, emphasizing the playbook’s role as a pivotal tool.

For me, crafting the playbook was as much about exploration and discovery as it was about creation. Initially, our team grappled with fundamental questions: What instructional strategies should be central to our playbook? How do we distinguish between strategies and activities? These early discussions were crucial, as they helped us sift through a myriad of educational practices to identify what truly mattered.

During these formative stages, we learned to focus on our overarching purpose and the specific needs that the playbook was meant to address, rather than getting bogged down in details. This perspective allowed us to develop a playbook adaptable to diverse educational settings.

For the broader educational community, we endeavored to create a playbook that was comprehensive in scope, including various instructional strategies carefully aligned with International Society for Technology in Education standards and Universal Design for Learning principles . We aimed to ensure that technology integration was intentional and meaningful, enhancing rather than overshadowing the instructional strategies.

As the playbook evolved, it became a living document, shaped by continuous contributions and enriched by diverse perspectives. Educators from different backgrounds brought templates and ideas, each adding unique value to the playbook. This collaborative approach meant that the playbook could be adapted and modified to fit unique contexts, making it a versatile tool for educators.

In contrast to this broad resource, the playbook I tailored for my professional learning community (PLC) had a much narrower focus. Recognizing the specific needs and goals of my PLC, I crafted a version of the playbook with a more concentrated scope. This personalized playbook addresses the particular challenges and objectives we face in our learning environment , proving that the playbook’s format and content could be as flexible and varied as the educators and students it serves.

Overall, crafting the playbook highlighted the importance of purpose-driven design in educational resources. By understanding our goals, we created a comprehensive, adaptable playbook that resonates with educators’ and students’ diverse needs.

Refocusing on Instructional Strategies

With more than two decades of teaching experience, this project allowed me to refocus on the core of teaching—instructional strategies. The playbook became a common language among teachers, coaches, and administrators, facilitating more focused discussions on teaching practices. It encouraged a shift from merely engaging students in fun activities to employing strategies that significantly impact learning.

Back in the classroom, the playbook transformed my approach to lesson planning. I started with the learning objectives and anticipated barriers, which allowed me to select the most appropriate instructional strategies. This backward-design approach ensured that technology was used not as a substitute but as a meaningful enhancer of the lesson objectives. Since developing the playbook, I have noticed a marked increase in collaboration, classroom discussion, and flexible grouping in my lesson plans. Technology was no longer just a tool for substitution but a means for collaboration, creation, and learning opportunities that students would not have with paper and pencil.

The Impact of the Playbook

Creating a playbook is not a one-off task. It demands continuous engagement, reflection, and refinement. We continue to update our activity hub, ensuring that it remains a relevant and dynamic resource for educators. Creating and using the Comprehensive Instructional Playbook reinvigorates my teaching practice. It makes me more mindful of the instructional strategies I choose and their alignment with my lesson objectives. It fosters a deeper understanding of when and why to use specific methods and how to effectively integrate technology into my teaching.

The playbook also proves valuable for new teachers and career switchers who need more exposure to diverse instructional practices. It serves as a guide, helping them navigate the complexities of effective teaching strategies and technology integration.

The playbook is more than a collection of strategies; it’s a testament to the power of collaboration and continuous learning in education. It reminds us that the teaching process, like learning, is ever-evolving and enriched by shared experiences and knowledge. As educators, we must remain adaptable, always seeking to enhance our practices for the ultimate benefit of our students.

Check out “ Collaborate to Create Your Own Instructional Playbook ,“ which has a variety of resources and templates.

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How has technology transformed the role of a teacher?

When I went to school it was common place for a teacher to place a text book in front a set of students and offer the simple yet daunting line, "copy that". There would be no talking to either the teacher or fellow pupils. For me lessons seemed to drag so much that I wasn't engaged in the subject material. I'm proud to say that I became a teacher in spite of the education I received; I believed that I could and would do a better job. This task was made easier through the use of technology in the classroom.

During 10 years in the profession, I've seen technology alter the role the teacher almost beyond all recognition. Teachers have undergone a Kafkaesque metamorphosis from Mr Chips to Mr Jobs; wooden, flip-lid desks have been replaced by iPads. The question we have to ask is, has this change from teacher to that of facilitator of learning been positive? Undeniably so, in my opinion.

