Technology these days has advanced our lifestyle. Things have become so easy.

Technology is
being used everywhere and in everything. Several devices have been introduced like laptops and
tablets. Each of them have their own versions with even more advanced apps. Such devices help
us finish loads of work with ease, but using such devices even in fields of education might affect
the habits of students.
Schools have started introducing the idea of using tablets for taking down notes, writing simple
tests and completing their projects. This gets the mind of a student completely in technology and
they tend to forget the use of books. Earlier students did not have the idea of using internet to
browse information about different topics and were dependent completely on books which
resulted in a very good vocabulary, but students these days do not have much of a good
vocabulary.
They start to expect everything just by a touch on the screen. The students finish their work just
for the sake of it and actually don't show any interest in it. Technology is good enough provided it
is used in the right field and in the right age.
Sneha
Class 9, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavans Public School, Hyderabad

EVER since the world has turned into a global village, the gap between people or
rather the classes has been widened. Technology has brought revolutionary changes in
our society. It has brought the entire world to our finger tips.
Today, a person living in the US or in any other country can easily communicate with his
family members or friends. Yes, communications is much faster now and a time-saving
process. But, the emotions, the feelings and the attachment linked with writing a letter has all
been lost during the last couple of decades. Social sites like Facebook and tweeter are the
modern ways of sharing our feelings with our near and dear ones.
These modern means of communication appear to be meaningful ways of communication but
in reality have negative effects. The privacy of a person exists nowhere on these so-called
social sites. But the irony is we still praise the West for providing us such a great platform for
communicating with our family and friends.
Almost every technology has a bright and dark side to it, its positive and negative
repercussions. About a couple of decades back, communicating with a relative or friend was
not as easy as it is today. We used to correspondence once a twice a month to inform them
about the latest happenings. We were deeply involved in the communication process. We
were so excited while speaking to our parents or friends while calling them from abroad. But
today, such emotions can hardly be witnessed.
Inevitably, we are technologically advanced but we have been morally and spiritually
weakened. We are heading towards cultural decadence ever since technology has become a
part of lives. It seems as if we have sunk into an ocean of nothingness.

With the help of the latest technology, fake IDs can easily be made. Besides, you can post
malicious content to defame a relative or friend. You can also do it out of jealousy or if you
want to take revenge for something.
Determining whether technology is a boon or bane is not easy. However, I believe it has more
evil effects than good.
WAQAR ABRO Karachi
It is interesting that both scientific research and life experiences underpin the necessary concept
that having meaning and purpose are fundamental needs for our human psyche. Brain health is
important but for what purpose? I would argue it is to discover meaning in ones life and to
continue to learn and grow as a human being.
My concern and caution with all the cool technology coming out for brain fitness is that we lose
the human factor. Its great to play a video game to increase cognitive functioning but its not so
great if our personal focus becomes playing the video game to the detriment of the relationships
in our lives. Living with teenage boys I experience this danger everyday.
Its cool to have all this monitoring equipment to know when individuals are struggling but the
danger is that we allow it to isolate them or give us permission to ignore them counting on the
technology to alert us instead of a human to human interaction. A great innovation for a
retirement home or long term care facility is to have sensors to indicate when someone has fallen
or is trying to get out of bed. A great temptation is to no longer physically check on individuals,
relying instead on the sensors to do the job. What we gain in efficiency we lose in humanity,
when the individual in the room feels more isolated and alone because a sensor is not a
friendly face, a sensor does not ask us how we are feeling, in the end a sensor does not care.
So Im all for technology with the caveat that it enables human interaction and does not disable
it. A computer cannot care another human being can and those relationships are what give
life meaning.

Using Technology as Our Teacher

Examining a new, dynamic way of teaching students.
Using Technology as Our Teacher

Millions more for education! You've heard it before, and the results have
disappointed. Now, the Obama administration has announced a $4.35
billion Race to the Top fundand it could be different this time around. It's
the largest pot ever in the history of discretionary funding for education
reform for grades K through 12. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan calls
it "a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity" to address a fundamental problem:
Just 71 percent of students graduate from high school within four years.

