Using Technology in Education
Technology is no longer considered as being dependent on teachers’ individual efforts or willingness, but is becoming compulsory at the school level (Vanderlinde,van Braak & Hermans, 2007). This would lead students and teachers to come across with some challenges during their experience with the technology. Even though, tehnology seems to be useful in most cases, there might be some problems if the necessary precautions are not taken. The following issues must be handled in school settings in order to benefit from the technology.
Some Challenges with the Technology:
1. Security Problems: Viruses, hacking, plagiarism, copyrights, illegal downloads are some issues that the students must be familiar with and understand before they start using technology. Individual computers or computers that are working under an intranet might be under some undesired attacks. Viruses are the most known type of these threats, and many others could be added to this situation such as adwares. In order to avoid these problems:
a. The entire computers must be protected by a secure antivirus program.
b. A school-wide computer use policy must be developed and all the teachers and the students must be aware of the policy.
c. Multi-user computers must be assigned to each student, and they should log onto the computer with their own user name and password.
2. Parental Control: Some typing errors may cause ending up with adult content web sites. There are several numbers of parental control programs for children go online safely. Kidoz, K9 Web Protection are some of these.
3. Going too much online, addiction: Even though this paper is talking about how technology must be integrated into the curriculum, there has to be some limits whenever it is needed. Using too much computers in every subject, and being dependent on internet and web applications might be harmful for the students. Since the children are fascinated by the technology, they would like to use computers and other devices to stay connected. This might cause some problems such as health, communication and addiction of computers.
4. Lack of Knowledge for Teachers: Sometimes teachers need to be guided by the school administration. Teachers are expected to follow the guidelines and prepare lesson plans according to the school’s technology plan. Teachers need to follow workshops and seminars and the school administarion needs to support them in terms of professional development.
5. Not having a well developed curriculum plan : Technology must be embedded into the curriculum and everybody must be aware of them. If using technology is a priority for all the components of a school, everybody should be informed about that and they need to try to participate as much as they can.
The teachers are not convinced yet that using technology is more efficient in classes. It is more attractive to young teachers, especially in science and math subjects.
The basic conception is, the technology will put an interface which will also bring an obstacle between teachers and the students. So, to prove efficiency technology usage in classes must make people believe that education will still be about human interaction.