Making use of technology to allow students the freedom to discover solutions to problems both independently and collaboratively is a force for good. As educators we strive for students to engage with our subject beyond a superficial level. We want them to be active learners, learners who have a thirst for discovery and knowledge. Technology places the world in the hands of every student inside the confines of your classroom.

There are many ways in which technology can be used in the classroom to engage students and facilitate exciting, engaging and interesting lessons. I'm not going to ignore the fact that there is a cost attached to most things, but it's about getting more bang for your buck, as our American cousins would say. Whatever you choose to use you need to make sure that you're getting it for the right reasons.

If you're not used to allowing your students space to guide their own learning then I can see how this all might seem intimidating; don't let it be. For many of us it feels counterintuitive to allow our students the space to discover solutions as these might not be the ones that we want them to find. Allowing the use of technology in my classroom has freed me from my lesson-plan shackles. It feels strange at first but the this type of emancipation is addictive

We all feel the stresses of getting students through exam courses and allowing them the freedom to wander is sometimes too much for some to allow. However, in my experience allowing the freedom to search and discover the subject through technology has fostered a love for my subject.

The best teachers that I have seen using technology to aid independent learning are the ones who have embraced the power that is already in the pockets of students. Most students have powerful devices, primed and ready to go in their pockets – the dreaded mobile phone. If you're lucky like me, your school will see the power that these wonders hold. Allowing students to unholster these weapons is a liberating experience for both teacher and student. Filming a peer assessment or recording a group discussions and uploading to AudioBoo is yet another way of engaging students.

Allowing yourself the opportunity to do something new and using technology as the tool can open up a cave of treasures that hooks the attention of the student and once you have that it can lead them anywhere.

Mike's tips for getting started with technology in the classroom

Do plan how you're going to use the technology in advance. How is it going to aid the learning of your students? If it isn't going to aid teaching and learning then you shouldn't use it

Don't buy the latest fad product. There has been a temptation for schools to replace laptops for tablets. This might have been successful for some schools but as good as tablets are, they aren't ready to replace laptops … yet

Do invest in good CPD in brushing up your ICT skills. This doesn't mean that you have to pay an expensive consultant. Simply ask your ICT department for some training or advice. Also, ask colleagues, NQTs or PGCE students for some fresh technology ideas

Don't give up. You might try something once and it doesn't work but don't let that put you off. Try and discover what works best for you and your students. If that doesn't work then try something else

Do focus on how technology can aid not hinder student progress

This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional . Looking for your next role? Take a look at Guardian jobs for schools for thousands of the latest teaching, leadership and support jobs.

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Teachers’ Attitudes towards the Use of Technology in Teaching and Learning Research Paper

The availability of technology equipment in schools does not provide assurance that teachers will use them effectively. The teacher is critical in determining how technology is used in a classroom. As a result, teachers must possess the right attitude towards technology and its application in teaching and learning.

Yusuf and Balogun noted that scholars have defined attitude as “one’s positive or negative judgment about a concrete subject” (Yusuf and Balogun, 2011, p. 19).

In this context, they noted that analysis of information concerning the effect of an action based on their negative or positive outcomes were responsible for determining one’s attitude. Further, researchers have noted the close relationship between teacher’s attitude and the use of technology in teaching and learning.

Studies have linked positive attitude towards technology to high rates of usages in learning and teaching. For instance, a recent research by Enayati, Modanlo, and Kazemi established that teacher’s attitude towards “the use of technology in education was positive” (Enayati, Modanloo and Kazemi, 2012, p. 10958).

On the other hand, poor attitudes towards technology among teachers led to low-levels of technology adoption in learning and teaching.

Relationship between attitude and belief

Teachers hold two fundamental beliefs in teaching. This consists of a traditional belief or direct transmission view and student-centred view or constructivist view. The traditional belief puts the teacher at the centre of learning and teaching. The teacher communicates knowledge while students remain attentive to teaching i.e., the learner remains a recipient of knowledge and has no active role.

