Challenges of technology in education
Nowadays, the world is
vastly different from 50 or 60 years ago. Passing through the enormously
changes with the increasing in globalization, the use of advances in
technology, communications and social networking are highly increase. Despite
in this modern era, technology application are widely used as tools that can
make things getting less complicated for human. There is also no exception for
education field especially in 21st century. The uses of technology
as medium and teaching tools in educational field also emphasized by the
government in order to have an effective learning and teaching process. In this
era, technology is formally introduced as an important medium in the process of
nourishing children’s education. Technology has be a part of daily life for
most of the citizen until sometimes they are too rely on it.The technology use in
21st century classroom presents ongoing challenges in education.
Nowadays, technology integrated not only in knowing the computer’s software but
it begin to approach and involve in the process of learning and teaching
between educators and students. The world of technology in social networking
often use for accessing information as it provides an explosion of knowledge
from variety field. However, every matter cannot avoid from two sides of coin
where, the advantages and disadvantages of practicing technology in education
always appear. It is true that technology had brought a lot of benefits from
different edges but at the same time, it also brings the side effect to the
society. For example, online learning can be a treat of isolation and decrease
the ability of communication skills as the society are too depend on technology
till lack of face to face interaction.Firstly, the biggest
challenge in including technology in education is lack of instructional
technology model which are affordable and sustainable for the educators. For
providing extended professional and developed technology tools, educators need
to invest a high financial commitment in order to have complete equipments for
learning and teaching process. Other than that, some substantial funding also
needed for other types of innovations to provide an effective instructional
hardware in educational field. The educators also need to provide the latest
technology program and resources for professional development. This will burden
the financial fund because the teaching and learning institution need to
prepare a sum of fund to import the technology equipments. Computers are the
spray of information from the internet to the readers. However, the process of
teaching and learning also can go on smoothly even without online application
as the classroom itself already drowning with data and information in the
books. It is true that when technology is applied in teaching and learning
process, the students are getting much understanding on certain courses because
of the graphic and colors of the writing instead of just reading a plain black
and white paper.Secondly, before the
educators use the application of technology in their teaching and learning
process, they need to be trained on how to apply this technology effectively. The
educators are required to integrate and develop new technologies into their
profession. Technology such as Microsoft Power Point that use for presentation,
video and audio can be a wonderful teaching media in the classroom but the
application need to be used wisely. If the educators are not properly trained
on the technology application that they are supposed to use in their
instruction, the highlight or purpose of the teaching lesson will lost. Technology training for teachers
must begin when they are pre-service education majors. Although educators do
get technology training before they continued in teaching and learning
community, most of they do not feel prepared to use technology for
instructional purposes. Furthermore, educators in the rural areas will exposed
lesser to technology as compared to the educators in urban areas. "There
is many practicing and pre-service teachers report inadequacies in the types of
computer technology programs offered in teacher preparation programs. They
report that they have had no systematic exposure to or integration of
technology in their teacher education program" according to Faison (1996).
Are the training for educators in applying technology in education is enough?
Using technology in the purpose of education is brilliant enough but the challenge
will apply on the educators where, they need to have skills and knowledge in
using the application of technology.
The use of technology
in education also carries a big challenge in accessing the right and
appropriate content. For students who lack of awareness to differentiate
between real and virtual information will cause serious problem in the society.
When technology is applied in education, of course the educators need to
integrate their skills in using the application but at the same time, students
also need to gain their knowledge about this teaching and learning tools. The
internet itself provides countless amount of information and that information
can be easily search just by a few clicks on the mouse. However, there are a
lot of inappropriate content that might see by the children and without any
awareness, online technology abuse occurred. Inaccurate information such as
swearing content, vandalism, crime and terrorism, violence pictures or even
gambling sites can encourage the child into unlawful and dangerous behavior.
