Technology And Education

Education and Technology

Running head: Education and Technology

Education and Technology William Jones ETC 567 Dr. Tammy Sherrard Northern Arizona University September 30, 2008

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Education and Technology

Abstract This paper looks as how technology, society and education have developed over time. This development dates back to the advent of basic technology such as papyrus and charcoal, slate and chalk and runs through today’s technology. With each advance in technology, the society changes. This paper also examines how with technology can affect how people live their lives and the negative sides of technology by examining identity theft.

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Education and Technology

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Introduction Education and technology have gone hand in hand with each other from the beginning of time. In early civilizations, education was for different classes of society. The education in those times dealt with an oral tradition of the transmission of knowledge. As technology as progressed from papyrus and charcoal through slate/chalk, to moveable type for printing education has evolved and changed to match. These changes in education and technology have also had tremendous affects on the societies in which they have existed. History Early civilizations had independently educated elites. The use of technology in education in these early civilizations is still hotly debated. In ancient Greece, the philosophers were considered the most educated men. In that civilization, education was demonstrated by the Socratic and Platonic philosophy of dialogue, rhetoric and oral persuasion (Uzgiris, 2007). The technology of the time was changing how education was viewed, implemented and discussed. The value of this new technology was hotly debated. Plato believed that if written education was going to continue it would destroy the basis of the Socatric/Platonic method of education. He was against allowing technology to influence education (Uzgiris, 2007).

This change in technology and

education also greatly affected the Greek society. There are similar parallels to the invention and use of moveable type printing in 1440. At the time the only people who were educated were the nobles, rich merchants, priests and the scribes. Prior to the invention of moveable type, the skills of reading, writing and basic mathematics were limited to only a few. Books were extremely rare, very expensive while being signs of wealth and status. The ability to mass produce text

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made books (and the information inside of them) more affordable. This ability to have low cost printing, coupled with an anger towards religious elites led to the start of the ProtestantReformation. One of the chief tools used was the technology of moveable print (Edwards, 1994). With the start of the Reformation movement, the technology available was changing the shape of the society. Now we can fast forward to the start of the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution reshaped the world by embracing technology, demanding an educated workforce and massively changing world civilization. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, more than two thirds of people were located in rural, agricultural areas and by the end of the Second Industrial Revolution those numbers had flipped around with over two thirds of the work force living in urban areas and employed in manufacturing jobs. (Hartwell, 1994) The shift from agriculture to industry also brought about massive changes to individual education. Factory workers needed higher levels of education in order to operate the new technology in the factories. Employers needed to have a technologically educated workforce. Schools were expected to produce graduates who were vocationally educated and technically proficient (Baker, Boser, & Householder, 1992). With this demand for semi to fully skilled workers, local education was established to provide manual training, manual arts, and industrial arts. These all became components of basic education. In this time period, there were numerous programs and individuals who were advocating worker education. John Dewey articulated a pragmatic philosophy towards technology and the experimentation in science towards education (Zuga, 1992). He believed by educating the youth of America in basic technology, fundamentals of democracy and a protestant work ethic that the United States would produce a strong working class to fill the needs of the

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factories while promoting a democratic ideology (Johnston, 2006). He is also later credited with the early definition of technology literacy (Braundy, 2007). The education that came out of the Industrial Revolution through the turn of the century supported the inclusion of technology in the curriculum and over the last one hundred years technology has been incorporated into education. From the turn of the century through World Wars I and II the educational framework stayed very similar to the Dewey ideologies. The technology used started with film and slide projectors, overhead projectors moving on to record players and tape recorders eventually incorporating television. In the 1950’s B.F. Skinner‘s research in behaviorism led to a curriculum of programmed instruction. This instruction was based on learning as a behavior with consequences and rewards. Students were thought to be able to be “trained” to respond and provide the correct answers (Cambre & Hawkes, 2004). The 1960’s and 1970’swere more focused on the cognitive learning theories. In the mid 1960’s DeVore wrote several articles which discussed the idea that technology could be used as the framework for curriculum (Dugger & Yung 1995). Apple, IBM and Tandy computers started appearing in a few classrooms across the United Sates in the late 1970’s. By the mid 1980’sthe computer was here to stay. At the time, the computers were used more for rote learning, memorization and knowledge drilling rather than comprehension exercises (Petrina, 2003). Over the past thirty years the use of computers, the advent of and rise of the internet and other instructional theories have dominated how technology and education are viewed.

Technology in Education Today

Education and Technology

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As we are moving past a Post Industrial Revolution society, the needs of future employers is constantly changing. And so too is the view of technology in education. With the current trend in education, the total spending on incorporating technology in schools is big business. It has grown to a $5 billion a year business due to the belief that "wiring schools, buying hardware and software, and distributing the equipment throughout will lead to abundant classroom use by teachers and students and improved teaching and learning" (Cuban, Kirkpatrick, & Craig, Winter 2001). With this amount of money being poured into public education it has sparked a very heated debate on the appropriate use of technology in education. Many critics of technology in the classroom have pointed to a flat line in educational test scores, and any individuals who support technology in the classroom point out that less than 20% of teachers in the US use technology/computers in the classroom (Cuban, et al., Winter 2001; Cuban, August 1999). This debate has some new data to show there are improvements in student learning by incorporating technology in the classroom. Groups like Edutopia, the North Central Educational Lab and the Center for Applied Research in Educational Technology are conducting research studies that link technology to increases in some academic areas depending on several factors including what the topic is, and how it is implemented in the classroom. For example Harold Wenglinsky's study, "Does it Compute: The Relationship between Educational Technology and Student Achievement in Mathematics," showed that for 4th and 8thgrade students incorporating technology showed a significant improvement in the students math scores, but when they were use to teach low order thinking skills their scores went down. So when they were using interactive simulations that required indepth thought and analysis their scores and