On the contrary, constructivist view emphasises the importance of the learner in teaching and learning. In this process, the learner takes an active role in learning.

Teachers who hold constructivist view often encourage students to conduct inquiry, ask questions, find solutions to problems, and explore subjects of interests and give learners opportunity to contribute in learning processes. This view stresses the importance of reasoning and thinking rather than passive acquisition of knowledge.

Therefore, the belief that a teacher holds has significant influences on decision-making and subsequent actions that the teacher may perform in learning and teaching (Palak and Walls, 2009). A study that wishes to explore the teacher’s practices should also conduct a simultaneous study on the teacher’s educational belief systems.

This is important because teacher’s beliefs have influences on “teachers’ perceptions and judgments, which in turn influence their classroom behaviour” (Palak and Walls, 2009, p. 417). Palak and Walls reviewed past studies and noted that most of these studies concluded that teachers who held student-centred approach often incorporated technology in their classroom instructions.

In addition, teachers were willing to explore new teaching methods and shift their beliefs by using such new methods. As a result, studies have reported positive links between high-levels of using technology and adoption of new teaching belief. Such changes were positive with student-centred approaches.

Scholars have warned against using teachers’ belief alone to provide an account of how teachers use technology in their classrooms. They claim that teachers’ practices and use of technology are “inextricably tied to other contextual and organizational factors” (Palak and Walls, 2009, p. 418).

On the issue of teachers’ belief, other scholars noted that it is ‘messy’. Such studies claim that belief is not a fixed concept with a single definition. Instead, they claimed that defining belief was a major challenge because it was impossible to subject it to empirical studies.

Consequently, the researcher concluded that studying a belief concept would involve simultaneous investigation of other several factors, which could even conflict with each other under certain circumstances. Others believed that belief was context-based, determined by situations, implicitly defined, and ill-structured concept.

One would conclude that teachers who hold constructivism view had positive attitude towards adoption of technology in classroom instruction.

Teachers’ attitudes towards technology and its use in teaching

Al-Zaidiyeen, Mei, and Fook conducted a study with 650 teachers randomly picked in Jordan in order to determine “the level of ICT usages among teachers and issues concerning teachers’ attitude towards the use of ICT” (Al-Zaidiyeen, Mei and Fook, 2010).

Their study revealed that teachers had “a low level of ICT use for educational purpose, teachers hold positive attitudes towards the use of ICT, and a significant positive correlation between teachers’ level of ICT use and their attitudes towards ICT was found” (Al-Zaidiyeen, Mei and Fook, 2010). They concluded that teachers ought to give high priority to the use of technology in teaching.

On the same note, Palak and Walls (2009) identified three issues about the use of technology among teachers. They used an integrated mixed-methods approach for the study. Their study showed the following:

• Teachers adopted the use of technology in areas of preparation, management, and in administration
• Teachers rarely used technology to facilitate constructivist view even among teachers who held the same view
• Teachers who were in technology advanced schools used technology to promote their own already existing traditional views

Teachers’ attitudes towards the use of technology in teaching and learning and teachers teaching belief

Scholars have noted that the need to understand teacher attitudes towards technology adoption in learning and teaching has gained significance due to availability of technology infrastructure in most schools.

Bakr conducted a study among Egyptian teachers in order to explore their attitudes towards computers in teaching and learning. The study consisted of 118 public schools, both male and female. Findings showed that the “Egyptian public school teachers’ attitudes towards computers were positive” (Bakr, 2011).

Current studies have demonstrated that teachers have embraced positive attitudes towards technology usages in learning and teaching. One can attribute this change to changes in belief as most pre-service teachers adopt student-centred approach in teaching and learning.

Enayati and colleagues used a sample of 380 teachers by using stratified sampling based on the Morgan table (Enayati et al., 2012). The study aimed at reviewing teachers’ attitude towards implementation of technology in teaching. The study used descriptive method alongside T tests to analyse data and present findings.

They found out that teachers’ attitude concerning advantages of “implementing technology in education, the amount of technology efficacy in education, preconditions of implementing technology in education and effectiveness of technology in education was positive” (Enayati et al., 2012). They also noted that teachers had a positive attitude towards the use of technology in education.