And the numbers for minorities are worse: 58 percent for Hispanics and 55
percent for African-Americans.
This time around, can we restore the great American tradition of providing
a good free education, as we did in the 19th and 20th centuries? And can
we attune it to the need of our time for analytic thinking, problem solving,
independence, and the ability to seek out and assimilate new knowledge?
I believe we can if we focus on the right key.
There is unanimous agreement on what that key is: better teachers. On
average, children with a very good teacher will learn 1 years of material
in a school year. Those with a bad teacher will learn only half a year's
wortha difference of a year's learning in a single year. There is more
variation in student achievement between classrooms in the same school
than there is between schools. In other words, it is better to have a good
teacher in a bad school than a bad teacher in a good school. A teacher in
the top quartile of effectiveness can raise a student from the lowest
quartile of the national achievement distribution to the highest quartile,
an increase of 50 percentiles, in just three years.
Force multiplier. Teacher effects dwarf school effects and are much
stronger than class-size effects. We would have to cut the average class
almost in half to pick up the same benefit that a student gets after
switching from the average teacher to a teacher in the 85th percentile.
Halving the class size would require that we build twice as many
classrooms and have twice as many teachers, an impossible financial
challenge.
But how can we identify a potentially good teacher? How can average
teachers become better teachers? The secretary's special funding could
make a crucial difference by financing a national program exploiting the
electronic miracles of the Internet and video. We could escape geography
by using the technology to have the best teachers appear in hundreds of
thousands of disparate classrooms. This is a force multiplier. The
classrooms would be equipped with a large, flat-screen monitor with
whiteboards on either side; the monitor would be connected to a school
server that contains virtually all of the lessons for every subject taught in
the school, from kindergarten through 12th grade. The contents would use
animation, video, dramatization, and presentation options to deliver
complete lessons, to convey ideas in unique ways that are now
unavailable in conventional classrooms. The classroom teachers would
play the role of enhancers, answering questions and helping students
better understand the material covered electronically; they'd pause the

presentation to ask questions and to prompt critical thinking. The

whiteboard would be the platform for student involvement.
Technology-teaching would relieve the burden on teachers to prepare
content for every lesson each day. It would help to teach special skills,
such as foreign languages, that many regular schools may not otherwise
be able to afford. It could also provide sophisticated remedial programs,
especially in the most common problem areas of math and reading. Failing
to learn in the primary years how to decode letters and sounds quickly,
automatically, and unconsciously into words, phrases, and sentences
often becomes a lifetime handicap. These programs would benefit millions
upon millions of American students.
What's more, technology-teaching would make it easier for students with
special needs, as well as the early high achievers, to get the attention
they deserve. It would also enable principals and administrators to identify
their most effective teachersand the duds.
All of the above is brilliantly outlined in a new book called Liberating
Learning: Technology, Politics, and the Future of American Education by
Terry M. Moe and John E. Chubb. It will take a major federal effort to
accomplish this. Duncan should include such a program in his Race to the
Top for K through 12. Schools throughout the country would then have
access to best-teacher courses, a marvelous payoff for the educational
achievements that gave America and the world the technology in the first
place.

Technology as a Tool to Support Instruction

By Lynne Schrum
This week, in an Education World "edu-torial," Lynne Schrum presents her personal
perspective on the ways in which technology can enhance learning -- and calls on
educators to take a leadership role in determining the ways in which technology is used
to support educational goals.
Lynne Schrum, past president of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), is
an associate professor in the department of instructional technology at the University of Georgia.
Her research, teachings, and writings focus on issues related to distance education, specifically
online learning. Schrum also investigates the uses of technology in K-12 environments and
identifies ways to support educators in the effort.
We're all familiar with the extravagant promises of technology: It will make our students smarter
-- and it will do it faster and cheaper than ever before. Moreover, the promise suggests, this
miracle will occur almost by osmosis. We need only place a computer in a room, stand back, and
watch the magic take place. If only life were that simple and learning that easy!

Those of us who remember the 1980s, when computers were first making their way into our
classrooms, probably also remember a great deal of bad software. As educators, we were
unfamiliar with the technology and uncertain about its possibilities. So we stepped back and let
software developers, hardware vendors, and other technicians define not only what we could buy
but also how those products would be used. In many ways, the technology drove the educational
process. And guess what? It didn't work very well!
Now, we've entered an era in which technology is no longer an intimidating novelty. Its use in
business and industry is both accepted and expected. And pressure abounds -- from the federal
government, from local school boards, and certainly from the popular press -- for educators to
get on board and see to it that students become technologically skilled.
But is mere technological skill enough?
Two points should be considered.

