When is technology used

When these innovations were combined, they formed a powerful army that gave way to the massive use of technology in business. Industrial processes rely on sources of energy for them to be fully functional. Before electricity was utilized for this purpose, other natural sources such as coal and water were used.

This is rather an unconventional way of fueling up factories because the said energy sources are not readily available for industrial use. With the discovery of the incandescent bulb by Thomas Edison, a series of other discoveries and inventions gave way for instant sources of energy. Electric utilities were ushered in during the late ? Although these utilities had a low transmission range and limited power, wide residential use became possible.

These utilities were further developed by George Westinghouse that made it possible to supply both residential homes and power-hungry industries the energy that they needed to perform daily business tasks. Communications, on the other hand, was revolutionized with the invention of the telephone by Alexander Graham Bell.

It was indeed a giant leap for communication, which ultimately affected the business world in many aspects. Digital Citizen? Examining a Dangerous Stereotype. As discussed in the What is Successful Technology Integration? This definition also depends on who is using the technology. For instance, in a classroom with only an interactive whiteboard and one computer, learning will still remain teacher centered and integration will revolve around teacher needs, which are not necessarily student needs.

Still, there are ways to use an interactive whiteboard to make it a tool for your students. Even with one computer in the room, there are ways to integrate that one machine into your classroom and still make sure that you and your students are indeed doing things that you couldn't do before, not just doing the same things you did before in a quicker, more efficient way. Below you will find a quick overview with suggestions of what kinds of tools and activities are best matched with various levels of technology access.

All of the resources linked to are either free or offer free versions. If you have a pod of three to five computers in the classroom or access to a library with a pod of computers:. To begin to move your tech integration to the point where it is "seamless," consider these questions:. For more on levels of technology access and what that means for tech integration, read this blog post: " What Does 'Technology Integration' Mean?

It provides guidance on different levels of tech integration based on readiness and current practice, and offers links to sample lessons. In schools that are not , sharing resources can be a huge challenge. Here are some quick tips for sharing resources effectively:. Once you have discovered what level of access you have and what possibilities this access affords you, it is time to address your own comfort level with the technology that is in your classroom.

Once you know your comfort level, then you can begin to build a professional-development plan for yourself. This can be done alone, as part of your "grade team," or as part of your school or district's personal-growth plan.

You can also begin to seek out professional-development opportunities online and outside of your district or school to begin to connect with other educators exploring the same challenges and seeking solutions. For more resources for taking professional development into your own hands, check out our DIY Professional Development page. It doesn't matter what your comfort level is with technology in your classroom -- without a continuous professional-development plan, you will never be as effective as you can be.

Many schools and districts have made the mistake of placing technology into classrooms without a comprehensive plan for training teachers. Often, this technology sits unused or underused. If you are a teacher in a situation where technology has been "thrown" at you with no professional development, be thankful for the new tool s that you have at your fingertips -- and then do your best to learn about how they can transform and improve your teaching and have a positive effect on student learning.

You can do this either on your own or by asking for help from your colleagues, mentors, or professional learning community. Unlike many other aspects of teaching, technology changes constantly.

Just as in any industry, it is vital that educators stay current with new trends and developments in both pedagogy and new technologies. If you have a tech-integration specialist at your school, then use this person to your full advantage, as they are the front line for the tools you have or may want to bring into your classroom. While hardware and software vary across classrooms, schools, and districts, one thing can be guaranteed across the board: technology, no matter what kind it is, will fail.

This inevitable part of tech integration is often the number-one fear of classroom teachers everywhere. Whether you are taking the steps to integrate technology into your classroom on your own or as part of a schoolwide or district initiative, this fear must be the first hurdle to overcome.

One of the most exciting aspects of bringing technology into your classroom -- and into your students' hands -- is the enhanced opportunity for timely and meaningful feedback. Quick Checks: If you want to know if your students grasp enough of a particular concept before you move on, you can use tools such as Poll Everywhere , Socrative , or Mentimeter to get a quick snapshot of the class.

