Emerging technologies in education
Education and its importance are renowned worldwide. With the progress and emergence of new technologies, every field started developing and education was not an exception. Education is basically a medium to develop the personality of the person as a whole. Evolution and progress requires time but brings drastic and positive changes. Similar is the case with education.
Since primitive era education had always griped its due importance, gradually with the changing scenario people started having formal schools and colleges where qualified teachers shared their experiences and due course of knowledge in order to build the coming generation. The tools used in schools consisted of blackboard chalks and books.
With the emergence of internet world came closer and education went global. The idea of pursuing education and then opting for job for a perspective career went into overall transformation. Students started having access to different forms of education which included full time, part time and distance learning. Work and Learn culture came into existence. This culture brought many young professionals to the industry, it enabled them to pursue education while they are already took steps towards building their career by working for a job profile of their choice.
Thus with the changing trend, education also came up with various changing technologies to gross the students in different education techniques. The use of these emerging technologies is actually regarded useful just because these technologies are smaller in size so easily portable, they promote co-operative and collaborative learning which enables more sophisticated teaching and learning classroom management and provides user generated content.
Internet is a magic wand, you name it and you have it in just fraction of seconds. Any piece of information scattered on the web can be found out with certain keywords on one go.Internet provides information in various forms amongst which Wikipedia commonly abbreviated as wiki is one of the reliable and accessible sources for the students. It enables the students to find the information in an instructive method, where each step is explained gradually. The form through which information is processed is called blogs. Blogs are gaining its due importance slowly and gradually, the educational institutions understand the emerging popularity of the blogs and thus are opting for sources like school community blog or college community blog as a medium to communicate with children and parents too. It is also one of the methods to educate and inform the students about some important activities.
The daily useful technologies like the mobiles, computers are very prevalent in modern times. While computers have become the necessity in the field of education these days, with information from internet it is also helpful in completing projects and assignments. However Podcasts are being more prevalent and useful technology. Podcasts basically are audacity tools to enhance student’s memory power. It comes in the form of mp3 which can be uploaded on the blogs and websites; it becomes a very effective element in learning, while learning podcasts are very essential in pronunciation. It can make you academics interesting through a narrative format by developing interest in subjects like history, biology and zoology.
Yet another essential tool is handheld or PDA (Personal Digital Assistant). This handheld or PDA enables you to maintain the important data in like display graphs, images or even notes, this data can even be shared and transferred. PDA is normally in the form of mobile computer, it is a small in size, minimal in cost and allows to access different application. It allows easy mobility due to its small size and wireless connectivity without any restrictions of indoors and outdoors, it allows mass data storage on one hand while minimizes the space occupancy, no requirement of extra classroom or lab. The Wireless internet connection allows easy aces and connection where ever possible while curbs the cost of desktop or laptop.Its user friendly applications are easily comprehended by the students.
Various other technologies include,
Digital videos – educational videos are in more trends these days. These videos not only enable students to acquire information but also satisfy the motto of active edutainment.
Social Bookmarking – Some social networking sites allow share certain Boookmarks of certain pages and later tag and share them with others. This is a very important technique to acquire some important educational discussions or updates.
Internet Telephony – A new tool that enables one have a direct conversation through certain software like Skype, this allows healthy educational discussions without any doubts.
Social Networking sites – These are one of the most common and popular form of information these days. Social networking sites enable to have active discussions on certain educational topics.
Tablet Computers – It allows the functions of directly writing on electronic document, this function requires lesser space and is prevalent in many schools and colleges.
Interactive whiteboards – This is a technique that allows the teachers to engage the students in the delivery of the content.
With the progressive world and emerging technologies world is getting more and more advanced. However all the advance technologies are enable to attract the students towards education and make them understand the concept in depth. With the developing technologies, it is required for that the educational sector should be pertain towards its goals.