TECHNOLOGY AS A TOOL
Technology is a tool that can change the nature of learning.
First and foremost, educators want students to learn. It is certainly notenough to tell educators
that they need to use the boxes and wires that have invaded their schools simply because they
are expensive or because students need to know how to use the latest widget. If it's clear that
technological tools will help them achieve that goal, educators will use those tools.
The real world is not broken down into discrete academic disciplines. I've heard a number of
teachers say that they would like to be able to change the way they teach -- to find ways to
implement project-based, multidisciplinary lessons. Let's think about how that might happen
when technology is used to support learning.
Technology lends itself to exploration. But before technology can be used effectively, exploration
must be valued as important to both teaching and learning. In a technology-rich classroom,
students might search the Web for information, analyze river water, chart the results, and record
what they've learned on the computer.
In such an environment, acquiring content changes from a static process to one of defining goals
the learners wish to pursue. Students are active, rather than passive -- producing knowledge and
presenting that knowledge in a variety of formats.
In such an environment, educators can encourage a diversity of outcomes rather than insisting
on one right answer. They can evaluate learning in multiple ways, instead of relying
predominately on traditional paper and pencil tests. And perhaps most importantly, teachers and
students can move from pursuing individual efforts to being part of learning teams, which may
include students from all over the world.
Of course, active learning is rarely a clean, neat process. Students engaged in such a process
can create busy, noisy, and messy classrooms. It's important to recognize that this kind of
learning takes practice -- for both the teacher and the students.
Activities and learning environments must be carefully guided and structured so learners are fully
engaged in their learning. Students must learn that exploration doesn't mean just running around
doing what they want and ending up who knows where. Educators must recognize that if
students are investigating and asking questions, writing about what they're learning, and doing
those things in an authentic context, then they are learning to read and write and think.

In a technology-rich classroom, students don't "learn" technology. Technology merely provides

the tools to be used for authentic learning. It is a means, not an end.
Technology provides educators with the opportunity to move from simply streamlining the way
things have always been done to really imagining things they would like to do.
What a wonderful opportunity!

CHOOSING AND USING THE TOOLS

Teachers must determine how technology tools are used, and they must have a hand in
designing the staff development process that trains them.
What will it take to realize the full potential of that opportunity? First, teachers must insist on
being part of the planning for technology integration, rather than merely the recipients of other
people's ideas.
They must work together to create exemplary units, and then they must share their experiences
with one another.
Teachers must take responsibility for helping design the staff development process so that
it really meets their needs -- so that it includes time to practice using the equipment, to watch
teachers model lessons that infuse technology into the curriculum, and to mentor other teachers.
Of course, teachers cannot revolutionize the educational system by themselves -- and make no
mistake about it, that is what we're discussing.
Have you heard the story about the administrator who came to observe a teacher? The
classroom had five computers, and the students were all busy on an investigation. Some of the
students were using the computers, and others were working on projects or creating information.
Some students were working together. Others were working alone. The administrator walked up
to the teacher, who was assisting a small group of students, and said, "I'll come back when
you're teaching."
As that story demonstrates, we also have to help administrators understand what a technologyrich lesson looks like. We have to insist that administrators provide us with time to work together,
to explore, and to play with technological tools. We have to make sure that support for lifelong
learning for educators, as well as for students, is built into our schools.
Teachers are creative, intelligent people, and once they learn to use technology in their
professional lives -- for keeping records, for creating documents, and for enhancing their own
learning -- they will soon discover the many ways in which technology can enhance what they
are doing with their students.

WORKING TOGETHER
In order to successfully infuse technology into their classrooms, teachers must have the support
of all stakeholders in the educational community. They must resist the notion that learning to use
the "gadgets" is an end in itself.
They must provide desperately needed leadership to find the best ways of using technology to
enhance teaching and learning. They must expect and demand the best and most interesting
software to enhance their educational goals. They must be included in planning the technology
implementation -- and be encouraged to experiment with the available tools.

