Critical Issue: Technology: A Catalyst for Teaching and Learning in the Classroom (Week 12)

http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/methods/technlgy/te600.htm

Technology is such an important part of our society that we would never consider that the world would be better with less technology. Even the teachers that are scared to death of using any kind of technology in their classrooms will admit that it is the future and the future in now. So that being said, technology has only one way to go - forward. The question is “how will our growing society keep up with the demands that the business sector put on education”? The business community grows at an exponential rate as compared to the growth of technology of the education community.We live in a technology age that demands that teachers teach students to solve complex problems and problem solve. No longer are teachers just simply teaching how to add or subtract but rather we are teaching student to think about how it relates to other things in our day-to-day.

Teaching is changing and, in many ways, becoming a more difficult job because of increasingly numerous contradictory expectations, including the following:

• We are living in an age of information overload with the expectation that students will learn high-level skills such as how to access, evaluate, analyze, and synthesize vast quantities of information. At the same time, teachers are evaluated by their ability to have students pass tests that often give no value to these abilities.
• Teachers are expected to teach students to solve complex problems that require knowledge necessary across many subject areas even as they are held accountable for the teaching and learning of isolated skills and information.
• Teachers are expected to meet the needs of all students and move them toward fulfillment of their individual potential even as they are pressured to prepare students for maximum performance on high-stakes assessment tests that are the primary measure of student and school success.

There are several reasons K–12 educational organizations continue to agonize about how much and in what ways technology use in schools is appropriate. Their concerns include the following:

• Some uses of technology may add value while some may become a distraction for students.
• Technology is only one variable among many others that also need to be addressed.
• Teacher competency in the use of technology is often problematic.
• Students and teachers have unclear, and often inconsistent, expectations of technology use.

It is no secret that technology must be used appropriately in order to achieve maximum benefits and there are particular ways in which technology must support the educational process - it must not exist as it's own entity and teachers must be given plentiful training/professional development.