Teachers have changed their belief systems as many schools adopt information and communication technology in learning and teaching. As a result, teachers have acknowledged that the traditional belief systems cannot help students in a society where ICT has dominated the system.

Teachers have noted that changing trends in a global environment and the need for them to adopt a positive attitude in learning and teaching and use the same to improve quality of education.

On teachers’ belief, studies have shown that teachers must strive to go deep and unearth the belief systems, personal factors that influence them, fellow teachers, and their learners’ behaviours (Xu, 2012).

Factors that influence teachers’ attitudes

Many schools around the world have implemented teaching by using ICT infrastructures. However, Buabeng-Andoh noted that although there are intensive investments on “ICT infrastructure, equipments, and professional development to improve education in many countries, ICT adoption, and integration in teaching and learning have been limited” (Buabeng-Andoh, 2012).

The researcher reviewed factors that had influences on teachers’ attitude towards the use of technology. They include “personal, institutional, and technological factors that encourage teachers’ use of computer technology in teaching and learning processes” (Buabeng-Andoh, 2012; Tsai, P., Tsai, C., & Hwang, G., 2010).

Further, the study identified other factors as “teacher-level, school-level and system-level factors that prevent teachers from ICT use” (Buabeng-Andoh, 2012).

Finally, the article classified barriers to use of technology among teachers as “lack of teacher ICT skills, confidence, pedagogical teacher training, suitable educational software, limited access to ICT, rigid structure of traditional education systems and restrictive curricula” (Buabeng-Andoh, 2012).

Therefore, it was necessary to understand the extent to which these factors influenced teachers’ attitude and the use of technology in order to develop effective ways of tackling them (Teo, 2011; Afshari et al., 2009).

Current studies have consistently shown that teachers’ attitudes towards technology have become positive. Moreover, many teachers have changed their beliefs in order to adopt and use ICT infrastructure in teaching and learning.

Such moves aim to enhance the quality of education and adapt to changes in learning and teaching environments. While such positive developments have taken place, there are still barriers that teachers face in adoption of technology in teaching and learning.

Afshari et al. (2009). Factors affecting teachers’ use of information and Communication Technology. International Journal of Instruction, 2 (1), 77-104.

Al-Zaidiyeen, N., Mei, L., and Fook, F. (2010). Teachers’ Attitudes and Levels of Technology Use in Classrooms: The Case of Jordan Schools. International Education Studies, 3 (2), 21-218.

Bakr, S. (2011). Attitudes of Egyptian Teachers towards Computer. Contemporary Educational Technology, 2 (4), 308-318.

Buabeng-Andoh, C. (2012). Factors influencing teachers’ adoption and integration of information and communication technology into teaching: A review of the literature. International Journal of Education and Development using Information and Communication Technology, 8 (1), 136-155.

Enayati, T., Modanloo, Y., and Kazemi, F. (2012). Teachers’ Attitudes towards the Use of Technology. Journal of Basic and Applied Scientific Research, 2 (11), 10958- 10963.

Palak, D., and Walls, R. (2009). Teachers’ beliefs and technology practices: a mixed- methods approach. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 41 (4), 417–441.

Teo, T. (2011). Factors influencing teachers’ intention to use technology: Model development and test. Computers & Education, 1315 (11), 137.

Tsai, P., Tsai, C., & Hwang, G. (2010). Elementary school students’ attitudes and self- efficacy of using PDAs in a ubiquitous learning context. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 26 (3), 297-308.

Xu, L. (2012). The Role of Teachers‘ Beliefs in the Language Teaching-learning Process. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 2 (7), 1397-1402.

Yusuf, M., and Balogun, M. (2011). Student-Teachers’ Competence and Attitude towards Information and Communication Technology: A Case Study in a Nigerian University. Contemporary Education, 2 (1), 18-36.

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Teaching Without Technology?

Please try again

Lenny Gonzales

By Aran Levasseur

New technology is a lightning rod and polarizing force because it not only begins to influence what we see and how we see it, but, over time, who we are, writes Nicholas Carr in his book, " The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains ."

