“The technology you use impresses no one. The experience you create with it is everything.”
– Sean Gerety
Sean Gerety quoted well that technology is only better when it creates new and amazing experiences, the kind of experiences that could alter and improve our lives for the better, that is way more important than the technology we create. This quote puts an emphasis on impact, and changes that technology brings, and in this blog we will outline the impacts and the nice things technology has offered for who who are in education space and who wish to learn something new and up skill themselves.
We all know without a fact that education is the cornerstone of the society, which shapes the mind of our future and present generations. Technology that we have today, are inculcated and integrated with traditional learning systems and in education institutes. Although we have not replaced the standard teacher/staff/professor teaching the class, we do rely on technology for measuring each students performance, and we do rely on online e-books, and e-learning sources for extra reference and personalised learning. These are some generic ways through which we leverage technology in our day to day education system, but what exactly is the role of technology especially in education? Let’s dive deeper into this topic and uncover it’s impact in education and it’s wide range of applications.
How Does Technology Work in Education?
To understand it’s working, lets have an broad look on where technology is implemented in our everyday learning systems.
- Digital Classrooms: These days, almost all schools in cities and towns have smart boards, and various state governments have decided to offer tablets and laptops for merit and less-privileged students, giving a fair opportunity for learning.
- Building E-Learning Platforms Accessible to All: Platforms like Khan Academy, Coursera, and edX offer courses from well-recognized universities and distinguished professors, so students can take courses from any corner of the world. These platforms include video lectures, quizzes, and discussion forums, making learning flexible and accessible to all.
- Use of AI: Online learning can sometimes feel mechanical. AI is set to change the game by creating personalized learning experiences. AI can adapt to a student’s learning pace, identify strengths and weaknesses, and suggest areas of improvement. For example, Grammarly uses AI to help students improve their writing skills.
- Gamification: Studies have shown that approaching education and learning from a game-like perspective can make it more engaging and enjoyable. Platforms like Kahoot! incorporate quizzes into competitive games, and Duolingo uses gamification to teach languages.
Common Misconceptions
While understanding anything related or that as an active involvement with technology, it’s important to be free from any biases and misconceptions, so let’s have an look at top 3 common misconceptions related to our topic!
Misconception 1: Technology Replaces Teachers
This will not happen, and sorry to break this down with you, but this is the sad truth, nothing can replace a traditional schooling system in which an experienced teacher or professor teaches and guides a group of students, in person teaching is still believed to be the best form of learning at early ages. Instead of technology replacing teachers, this will aid in improving and bettering the teaching process and helps to automate boring and tedious tasks that teachers and staffs have to encounter in their day to day lives.
Misconception 2: E-learning is Easier
I really do wish the above statement was true. You still have to do the assignments, try and practice out extra problems, and put in extra efforts to understand the concepts that you don’t understand. In nut shell just because one can take a course or learning module from their couch, does not mean they are going to learn the material effectively. It does take self discipline, time management, and a growth mindset which looks a lot simpler when we read things about them, but in reality gets hard to implement on a daily basis.
Misconception 3: Technology Alone Improves Learning
We all know that one friend, that has latest of electronic gadget and accessories, but is he/she the smartest and the most academic student? chances are they are not. Anyone with money can buy tools for education, but to acquire the education and learning, one must put in the work, no course can make you memorise, learn and implement things you have learned online or offline. You have to do them all by yourself !
Now some of the general conservatives might think that online learning is not at all effective as we have seen many cases where children play video games in place of online classes. Well certainly we can’t deny the fact, but also we should not under estimate and under value the and can suggest area’s of improvement. As of today, grammerly uses AI to help students improve their writing skills.
Two tips to enhance online learning experience.
Dedicate a fixed time slot for learning, and make sure you stick to it. You can use the 5 minute rule which beats procrastination by tricking your brain to do a boring task only for 5 minutes and then you get into flow state to keep going. Also siting in a place for too long is very bad for your health so you could use pomodoro technique which utilises 25 minutes of intense focused learning followed by 5 minute break where you can have a small workout or take a break without getting distracted on phones. You can also use 50 minute study and 10 minute break if you feel 25 minutes is too short
Take notes and revise, this one is no brainer, but since you are using technology, you could take notes from your system or desktop. You can use apps like cherrytree ,
notion , or obsidian , take backups and the advantage of these notes is that you could attack external files and screenshots easily without need to waste time. You can add
URLS or links of any website and get things done, which is not at all possible in offline notes. This makes your learning experience easy and make sure you re-visit your notes every now and then to make sure you don’t forget what you have learned.
Conclusion
If you wish to take advance note taking methods and apps you can try it out, but at the end of the days it’s not how aesthetic and cool your notes are but how much information you retail. That being said we have come to the end of this blog and hopefully you got to see how technology is revolutionsing the education space and make sure you make the best of online or e-learning and to stay ahead of the curve, don’t forget to take advantage of the opportunities that internet and e-learning platforms offer ….
