Education Technology: A medium for improving Teaching and Learning in the classroom

Education Technology: A Medium for improving Teaching and Learning in the classroom.

Educational technology, especially computers and computer-related peripherals, have grown tremendously and have permeated all areas of our lives. It is incomprehensible that anyone today would argue that banks, hospitals, or any industry should use less technology. Most young people cannot understand arguments that schools should limit technology use. For them, use of the Internet, for example, plays a major role in their relationships with their friends, their families, and their schools. Teens and their parents generally think use of the Internet enhances the social life and academic work of teenagers:

The Internet is becoming an increasingly vital tool in our information society. More Kenyans are going online to conduct such day-to-day activities as education, business transactions, personal correspondence, research and information-gathering, job searches and lately social networking(SNS). Each year, being digitally connected becomes ever more critical to economic and educational advancement and community participation. Now that a large number of Kenyans regularly use the Internet to conduct daily activities, people who lack access to these tools are at a growing disadvantage. Therefore, raising the level of digital inclusion by increasing the number of Kenyans using the technology tools of the digital age is a vitally important national goal. (CCK statistical report(2011)

The very concept of the Internet would not be possible without technology. This is paralleled by the incredibly rapid growth of registered Internet users that likely would not be possible without this technology. Educational institutions with no computers would arouse suspicion about the completeness, accuracy and professionalism in the delivery of curriculum as information grows daily and much of that new information can only be found through the use of technology.  

From the beginning of the computer age, educational researchers and practitioners have told us that for technology use to be successful in our schools it needed to be closely tied to school reform. Glennan and Melmed (1995) wrote: "Technology without reform is likely to have little value: widespread reform without technology is probably impossible" (pp. xix–xx.). The unavoidable conclusion is that successful improvement of technology in education is of high importance to our future.  

Given the vital role of technology in today's world, Old methodologies were based on concept of the classroom as the ultimate place of knowledge transfer. The teacher played the role of being the source and transmitter of information and knowledge and the learners play the role of receivers. Based on this traditional approach, the teacher easily learns from his/her own experience. But now with rapid technological changes, very few teachers can teach from their own experience. This demands that the teachers have to meet the following;

1.       Have high level of initial knowledge and necessary experience in IT.

2.       Have the ability  to work as project team members and curriculum manager.

3.       Have the ability to organize project team works in such a way that all the students accept proposed conditions.

4.       Should be able to dynamically manage curriculum establishing and adopting criteria and flexibility in motivation principles oriented on the final results.