Finally, teachers must educate themselves on how to best use those tools to enhance teaching
and learning.
It is an exciting time to be teaching, and we must seize this moment to challenge ourselves, our
students, our administrators, and policymakers throughout the country to help all teachers make
the best use of the technology tools available to them.
Article by Lynn Schrum
Education World
Copyright 2005 Education World

How Does Technology Facilitate

Learning?
Learning From Technology
Some of the first educational technologies were illustrations in 17th-century books and slate
chalkboards in 18th-century classrooms. Educational technologies in the 20th century include
lantern-slide and opaque projectors, later radio, and then motion pictures. During the 1950s,
programmed instruction emerged as the first true educational technology, that is, the first
technology developed specifically to meet educational needs. With every other technology,
including computers, educators recognized its importance and debated how to apply each
nascent commercial technology for educational purposes. Unfortunately, educators have
almost always tried to use technologies to teach students in the same ways that teachers had
always taught. So information was recorded in the technology (e.g., the content presented by
films and television programs), and the technology presented that information to the students.
The students role was to learn the information presented by the technology, just as they
learned information presented by the teacher. The role of the technology was to deliver
lessons to students, just as trucks deliver groceries to supermarkets (Clark, 1983). If you
deliver groceries, people will eat. If you deliver instruction, students will learn. Not
necessarily! We will tell you why later.
Later in the 1980s, educators began to perceive the importance of computers as
productivity tools. The growing popularity of word processing, databases,
spreadsheets, graphics programs, and desktop publishing was enabling businesses
to become more productive. So students in classroom began word processing and
using graphics packages and desktop publishing programs to write with. This tool
conception pervaded computer use according to a 1993 study by Hadley and
Sheingold that showed that well-informed teachers were extensively using text
processing tools (word processors), analytic and information tools (especially
databases and some spreadsheet use), and graphics tools (paint programs and

desktop publishing) along with instructional software (including problem-solving

programs along with drill and practice and tutorials).
The development of inexpensive multimedia computers and the eruption of the
Internet in the mid-1990s quickly changed the nature of educational computing.
Communications tools (e.g., e-mail and computer conferences) and multimedia, little
used according to Hadley and Sheingold, have dominated the role of technologies in
the classroom ever since. But what are the students producing? Too often, they are
using the technology to reproduce what the teacher or textbook told them or what
they copy from the Internet.
Our conception of educational computing and technology use, described next, does
not conceive of technologies as teachers or repositories of information. Rather, we
believe that, in order to learn, students should teach the computer or use the
technology to represent what they know rather than memorizing what teachers and
textbooks tell them. Technologies provide rich and flexible media for representing
what students know and what they are learning. A great deal of research on
computers and other technologies has shown that they are no more effective at
teaching students than teachers, but if we begin to think about technologies as
learning tools that students learn with, not from, then the nature of student learning
will change.

Learning With Technology

If schools are to foster meaningful learning, then the ways that we use technologies
in schools must change from technology-as-teacher to technology-as-partner in the
learning process. Before, we argued that students do not learn from technology but
that technologies can support productive thinking and meaning making by students.
That will happen when students learn with the technology. But how do students learn
with technologies? How can technologies become intellectual partners with
students? We assume the following:

Technology is more than hardware. Technology consists also of the designs and the
environments that engage learners. Technology can also consist of any reliable technique or
method for engaging learning, such as cognitive learning strategies and critical thinking
skills.

Learning technologies can be any environment or definable set of activities that

engage learners in active, constructive, intentional, authentic, and cooperative learning.

Technologies are not conveyors or communicators of meaning. Nor should they

prescribe and control all of the learner interactions.

Technologies support meaningful learning when they fulfill a learning needwhen

interactions with technologies are learner initiated and learner controlled and when
interactions with the technologies are conceptually and intellectually engaging.

Technologies should function as intellectual tool kits that enable learners to build
more meaningful personal interpretations and representations of the world. These tool kits
must support the intellectual functions that are required by a course of study.

Learners and technologies should be intellectual partners, where the cognitive

responsibility for performance is distributed by the part of the partnership that performs it
better.