By creating a short quiz or open-ended response question using one of these tools and having your students use an internet-enabled device to answer, you can get quick and easy feedback that will help inform your instruction. They are intended to provide high-quality educational content that will serve both as core text and provide an adaptive environment for learning.

Leadership Public Schools LPS — In each of the four LPS schools, teachers work together to utilize open-source materials to meet the specific learning needs of their students. Through a partnership with CK, LPS has developed College Access Readers, a series of online books with literacy supports embedded in them to meet the individual needs of students, from advanced to under-performing students.

Khan Academy — The Khan Academy is a not-for-profit organization providing digital learning resources, including an extensive video library, practice exercises, and assessments. These resources focus on K math and science topics such as biology, chemistry, and physics, and include resources on the humanities, finance, and history. Mooresville Graded School District — This North Carolina district launched a Digital Conversion Initiative to promote the use of technology to improve teaching and learning.

Vail Unified School District — This Arizona district has replaced textbooks with a digital learning environment that enables every school in the district to take advantage of an online tool to create digital textbooks and support effective teaching. HTH links technical and academic studies and focuses on personalization and the connection of learning to the real word. To support student learning and share the results of project-based learning, HTH makes a wealth of resources available online, including teacher and student portfolios, videos, lessons, and other resources.

New Technology High School — At this California school, student work is assessed across classes and grades, and feedback is made available to students via online grade books. These grade books are continually updated so that students can see how they are doing not only in each course, but also on each of their learning outcomes, averaged across all their courses.

Quest to Learn — This school, located in New York, utilizes games and other forms of digital media to provide students with a curriculum that is design-led and inquiry-based. The goal of this model is to use education technologies to support students in becoming active problem solvers and critical thinkers, and to provide students with constant feedback on their achievement. Department of Education Florida Virtual School: Building the first statewide, Internet-based public high school , Innosight School of One — This math-based program for students in grades six through eight operates in three New York City middle schools.

School of One uses technology to develop a unique learning path for each student and to provide individualized and differentiated instruction. The program uses data from student assessments to identify the skills that each student needs to work on.

Inputs from teachers and from students provide information about how each student learns best. How Do I Find? Similarly, Mo et al. Yet, the key shortcoming of this study is that the teacher-directed version added several components that may also influence achievement, such as increased opportunities for teachers to provide students with personalized assistance when they struggled with the material. Ma, Fairlie, Loyalka, and Rozelle compared the effectiveness of additional time-delivered remedial instruction for students in grades 4 to 6 in Shaanxi, China through either computer-assisted software or using workbooks.

This study indicates whether additional instructional time is more effective when using technology, but it does not address the question of whether school systems may improve the productivity of instructional time during the school day by substituting educator-led with computer-assisted instruction. This, combined with the fact that many developing-country classrooms include a very large number of learners see, e.

Technology can potentially increase learner effort and understanding of the material by finding new and more engaging ways to deliver it. They can increase understanding by breaking the material into smaller units and tackling common misconceptions. In spite of the popularity of instructional videos, there is relatively little evidence on their effectiveness.

Yet, two recent evaluations of different versions of the Khan Academy portal, which mainly relies on instructional videos, offer some insight into their impact.

First, Ferman, Finamor, and Lima evaluated an initiative in public primary and middle schools in five cities in Brazil in which the teachers of students in grades 5 and 9 were taken to the computer lab to learn math from the platform for 50 minutes per week. The authors hypothesized that this could be due to the reduction of teacher-led math instruction. Students in this study received 90 minutes per week of additional math instruction effectively nearly doubling total math instruction per week through teacher-led regular lessons, teacher-assisted Khan Academy lessons, or similar lessons assisted by technical supervisors with no content expertise.

Importantly, the first group provided differentiated instruction, which is not the norm in Salvadorian schools. All three groups outperformed both schools without any additional lessons and classrooms without additional lessons in the same schools as the program.

The teacher-assisted Khan Academy lessons performed 0. Together, these studies suggest that instructional videos work best when provided as a complement to, rather than as a substitute for, regular instruction.

