Impact of Technology on Education

With the help of technology teachers interact differently with their students – more as guides or mentors and less like lecturers. In fact, their personal efforts to make technology an integral part of their classrooms cause them to rethink their most basic beliefs about education and open them to the possibilities of redefining how they went about providing opportunities for students to learn.
Traditional views of teaching and learning – from instruction to knowledge construction:

Activity	Traditional Instruction Teacher-centered and Didactic	Extended Instruction (Knowledge Construction) Learner-centered and Interactive
Teacher role	Fact teller and expert	Collaborator and learner
Student Role	Listener and learner	Collaborator and sometimes expert
Learning emphasis	Facts and replication	Relationships and inquiry
Concept of knowledge	Accumulation	Transformation
Demonstration of success	Quantity	Quality
Assessment	Norm-referenced and multiple guess	Criterion-referenced and performance portfolios
Technology use	Seat work	Communication, collaboration, information access, and expression

• Teachers and students become producers, not just users, of information.
• Students take part in advanced activities, tasks or courses and be more CREATIVE.
• Teachers network with each other to share instructional practices.
• Teachers and students access information more frequently and cost effectively.
• Students take more responsibility for their own learning, work at their own pace and correct many of their own errors.

With technology dispensing information, teachers are free to coach and facilitate students learning. With technology monitoring learning, students can become active learners, working to effectively acquire new skills as they solve problems. If the goal of creating high-performance learning organizations is to be realized, the reinvention of  education system in any country has to incorporate these new tools.
Adapted from: www.nsba.org