It makes sense then, that debate of digital technology's role in society is naturally being played out in microcosmic form within schools. Education is designed to transmit a culture's history, values and theories of knowledge while also preparing students for the world of tomorrow. Yet, in times like ours, when the gulf between the past and future stretches light years, cognitive dissonance ensues when students, teachers and parents try to figure out what technology should be used to bridge this timeline.

Anti-Tech in America's Tech Capital

While critique of new technology within schools is healthy and to be expected, a recent New York Times article revealed an unexpected source: Silicon Valley. The essence of the article, " A Silicon Valley School That Doesn't Compute ," can be found in the third paragraph:

"Schools nationwide have rushed to supply their classrooms with computers, and many policy makers say it is foolish to do otherwise. But the contrarian point of view can be found at the epicenter of the tech economy, where some parents and educators have a message: computers and schools don't mix."

The conflict between computers and schools is really a conflict between educational paradigms. The traditional and dominant paradigm is rooted in the book and the pedagogy is one of transmission. Teachers, who have presumably read more books than their students and listened to more scholarly lectures, transmit what they've learned to their students in a similar fashion.

The students who do best within this system are those who can capture the transmission -- as unfiltered as possible -- and mirror back to the teacher what they have delineated. Within this model, digital technology can provide improvements, but they are cosmetic.

Teachers can enhance their lectures with presentation software, videos and other forms of multimedia, but the methods stay the same. For teachers who don't understand how these new tools can enhance what they are teaching, then technology can be a distraction.

Inquiry-Based Learning and Technology

The pedagogy that's emerging to deliver 21st-century skills is student-centered and inquiry-based. In the inquiry-based approach, student interest drives the learning process and the teacher shifts from the sage on the stage into more of a coaching role. Within this system of learning, there is real value in having the widest range of technological tools for not only consuming information in all its multimodal forms, but for creatively demonstrating what one has learned.

Within an inquiry model, in addition to keeping an eye on content, teachers should be focused on what kinds of skills they want their students to cultivate -- such as critical thinking, communication and collaboration -- and then from this baseline determine what kinds of tools are best for developing those skills. Some will be digital, some won't. But to eliminate digital tools from the classroom toolkit completely is a sign of the confusion and fear people are feeling as the gravitational pull of digital technology bends our culture.

Technology shapes habits of mind. Different tools allow for varying kinds of experiences. Modern neuroscience has revealed that different experiences lead to other kinds of brain structures. As a result, perception and thinking are altered by the technology we use.

Integrating Tech Tools

For those of us who have been wired to learn in specific ways and with certain tools, when new ways and tools come along that undo that wiring, it's understandable why many might think that the gold standard of learning is being attacked. Socrates felt the same way about the technology of literacy. But this is why it's so critical to integrate digital tools into a learning environment.

If schools don't train students to use and think about digital tools in a thoughtful way, where else is it going to happen? A recent article by Clive Thompson in Wired on " Why Students Can't Search " underscores this point. The crux of the article states that "students aren't assessing information sources on their own merit -- they're putting too much trust in the machine." Just because students are at ease inputting words or phrases into a search engine doesn't mean they know how to engage in critical research and judge sources. This kind of critical thinking takes training.

To say digital literacy is something that students can learn once they are older is akin to an oral culture saying reading can be taught only once students have mastered the oral tradition. As a society, we need to learn to not only know how to use digital tools but, perhaps more importantly, learn how they can augment our thinking and discover what new kinds of cognitive and social capacities they yield.

This is a process of discovery -- and like all discovery, it's filled with trial and error. Our current educational system stigmatizes mistakes. To understand how digital technology can enhance teaching and learning in the 21st century we'll need to embrace James Joyce's philosophy: "A man of genius makes no mistakes; his errors are volitional and are portals of discovery."

Aran Levasseur has an eclectic background that ranges from outdoor education to life coaching, and from habitat restoration to video production. For the last five years he's taught middle school history and science. From the beginning he's been integrating technology into his classes to enhance his teaching and student learning. He recently gave a talk at TEDxSFED on videogames and learning . Currently he's the Academic Technology Coordinator at San Francisco University High School.

