An Analysis of Technology Through My Eyes

An Analysis of Technology Through My Eyes

By: Edith Trevino

 

Oh boy, we all know that 2020 has been a very rough year for everyone and when I say everyone, I mean everyone! Every person from the adults, to the teens, to even the kids! This pandemic has brought us so many changes and challenges, and to be honest, I don’t think it is going to go back to normal anytime soon. So, we as mankind, have to adapt, accept, change our lifestyles because of this pandemic. Here is three points I would like to talk about in my blog.

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1.     I recently read an article entitled, “10 issues in Educational Technology”, by the Southern Regional Education Board.  According to the article by the SREB, it says:

“The explosion in mobile technology and social networking has paralleled a rapid growth in educational technology applications and technology-mediated instruction. In 2017, the Gartner Hype Cycle for Education tracked over fifty emergent education-related technologies in various stages of development and implementation. These technologies represented various applications, promising practices and enhanced methods which attempt to meet evolving expectations for information and learning systems and for engaging students more deeply in their learning (SREB2018). Emerging technologies in school with strategic decision making, foster faculty with professional development in technology to maximize their benefit to students” (SREB2018).

 

·      Wow. You see, this was back in 2017 and 2018. Now we are in the year 2021 and technology is only going to evolve even more and like I said in the beginning we, as mankind, have to adapt and change. Technology is going to be in our everyday lives from now on and we need to get on board with the educators to help our children learn and be familiar with technology. Every school needs to have communication and collaborations with the teachers and administrators and even the parents as our technology advances and evolves. As it is, I believe it was very difficult change on everyone when the switch was made from a traditional, in-classroom setting to online video chats and homework. This was challenging because educators had no choice but to re-plan most of their lesson plans to fit with the online setting and this took much time off their hands. It requires training, support, and coordination from technology experts. As a former educator, I personally know how much planning it takes to make a lesson plan. I know that an educator only wants the best learning environment and experience for every one of their students.

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2.My other point that I found interesting to me and maybe possibly could be to you. In the same article that read it says:

 

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·    “Technology security is a global issue for education, government, military, business and private individuals. Today all technology systems, from learning management systems to institutional networks, access points, wi-fi networks, enterprise resource planning, and student information systems, need technology security extending from the user level to the network, institution and beyond, including vendor partners. More schools and institutions now use third-party vendor networks, cloud-based services, and online educational tools than ever before, which makes them vulnerable to external access. If they have multiple devices and sensors (known as the Internet of Tings or IOT) connected to their network, they create additional risk of unauthorized network access. More than 72 percent of IOT devices are hackable and expose risks for unauthorized access to larger systems” (SREB2018).

·      I really hope this caught your attention. We have very intelligent people living in this world. As technology is getting more advance, so are hackers. Some of the issues that the education system is going to have or is already experiencing is hacking problems. I have personally seen it with my eyes. So, let’s go back a couple of months ago. When my kids went back to school, it was a full remote learning experience, so everything was done online. I am not kidding you, there would be times a random so called “student” would hack into the class. These people would show up and begin to say vulgar words and text in the chat saying threats such as, “I’m going to hack this teacher’s computer” and many more. The thing is those students were not even in the teacher’s rosters. You had to have special code to enter any class. This went on for a couples of weeks until finally the administration fixed the issue. With that being said you can probably agree that the school system needs to have a better security system for technology moving forward. 

3.My last point is that schools may have issues with digital literacy among the students and staff. As I was reading the article by the South Regional Education Board, 2018, it said: 

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·      “A 2016 Stanford University study of nearly 8,000 secondary school and college students in 12 states makes clear that these skills are unlikely to develop on their own. It shows that most students cannot distinguish between an advertisement and a news article or determine the source of the information. Eighty percent of middle graders thought an ad marked as “sponsored content” was a legitimate news article. High school students couldn’t discern between fake news accounts and actual news sources on social media. College students were not able to evaluate the credibility of a website or wade through contradictory results of a Google search to find reliable and accurate information” (SREB2018). 

·      With Technology moving exponentially fast, we need to teach the students and staff about digital literacy. Digital Literacy pertains to reading, writing, and math in the modern world. Digital literacy is going to be the new thing for students, and it is important that schools need to embed this at a young age so the students can be familiar as they mature and develop the necessary skills to reach their goals. Technology is moving so fast that digital literacy has to be part of student’s school experiences, so they won’t have any trouble as they go into this new world.  

·      Another research by the SREB shows that: 

·      “A lack of digital literacy skills contributes to a “digital divide”. People with lower incomes, the elderly, the less-educated, the unemployed, and people with disabilities have less access to digital communications — and therefore less opportunity to build skills related to the technology. Many of these people are already marginalized; their digital illiteracy only adds to their isolation because they are unable to access support networks, government services, political processes, or economic opportunities” (SREB2018). 

This is why I say and agree that educator’s needs to teach the fundamental skills that students need from a young age all the way to college to be fully aware and focus on learning technology so they can be successful in this digital world that we are on. In addition to my readings, I would still want to learn more about technology on how it will be use and on how to incorporate technology in general. Here are some of the links that I found a that could be useful, which I like because it has categories broken down into sections from most popular articles to recent articles.  

 

 

 

References:

Southern Regional Education Board (2018) 10 Issues In Educational Technology. https://www.sreb.org/10issues

 

The Conversation Articles On Technology In Education 

 

2021https://theconversation.com/us/topics/technology-in-education-9121  

Becton Loveless. Education Corner, Technology In Education The Complete Guide,2021 

https://www.educationcorner.com/education-technologies.html

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