How technology impacts student learning? Before covid technology was considered as a distraction in physical classroom by the teachers. In most of the cases, they didn’t ban the use of mobile phones but considered it as a “necessary evil”.
But since the pandemic, viewpoint regarding remote education is changing. The ‘bear it’ term used by teachers is being changed and technology’s positive aspects are being accepted by them.
During the last year, the Covid-19 has shown why online education is fundamental part of teaching and learning. Instead of using technology as crisis-management tool, teachers can use technology as powerful educational tool.
Using technology in education comes with its pros and cons. The ultimate goal of teachers is to improve students’ performance, and now technology can play great role in achieving it. In order to lessen difficulties, proper training should be given to teachers to provide best learning to students with technology.
Technology also provides easy-access to information, in-depth learning .It helps students by making learning more engaging and collaborative. Through technology, student’s critical thinking gets better – a basic advantage of online learning.
At the same time, that comes to mind is “Are all the students are benefitting from online learning?” To answer that we have come to conclusion that we are facing equity issue. The financially stable families can afford electronics while students belonging to struggling families hardly affords any devices – a poverty indicator.
During closing of schools, students of struggling families have face setback due to lack of internet, inability to take classes with families due to lack of privacy. These are some reasons that online learning is not good for burdened students.
Technology has been proven good as research shows that on average, students retain 25-60% more material when learning online compared to only 8-10% in a classroom. But as large population of world is having low income so students belonging to poor families are at disadvantage.
This Covid-19 crisis is opportunity to education systems to expand their capacity, prepare themselves for threats. As a whole, the Asia region has potential to make this happen, irrespective of Covid-19.