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• Technology Essay

Essay on Technology

The word "technology" and its uses have immensely changed since the 20th century, and with time, it has continued to evolve ever since. We are living in a world driven by technology. The advancement of technology has played an important role in the development of human civilization, along with cultural changes. Technology provides innovative ways of doing work through various smart and innovative means. 

Electronic appliances, gadgets, faster modes of communication, and transport have added to the comfort factor in our lives. It has helped in improving the productivity of individuals and different business enterprises. Technology has brought a revolution in many operational fields. It has undoubtedly made a very important contribution to the progress that mankind has made over the years.

The Advancement of Technology:

Technology has reduced the effort and time and increased the efficiency of the production requirements in every field. It has made our lives easy, comfortable, healthy, and enjoyable. It has brought a revolution in transport and communication. The advancement of technology, along with science, has helped us to become self-reliant in all spheres of life. With the innovation of a particular technology, it becomes part of society and integral to human lives after a point in time.

Technology is Our Part of Life:

Technology has changed our day-to-day lives. Technology has brought the world closer and better connected. Those days have passed when only the rich could afford such luxuries. Because of the rise of globalisation and liberalisation, all luxuries are now within the reach of the average person. Today, an average middle-class family can afford a mobile phone, a television, a washing machine, a refrigerator, a computer, the Internet, etc. At the touch of a switch, a man can witness any event that is happening in far-off places.  

Benefits of Technology in All Fields: 

We cannot escape technology; it has improved the quality of life and brought about revolutions in various fields of modern-day society, be it communication, transportation, education, healthcare, and many more. Let us learn about it.

Technology in Communication:

With the advent of technology in communication, which includes telephones, fax machines, cellular phones, the Internet, multimedia, and email, communication has become much faster and easier. It has transformed and influenced relationships in many ways. We no longer need to rely on sending physical letters and waiting for several days for a response. Technology has made communication so simple that you can connect with anyone from anywhere by calling them via mobile phone or messaging them using different messaging apps that are easy to download.

Innovation in communication technology has had an immense influence on social life. Human socialising has become easier by using social networking sites, dating, and even matrimonial services available on mobile applications and websites.

Today, the Internet is used for shopping, paying utility bills, credit card bills, admission fees, e-commerce, and online banking. In the world of marketing, many companies are marketing and selling their products and creating brands over the internet. 

In the field of travel, cities, towns, states, and countries are using the web to post detailed tourist and event information. Travellers across the globe can easily find information on tourism, sightseeing, places to stay, weather, maps, timings for events, transportation schedules, and buy tickets to various tourist spots and destinations.

Technology in the Office or Workplace:

Technology has increased efficiency and flexibility in the workspace. Technology has made it easy to work remotely, which has increased the productivity of the employees. External and internal communication has become faster through emails and apps. Automation has saved time, and there is also a reduction in redundancy in tasks. Robots are now being used to manufacture products that consistently deliver the same product without defect until the robot itself fails. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning technology are innovations that are being deployed across industries to reap benefits.

Technology has wiped out the manual way of storing files. Now files are stored in the cloud, which can be accessed at any time and from anywhere. With technology, companies can make quick decisions, act faster towards solutions, and remain adaptable. Technology has optimised the usage of resources and connected businesses worldwide. For example, if the customer is based in America, he can have the services delivered from India. They can communicate with each other in an instant. Every company uses business technology like virtual meeting tools, corporate social networks, tablets, and smart customer relationship management applications that accelerate the fast movement of data and information.

Technology in Education:

Technology is making the education industry improve over time. With technology, students and parents have a variety of learning tools at their fingertips. Teachers can coordinate with classrooms across the world and share their ideas and resources online. Students can get immediate access to an abundance of good information on the Internet. Teachers and students can access plenty of resources available on the web and utilise them for their project work, research, etc. Online learning has changed our perception of education. 

The COVID-19 pandemic brought a paradigm shift using technology where school-going kids continued their studies from home and schools facilitated imparting education by their teachers online from home. Students have learned and used 21st-century skills and tools, like virtual classrooms, AR (Augmented Reality), robots, etc. All these have increased communication and collaboration significantly. 

Technology in Banking:

Technology and banking are now inseparable. Technology has boosted digital transformation in how the banking industry works and has vastly improved banking services for their customers across the globe.