How Technologies Foster Learning

If technologies are used to foster meaningful learning, then they will not be used as
delivery vehicles. Rather, technologies should be used as engagers and facilitators
of thinking. Based on our conception of meaningful learning, we suggest the
following roles for technologies in supporting meaningful learning:

Technology as tools to support knowledge construction:

for representing learners ideas, understandings, and beliefs

for producing organized, multimedia knowledge bases by learners

Technology as information vehicle for exploring knowledge to support learning by

constructing:

for accessing needed information

for comparing perspectives, beliefs, and worldviews

Technology as authentic context to support learning by doing:

for representing and simulating meaningful real-world problems, situations,

and contexts
o

for representing beliefs, perspectives, arguments, and stories of others

for defining a safe, controllable problem space for student thinking

Technology as social medium to support learning by conversing:

for collaborating with others

for discussing, arguing, and building consensus among members of a

community

for supporting discourse among knowledge-building communities

Technology as intellectual partner (Jonassen, 2000) to support learning by reflecting:

for helping learners to articulate and represent what they know

for reflecting on what they have learned and how they came to know it

for supporting learners internal negotiations and meaning making

for constructing personal representations of meaning

for supporting mindful thinking

How Technologies Foster Thinking

Why do these uses of technology foster meaningful learning? It is because they
require that students think and reason. In this book, we argue that students do not
learn from teachers or from technologies. Rather, students learn from thinking
thinking about what they are doing or what they did, thinking about what they
believe, thinking about what others have done and believe, thinking about the
thinking processes they usejust thinking and reasoning. Thinking mediates
learning. Learning results from thinking. What kinds of thinking are fostered when
learning with technologies?

Causal
Causal reasoning is one of the most basic and important cognitive processes that
underpin all higher-order activities, such as problem solving. Hume called causality
the cement of the universe (Hume, 1739/2000). Reasoning from a description of a
condition or set of conditions or states of an event to the possible effect(s) that may
result from those states is called prediction. A baseball pitcher predicts where the ball
will go by the forces that he or she applies when pitching the ball. When an outcome
or state exists for which the causal agent is unknown, then an inference is required.
That is, reasoning backward from effect to cause requires the process of inference. A
primary function of inferences is diagnosis. For example, based on symptoms,
historical factors, and test results of patients who are thought to be abnormal, a
physician attempts to infer the cause(s) of that illness state. Thinking causally is also
required for making explanations. Explaining how things work requires learner to
identify all the causal connections among the things being explained.
Causal thinking is really more complex than learners understand. In order to be able
to understand and apply causal relationships, learners must be able to quantify
attributes of causal relationships (direction, strength, probability, and duration) as
well as be able to explain the underlying mechanisms describing the relationship
(Jonassen & Ionas, 2007). Why does a force applied to a ball cause it to move in
certain direction?

Analogical
If you distill cognitive psychology into a single principle, it would be to use analogies
to convey and understand new ideas. That is, understanding a new idea is best
accomplished by comparing and contrasting it to an idea that is already understood.
In an analogy, the properties or attributes of one idea (the analogue) are mapped or
transferred to another (the source or target). Single analogies are also known as
synonyms or metaphors. One word conveys attributes to the other, often using the
word like or as as a connector. Following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, New Orleans
was said to be inundated with a toxic gumbo. Gumbo is a complex New Orleans
style soup that contains a variety of ingredients. The waters that surrounded New
Orleans contained a complex variety of toxic substancesthus metaphor as
analogy.
People most commonly think of syllogism as analogies. A syllogism is a four-part
analogy. For example, love is to hate as peace is to . The analogy makes
sense only if the structural characteristics of the first analogy can be applied to the
second.
In using technologies to represent their understanding, students consistently are
required to engage in the comparisoncontrast reasoning required to structurally
map the attributes of one or more idea to others, that is, to draw an analogy.

Expressive
Using technologies as tools to learn with entails learners representing what they
know, that is, teaching the computer. To do so, learners must express what they
know. Using different tools requires learners to express what they know in different
ways. Technologies can be used to help learners express themselves in
writing. Learners can express themselves using a variety of tools, such as
databases, spreadsheets, and expert systems, each tool requiring different forms of
expression. Ttechnologies can support verbal expression, while chapter 9 focuses
on visual expressions. Contrast these varieties of expressions to those required by
state-mandated tests, where students only form of expressions is the selection of
answer a, b, c, or d.

