Topic > Technology Improves Education - 1134

Technology Improves Education Many believe that there is an education revolution underway in the way people learn and the way education is delivered. The education community has heard about reforms and revolutions in recent decades, but most of them have been non-existent or without any long-term merit or real value. Some believe that the method of an instructor lecturing while students listen and absorb is really the only viable way to teach or learn. About twenty years ago, when personal computers began to become accessible, many thought that computers would revolutionize education, that computer-based teaching and learning would become the savior of education and the solution to decline in test scores. This never actually happened. Over the past two decades, many teachers have successfully prepared students, some with computers in the classroom and some without. Teachers may have avoided computers, either because they chose not to learn how to use them or because they had none to use in the classroom or at school. Teachers entering the profession were not required to understand computational technology in order to graduate. The Internet has existed for almost two decades and began to extend into schools about 15 years ago, first in universities and then in primary and secondary schools. Has the Internet revolutionized education? Not exactly, it provided an opportunity to expand learning options for teachers and students who were fortunate enough to have access to the Internet, a few computers, and proper guidance on how to use it. Often this only took place in one classroom and one school within a system and did not become systemic across the whole school. There are many factors influencing this slow implementation of information and communications technology in schools, including administrations that do not know its value or are unwilling to realign school budgets to include computational technology; insufficient service professions development programs for teachers; the lack of specific curricular benefits or resources for teachers to use in their courses; lack of pre-service preparation of teachers in technology or information technology. Why do some of us believe there is a revolution underway that cannot be ignored by educators or administrators? In November 1993, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) released Mosaic, the first World Wide Web browser for all three computing platforms (UNIX, PC, and Macintosh). The Internet had become the World Wide Web, and now Mosaic allowed anyone who knew the basics of using a computer and mouse to go to the Web and easily and quickly locate multimedia information.