Most of the children, who already have enough knowledge in using online
technology, they will apply it in the social media and may get into
conversation without any barrier with unsuitable comments. The children are
supposed be protected by that inappropriate content during their innocent
childhood time. It is a big challenge to guarantee the effectiveness in using
technology only for suitable content, teaching and learning process. The
government also faces a big challenge in districting and banning the unsuitable
and inappropriate information.The advantages in the
use of technology and internet service in teaching and learning process cannot
be denied. However, cyberbullying trap often happened not only in teenagers but
also including children. Cyberbullying is the use of technology to bully a
person or a group with the intent to hurt them socially, psychologically or
even physically. Nowadays, we do not need any payment for social media’s
account so we can sign up easily. Internet Communication Technology is giving
the chances for students in accessing anonymous accounts and social contact
avenues that can lead to troubles. Some of the children are not mature enough
so they may trapped easily in cyberbullying issue under others influence. Cyberbullying
trap is a serious problem and a challenge for most of the society.
Cyberbullying included hurtful messages, images or videos, imitating or
humiliating an individual, abusive texts or emails and nasty online gossip. It
is not easy to overcome this problem as the scope of cyberbullying is too large
and involving global online technology service. This is a serious issue but
there is not much people aware of it because bullying causes stress and stress
causes depression. Depression is the one of the major reason that will cause
suicide.Technology is an useful
and easy medium to access information and it may seem like a great thing.
However, some of them may misuse this application to cheat about academic assignments
when they feel helpless, frustrated or understand nothing. Who does not
consider high achievement in academic goal? Everyone concerns about their
grades but if they misuse this application for copying all the data for the
assignment instead for just referring for a better understanding, it can be
considered as cheating. Teaching and learning process acquire real and fully
understanding about certain subjects rather than just cheat for the assignments
and get good grades. As the big flow of information about some matters can be
obtained easily on the internet, students become too rely on it. Using
technology in the classroom for searching information of open discussion,
debate and written articles is encourage but the students cannot copy all the
ideas from the online writer. This cheating problem is the biggest challenge in
teaching and learning process that need to be alert and overcome in order to
get a real value of learning experience.Nowadays, technology
has become the major distraction for the society when it applied in entertainment.
Some studies show
that low-achieving students are more likely to be distracted by the presence of
mobile phones while high achievers can focus in the classroom regardless of the
mobile phone policy. If the students are in their class
while having their cell phone or application for internet services, their
attentiveness towards the learning progress will drops drastically. Games and chatting
box had take most of their times in using the internet service rather than browsing
for academic matters. It is a complex issue when students actively participate
in their own learning by accessing to the web and shift away from educators,
who are imparting information for them. Moreover, students should not face
their cell phone or laptop all the time instead, they should face book or paper
which is also less burden to the eyes. However, the reality is, the devices and technology
application are not going to be faded away. Thus, the society needs to teach the
students to manage the application effectively so that they can be successful
in applying the use of technology in the right path way. Even though technology
is a major distraction of the teaching and learning process which takes most of
the time for social media but everyone especially the students need to strike a
balance between social communication and information searching to reach the
maximum of the benefits of the technology application itself.
When technology is
applied in education, students need to face the risk of isolation. As the
technology is introduced, which is more interesting, most of their concern for
face to face interaction will decrease. Technology which integrated with the
access to Information and Communication Technology has no limits of source of
information and no learning limits. However, the students will lost the
opportunity to take part actively in face-to-face discussion in interactive
environment. The study also shows that, learning process with interaction can
facilitates the most in learning process. Technology may let students keep left
out on certain active conventional classroom or peer-to-peer learning if they
not be able to strike a balance between the participation of communication in
class with the time that use to online.As a conclusion, even
though technology is applied mostly in every edges in our daily life but if we
do not aware the misuse of technology, it will cause a lot of troubles. It also
cannot be denied that technology has its own challenge in applying in education
system. The challenge need to be pointed out and solved brilliantly so that the
society can be aware of this issues. If we can handle the technology by
overcome the challenges, we will be able to experience the full advantages that
technology based on the application of internet in education.
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