While the software does not provide the type of personalization discussed above, learners are asked to take a placement test and, based on their score, educators assign them different work.

There are very few studies on the effects of games and gamification in low- and middle-income countries. Recently, Araya, Arias Ortiz, Bottan, and Cristia evaluated an initiative in which grade 4 students in Santiago, Chile were required to participate in two minute sessions per week during the school day with instructional math software featuring individual and group competitions e. After nine months, the program led to improvements of 0. However, it had mixed effects on non-academic outcomes.

Finally, given that one of the weekly sessions replaced regular math instruction and the other one represented additional math instructional time, it is not clear whether the academic effects of the program are driven by the software or the additional time devoted to learning math. Here are five specific and sequential guidelines for decisionmakers to realize the potential of education technology to accelerate student learning.

Take stock of how your current schools, educators, and learners are engaging with technology. Carry out a short in-school survey to understand the current practices and potential barriers to adoption of technology we have included suggested survey instruments in the Appendices ; use this information in your decisionmaking process.

For example, we learned from conversations with current and former ministers of education from various developing regions that a common limitation to technology use is regulations that hold school leaders accountable for damages to or losses of devices. Another common barrier is lack of access to electricity and Internet, or even the availability of sufficient outlets for charging devices in classrooms.

Understanding basic infrastructure and regulatory limitations to the use of education technology is a first necessary step. But addressing these limitations will not guarantee that introducing or expanding technology use will accelerate learning.

The next steps are thus necessary. The continent is creating a digital divide between cities, where there is fiber, and the rural areas.

In deploying this, we are finding that again, teachers are unfamiliar with it. And existing policies prohibit students to bring their own tablets or cell phones. The easiest way to do it would have been to let everyone bring their own device. But policies are against it.

Consider how the introduction of technology may affect the interactions among learners, educators, and content. Our review of the evidence indicates that technology may accelerate student learning when it is used to scale up access to quality content, facilitate differentiated instruction, increase opportunities for practice, or when it increases learner engagement.

For example, will adding electronic whiteboards to classrooms facilitate access to more quality content or differentiated instruction? Or will these expensive boards be used in the same way as the old chalkboards? Will providing one device laptop or tablet to each learner facilitate access to more and better content, or offer students more opportunities to practice and learn? Solely introducing technology in classrooms without additional changes is unlikely to lead to improved learning and may be quite costly.

If you cannot clearly identify how the interactions among the three key components of the instructional core educators, learners, and content may change after the introduction of technology, then it is probably not a good idea to make the investment. See Appendix A for guidance on the types of questions to ask. Once decisionmakers have a clear idea of how education technology can help accelerate student learning in a specific context, it is important to define clear objectives and goals and establish ways to regularly assess progress and make course corrections in a timely manner.

For instance, is the education technology expected to ensure that learners in early grades excel in foundational skills—basic literacy and numeracy—by age 10? If so, will the technology provide quality reading and math materials, ample opportunities to practice, and engaging materials such as videos or games?

Will educators be empowered to use these materials in new ways? And how will progress be measured and adjusted? How this kind of reform is approached can matter immensely for its success.

Keep in mind that good use of education technology requires thinking about how it will affect learners, educators, and parents. After all, giving learners digital devices will make no difference if they get broken, are stolen, or go unused. Classroom technologies only matter if educators feel comfortable putting them to work.

Since good technology is generally about complementing or amplifying what educators and learners already do, it is almost always a mistake to mandate programs from on high. It is vital that technology be adopted with the input of educators and families and with attention to how it will be used. If technology goes unused or if educators use it ineffectually, the results will disappoint—no matter the virtuosity of the technology.

Indeed, unused education technology can be an unnecessary expenditure for cash-strapped education systems. This is why surveying context, listening to voices in the field, examining how technology is used, and planning for course correction is essential. It is essential to communicate with a range of stakeholders, including educators, school leaders, parents, and learners.

Technology can feel alien in schools, confuse parents and especially older educators, or become an alluring distraction.

Good communication can help address all of these risks.