The Role of Technology in Education

Over the years, technology has played an important function in enabling educational innovation, providing students and teachers with many options and ensuring flexibility in learning and teaching processes. With the computer and internet availability, instructional technology resources in the 21st century are increasingly becoming indispensable. The availability of these resources enables both students and teachers to have a range of opportunities in expanding their curriculum (Chyung, 2016).

Drill and practice software

The Drill and practice software provides students with multiple opportunities to tackle their examples or problems one at a time. The students then get feedback on their performance.

Evaluation

Drill and practice software can be used as a way of reviewing or learning new content. It can be in any of the following categories; branching drills, extensive feedback activities, and flashcard activities (Chyung, 2016). The advantage of using this software is that students receive immediate feedback which assists them in their learning process. Also, teachers get to motivate their students and save time on grading student activities. The dill and practice software is user-friendly and as long as a student has a smartphone, he or she can access her activities anywhere.

Bright storm website

The Bright storm website is an online learning platform for students. It contains many study videos and other study tools including College Counselling and Math Genie and it also covers some English and Science courses.

Evaluation

This website is an example and advocate of flipped classroom teaching whereby students are able to learn on their own using online videos. The videos make use of pen cast technology to provide the users or students with step by step instructions. College counseling answers most of the academic questions asked by students and their parents (Khosrow-Pour, 2015). The videos are made by professional college admissions and they answer questions such as how to write a college essay, how to get better grades and how to apply for college.

Stick Pick App

Stick Pick App was created by Buzz Garwood, a technology teacher at the Academy of Home Gardens, California. It sold at 2.99$ and it has a size of 8.8MB. This is a class assessment and management app that uses Popsicle sticks which have the names of every student written on them. This app ensures that the teacher calls on all students equally.

Evaluation

Stick Pick App not only calls on students equally but also has the ability to show question stems tied to the level of each student’s English language ability. A teacher can also track the performance of each student. He or she can have on hand student information such as their recent language standardized test scores.

The study in Hyperrealism WebQuest

This Web Quest contains both the students and teachers page. This web quest is meant to assist students in evaluating the historical implications which caused a whole population to be fooled by Orson Welles.

Evaluation

The study in Hyperrealism begins with an introduction which gives a clear scope of what is required of the students and teachers after reading a novel and listening to a broadcast. It provides a three days learning process that the students should follow (Khosrow-Pour, 2015). Next is a page showing that students are required to create an artifact based on what they have learned. The web quest further explains how the students work will be evaluated, credited and all the resources that the teacher requires to teach the students.

Reflection

Teachers are required to use the appropriate process identifying and evaluating the instructional technology. The technology should be efficient, easy to acquire and use, able to meet the demands and goals of both the teacher and students and improve the teaching process. The instructional resources differ right from their formation, how they work, their advantages and functions. A preserve teacher can use an instructional software to help students tackle their problems, an instructional website to help students gain learning tools, an instructional application to provide a range of methods to improve the teaching process and a web quest to provide a better lesson format (Chyung, 2016).

Preparing students for the 21st-century demands need a lot of commitment and groundbreaking teachers who are ready to fight existing restrictions. It is all about excellently using the emerging instructional technology resources to improve learning and teaching strategies. Integrating these resources in education can positively transform education to and create new learning goals.

References

Chyung, S. Y. (2016). Basics of instructional and performance technology. Amherst, MA: HRD Press.

Khosrow-Pour, M. (2015). Web-based instructional learning. Hershey, PA: IRM Press.