Technology has made banking operations very sophisticated and has reduced errors to almost nil, which were somewhat prevalent with manual human activities. Banks are adopting Artificial Intelligence (AI) to increase their efficiency and profits. With the emergence of Internet banking, self-service tools have replaced the traditional methods of banking. 

You can now access your money, handle transactions like paying bills, money transfers, and online purchases from merchants, and monitor your bank statements anytime and from anywhere in the world. Technology has made banking more secure and safe. You do not need to carry cash in your pocket or wallet; the payments can be made digitally using e-wallets. Mobile banking, banking apps, and cybersecurity are changing the face of the banking industry.

Manufacturing and Production Industry Automation:

At present, manufacturing industries are using all the latest technologies, ranging from big data analytics to artificial intelligence. Big data, ARVR (Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality), and IoT (Internet of Things) are the biggest manufacturing industry players. Automation has increased the level of productivity in various fields. It has reduced labour costs, increased efficiency, and reduced the cost of production.

For example, 3D printing is used to design and develop prototypes in the automobile industry. Repetitive work is being done easily with the help of robots without any waste of time. This has also reduced the cost of the products. 

Technology in the Healthcare Industry:

Technological advancements in the healthcare industry have not only improved our personal quality of life and longevity; they have also improved the lives of many medical professionals and students who are training to become medical experts. It has allowed much faster access to the medical records of each patient. 

The Internet has drastically transformed patients' and doctors’ relationships. Everyone can stay up to date on the latest medical discoveries, share treatment information, and offer one another support when dealing with medical issues. Modern technology has allowed us to contact doctors from the comfort of our homes. There are many sites and apps through which we can contact doctors and get medical help. 

Breakthrough innovations in surgery, artificial organs, brain implants, and networked sensors are examples of transformative developments in the healthcare industry. Hospitals use different tools and applications to perform their administrative tasks, using digital marketing to promote their services.

Technology in Agriculture:

Today, farmers work very differently than they would have decades ago. Data analytics and robotics have built a productive food system. Digital innovations are being used for plant breeding and harvesting equipment. Software and mobile devices are helping farmers harvest better. With various data and information available to farmers, they can make better-informed decisions, for example, tracking the amount of carbon stored in soil and helping with climate change.

Disadvantages of Technology:

People have become dependent on various gadgets and machines, resulting in a lack of physical activity and tempting people to lead an increasingly sedentary lifestyle. Even though technology has increased the productivity of individuals, organisations, and the nation, it has not increased the efficiency of machines. Machines cannot plan and think beyond the instructions that are fed into their system. Technology alone is not enough for progress and prosperity. Management is required, and management is a human act. Technology is largely dependent on human intervention. 

Computers and smartphones have led to an increase in social isolation. Young children are spending more time surfing the internet, playing games, and ignoring their real lives. Usage of technology is also resulting in job losses and distracting students from learning. Technology has been a reason for the production of weapons of destruction.

Dependency on technology is also increasing privacy concerns and cyber crimes, giving way to hackers.

FAQs on Technology Essay

1. What is technology?

Technology refers to innovative ways of doing work through various smart means. The advancement of technology has played an important role in the development of human civilization. It has helped in improving the productivity of individuals and businesses.

2. How has technology changed the face of banking?

Technology has made banking operations very sophisticated. With the emergence of Internet banking, self-service tools have replaced the traditional methods of banking. You can now access your money, handle transactions, and monitor your bank statements anytime and from anywhere in the world. Technology has made banking more secure and safe.

3. How has technology brought a revolution in the medical field?

Patients and doctors keep each other up to date on the most recent medical discoveries, share treatment information, and offer each other support when dealing with medical issues. It has allowed much faster access to the medical records of each patient. Modern technology has allowed us to contact doctors from the comfort of our homes. There are many websites and mobile apps through which we can contact doctors and get medical help.

4. Are we dependent on technology?

Yes, today, we are becoming increasingly dependent on technology. Computers, smartphones, and modern technology have helped humanity achieve success and progress. However, in hindsight, people need to continuously build a healthy lifestyle, sorting out personal problems that arise due to technological advancements in different aspects of human life.