How Technology is Advancing into Education and our Schools

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Technology in Education

Technology is an ever growing and changing aspect of everyday life in American homes. Recently technology is branching out into education, and is now targeting our youth and their developing minds. It is a strong and proven tool to help children learn and overcome certain learning disabilities. The potential benefits of technology for young children’s learning and development are well documented. There is an organization called the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) that released a position statement in 1996 stating their stand on technology in education. In their article they show many different research findings related to this topic that support the use of technology in educational settings and in the home. They state that in 1996, according to a SPA Consumer Market Report, seventy percent of parents who own a computer purchased educational software for their children to use. That was sixteen years ago, and now the trend has moved and is growing into our schools.

Every school, whether primary or secondary has a computer lab. Students are required to use the lab to research papers, type, or find important information. Soon, however, they will also be playing games, and doing their lessons and homework on special software developed by educators and program writers to learn information related to their teacher’s lesson plan. Chris Dede is leading this push to online education through his River City Project; an online environment where students work in teams and take on the identity of scientists where they must step back into the 19th century to battle a mysterious epidemic. The curriculum tests the strengths and limits of an emerging learning technology called MUVE, or multi-user virtual environments. He is also working with the U.S. Department of Education in accessing Augmented Reality Simulation Games (ARGS) that teach student mathematics and literacy skills on a mobile computer. These games, such as Mad City Murder and Environmental Detectives, confront students with multidimensional problems that require higher-order thinking and problem solving to win stages. Dede is also working with the University of Wisconsin and MIT to teach teachers how to create their own ARGS for their students. It’s a very positive move that will push for teachers to be proficient in program writing to create these “games” for their students. Even Europe has a similar program. It’s called ARiSE or Augmented Reality in School Environments, and it shows that a leap in gaming and education is slowly starting to form.

Even large companies such as Microsoft are starting to plunder into the realm of education. It was hard to miss the release of Microsoft’s new Kinect, a device that features an RGB camera, depth sensor, and multi-array microphone running proprietary software, which provides full-body 3D motion capture, facial recognition, and voice recognition capabilities. Sesame Street: Once Upon a Monster is the first game aimed at education for younger kids, and allows them to dive right into Sesame Street and interact with letters, numbers, characters, and objects on the television. Now, however, they are releasing Kinect for Windows; Software Development Kit (SDK), a free beta release for noncommercial applications that will allow anyone to create an interactive program to use the Kinect camera in other applications. This allows any person with little programming knowledge to use the Kinect and SDK programs to make custom “games.” There is already a site kinecteducation.com that show demos of teacher-created programs, and provides help on writing your own. This site and many others will soon pave the way for technology into the classroom, because, as we all know, the classroom has already been brought to the children’s homes.

It’s almost shocking how many school districts have started allowing home schooling online. Before, homeschooling was tedious on the parents because of strict curriculum and lengthy testing procedures, now it is almost as easy as logging in to your Facebook. For example connectionsacademy.com is an Indiana based online school that helps educate kindergarteners through seniors in high school. The website allows parents and prospective students to see how the Learning Management System works before they enroll so they can see if it will work with them. It requires active parent participation as well. Parents have to log daily attendance in how many hours their kids studied, and they get immediate feedback on assignments and tests. They can even speak with the assigned educator for their children via web chat. Ten years ago web chatting with a child’s teacher would have seemed silly, but now in our age of smart phones and tablets it would seem silly not to.

As you can see, technology is rapidly moving into our lives whether it is in work, play, and now, education. It has many benefits and few drawbacks. It can reach children who; refuse to go to school, or drive their parents crazy with reprimands at an actual school, or just don’t have good experiences at school. Technology is now allowing kids to learn at home in their own environment and allowing teachers to gain their students interest again with educational video games. Technology may seem daunting at first, but with so many YouTube tutorials, and “books for dummies” it’s slowly becoming easier for everyday people to utilize its full benefits. Technology has benefited medicine, agriculture, communications, trade, industry, and many other aspects of our lives; now it’s time for technology to benefit our dated educational system.

Austin F. 2012