Development of technology has always had a great
influence on the development of mankind. In the last couple of decades, though,
following the decisive leap from analog to digital age there was a dramatic
change in our everyday lives. Unlike the previous revolutions when
industry gradually reshaped the society, current IT revolution took over the
world over night and made its way into every sphere of our society. Let us take
a look what changes this ever-enveloping process has brought to the education
and what does this mean for the kids that will be born in the world without
chalkboards.
Improved Communication
Starting with the most obvious entry, and that
would be the fact that IT revolution drastically changed the way we communicate
with each other, or to be more precise, opened new and exciting communication
channels. These days, traditional classrooms are becoming obsolete, and the
existence of virtual classrooms, and platforms like Skype and Dropbox is making
education more convenient than ever before. Students can access teaching
materials, teachers, and their fellow co-students whenever they want, and from
whatever device they currently have on their disposal.
Interactive Learning
The best kind of knowledge is the one that is
acquired through personal experience and problem solving. The teaching tools of
the past were very limiting in this regard, and teachers had to rely on their
wit, along with paper and chalkboard to create stimulating tasks and situations
for their students to take most advantage of.
Needless to say, current smartphone apps, interactive textbooks, and, to
some extent, even video games,
offer much more powerful, versatile and engaging environment for students to
unleash their creativity, and employ their problem-solving skills.
Rise of E-Books
Although they still have quite a way to go before
they finally put an end to paper, E-Books are constantly gaining more and more
ground. The area where they can shine the most is education. E-Books have an
opportunity to finally replace the bulky books and put everything students need
to know on a single tablet computer or a notebook. This way, the offered
content is not only more manageable in the physical sense, but, due to fact
that it is put into interactive environment when students have more options to
manipulate and share it, it is manageable in the educational sense as well.
Virtual Note-Passing
No matter how much some teachers may insist on
using books, notes have always been an integral part of education and note
passing a great way to build a knowledge foundation and create guidelines for
further improvement. Much like all the previous mentions on this list, note
passing is making a transition into the online realm as well, and if some
student is, for example, studying economy it can easily find abundance of
pre-edited economy, management and latest commercenotes simply by Googling. By acquiring these notes in digital
format, students can enjoy the same benefits we mentioned when we were talking
about E-Books.
Web-Based Research
Finally, it should be mentioned that Information
Technologies are not only changing the mediums in which education can be done,
but also some of its foundations like searching for particular piece of
information. Something that, not that long ago, required hours upon hours of
time spent in a library can now be easily pulled off in a matter of seconds.
This way, the process of researching is considerably sped up, leaving the
students much more time for processing the acquired information and learning.
As we can see, the recent technological surge
influenced education in more than one way. But how far exactly these
innovations will push education in the future? It is very hard to determine,
but one thing is for sure - This process will start to take its true shape only
when the kids that were born in the heyday of the Age of Information truly get
in control.
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