Technology in Education

Instead of a back pack full of books and notebooks, every student walks into class and opens their laptop, or takes out their palm pilot with all of their books downloaded onto it. Sounds like the ideal school? Is it the future of American education? Whether it will be or not remains to be seen. The most important thing to focus on when it comes to technology in education is that, like everything else, it is a tool, not a savior.

Many things have changed over the years in education. When my career started thirteen years ago the internet was a little known device, not the ever present, world changing thing it is today. Some of the teachers I worked with were still using the still picture film strips that beeped when it was time to advance the picture. Today I use DVDs and YouTube almost daily.

Technology itself will not reform education, how it is used may. Like any other thing in the classroom, technology is a tool to help students learn, just as books and videos and overheads are tools. When it comes down to it, the student and the teacher are the key components. They are the ones that have to work to together for the student to be successful.

Technology makes it a lot easier to access information, but if you do not know what to do with it, then it is useless. We do not yet live a world like The Matrix where knowledge can be downloaded right into our brains. Until that time the fundamentals of teaching how to think and question are paramount. The technology hopefully makes it more fun.