Experiential
Experiences result in the most meaningful and resistant memories. We can recall
with clarity experiences that we have had many years before. The primary medium
for expressing experiences is the story. Stories are the oldest and most natural form
of sense making. Stories are the means [by] which human beings give meaning to
their experience of temporality and personal actions (Polkinghorne, 1988, p. 11).
Cultures have maintained their existence through different types of stories, including

myths, fairy tales, and histories. Humans appear to have an innate ability and
predisposition to organize and represent their experiences in the form of stories.
Learning with technologies engages stories in a couple ways. First, the experiences
that students have while using technologies to represent their understanding are
meaningful and memorable. Second, students may seek out stories and use
technologies to convey them.

Problem Solving
Using technologies to express and convey learner knowledge all entail different
kinds of problems solving. Learning with technologies requires that students make
myriad decisions while constructing their representations. Deciding what information
to include and exclude, how to structure the information, and what form it should take
are all complex decision-making processes. Students also engage in a lot of design
problem solving while constructing their interpretations. They also must solve ruleusing problems in how to use software. When learners are solving problems, they
are thinking deeply and are engaged in meaningful learning. What they learn while
doing so will be so much better understood and remembered than continuously
preparing to answer multiple-choice test questions.
Nothing is perfect in this world. Everything has its pros and cons. In the present world it
is difficult to survive without the use of technology.
Few examples of technology will help to understand.
1) Information System Technology :- If proper use of the Internet is done then we can get
all the information with the help of it. Other side it can also spoil the life of many people
by uploading improper things about them.
2) Cellular Phones :- It is a boon as it helps to communicate easily and quickly and now a
days use of cellular phones is much more than just communication. We can almost find
everything in it but on the other side the radiation rays harms the health of the people.
In Short, Technology is definately a boon if it is used after taking proper precautions.
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Partners in Learning: Twelve Ways Technology Changes The

Teacher-Student Relationship
It's no surprise toteachers who've experimented with technology in the
classroom thatit's a long and arduous process. Introducing a
computer,telecommunications tools or other technological resources

intostudents' learning experiences d'esn't automatically result inimproved

learning. Savvy teachers and administrators know thateffective integration of
computers and other technology requires thatteachers:

become comfortable with the technology itself;

explore software, CD-ROM, Internet-based and other curriculum

resources to identify those that might enhance and enrich their current
curriculum;

review their curriculum to determine how best to integrate these

technology resources into their lesson plans;

revise the lesson plans to incorporate the technology resources;

experiment with the lessons in the classroom;

assess how well things worked; and

refine the lesson.

At Stevens Institute ofTechnology's Center for Improved Engineering and

Science Education(CIESE), we have been working with teachers,
administrators, schoolsand districts for 10 years on the integration of technology
into K-12science and mathematics education. These collaborations
haveencompassed not only professional development activities, but liaisonand
support for school and district administrators to assist them inplanning and
fostering meaningful and effective applications oftechnology.
Over the last decade, wehave observed astounding effects of technology
integration onteachers and students: veteran teachers who undergo a
dramatictransformation and find a sense of enthusiasm for their craft whichthey
felt they'd lost; tech-savvy teachers who create wondrousclassroom experiences
and lessons that engage their students inreal-world problem-solving; disaffected
students suddenly curiousabout new areas of inquiry with the help of technology
tools; andreticent students who've blossomed into eager, motivated members of
agroup investigating a common problem.
But what about theinteraction between teachers and students with the
introduction oftechnology? What changes in the dynamics between them when

computersand other technologies are a purposeful part of the

learningexperience? How do computers and telecommunications
technologiesaffect the relationship between teachers and learners? To
answerthese questions, we talked with a group of teachers who have been atthe
forefront of using computers and the Internet in innovative andcompelling ways
in science and mathematics. These teachers and theirschools have all invested
countless hours to learn about thestrengths of the technology tools, mainly
software and Internet-basedresources, and to plan meaningful activities to use
these tools inways that meet their own lesson objectives and that will enrich
theirstudents' learning experiences