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understanding went up. And when they were just using “Drill and Kill” repetitions their scores went down (Wenglinsky, 1998). Another good example is the eMints program in Missouri. It is a 100 hour, 2 year professional development course for Missouri teachers designed to help teachers integrate technology into their classrooms. They found that after the teachers had completed their course they had a significantly higher number of students who were both proficient or advanced when compared to classrooms where the teachers did not complete this course. One of the program leaders stated “We find that when you put the two, (inquiry based learning and true technology integration) together there's a synergy created that really boosts students' learning" (Brannigan, 2002). These two studies reflect the current and prevailing attitude in most school districts. This attitudes is one that wants to couple the freedom of the technology with an open ended constructivist learning style. This attitude canbe summed up by this quote While many varieties of technology education are currently practiced and proposed, the common features of most programs include: (a) an emphasis on problem-solving capabilities; (b) an interdisciplinary approach that emphasizes alternatives and compromises, (c) the integration of context in an approach to recognize systemic functions, and (d) an assessment of the consequences of technological activities (Baker, et al., 1992, p.12). Even with the debate raging about the benefits of technology versus the cost, many teachers are incorporating technology in new and interesting ways. This includes the use of social networking sites, computer applications which are used in the business world (like Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc.) and online video storing sites to supplement their students education. The students are currently learning and accessing more

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information that previous generations have ever had available and are forced to multitask in ways most educational theoriest have never thought about (Wesch, 2007). One of the biggest demands is the ability to connect the technology used in classes to an integrated lesson plan. According to some of the research out there, a teacher should make a concerted effort to select or use appropriate technology to deal with the learning objectives and select appropriate follow up activities (Okojie, 2006).

Technology and Society Technology is a double edged sword. For each cooperative breakthrough that will help science and people there is a consequence. Often the freedom that technology and the internet have provided us, also provides opportunities for criminals to thrive. One of these negative consequences that our technological age as brought about is the problem of identity theft. The United States Department of Justice defines identity theft as “types of crime in which someone wrongfully obtains and uses another person's personal data in some way that involves fraud or deception, typically for economic gain. “ They go on to provide much more information on how an individual’s personal data (social security number, date of birth, credit card numbers) can be obtained by online criminals who then use that information to create false identities. These criminals then use these identities to engage in fraudulent activities including creating fake credit card accounts, opening bank accounts, accessing the victims accounts, and even transferring money from the victim to a different bank account. When the authorities come to arrest the criminal, they often find a completely innocent individual who has had their identity stolen and used by these criminals. This creates a nightmare for the innocent victim as they may have massive credit card bills, outstanding debts and other issues that the

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criminal has done in their names and at the same time it causes massive headaches for law enforcement agencies as they try to track this criminal. What makes identity theft so easy is the same technology that we use for everyday life is what the criminals use to steal people identities. Individuals use their computers to send emails, chat, log into social networks, do online banking and many more things. A smart criminal can set up false webpages that look very similar to the authentic webpages and get unsuspecting individuals to log into them or to provide personal information. Once the person has logged in, it is possible for the criminal to gather up personal data to be used in an identity theft operation.

Conclusion One of the constants in the human race is how technology advancement is part of our civilization. From the dawn of man, we have adapted to our environment, and then advanced our technology with each generation. We went from sitting around fires having rhetorical conversations, to pens and paper, slate and chalkboards, televisions and now the internet with computers. With each increase in the technology level, the level of education has also increased rapidly. We can look at this and see that in a generation education will look very different from what it is now. Our past lets us see that as technology has improved, so too has the educational levels and the quality of life for the people around us. Mike Wesch has done several insightful videos about how education and technology are intertwined and how education is changing, must change for the future. In his great video Information R/evolution he discusses how knowledge and our ability to access it have changed with the advent of the web. He points out how we will build our own knowledge by having the freedom that technology allows, and how the world is changing. I think he is right.

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http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JOTS/Winter-Spring-1997/PDF/5-Haerschbacharticle.pdf Hartwell, Ronald and James, John and Thomas Mark. (1994). Capitalism in Context: Essays on Economic Development and Cultural Change in Honor of R.M. Hartwell. Chicago. University of Chicago Press. Johnston, James (2006). Inquiry and Education: John Dewey and the Quest for Democracy. New York. SUNY Press. Page 3 Leh, A. S. (2005). Learned from service learning and reverse mentoring in faculty development: A case study in technology training. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 13(1), pp.25-41 Okojie, M., Olinzock, A. A., & Okojie-Boulder, T. C.(2006). The Pedagogy of Technology Integration. Journal of Technology Studies, 32, Retrieved September 24, 2008, from http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JOTS/v32/v32n2/pdf/okojie.pdf. Petrina, S. (2003). The Educational Technology is Technology Education Manifesto. Journal of Technology Education, 15, Retrieved September 19, 2008, from http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JTE/v15n1/petrina.html Snyder, M. S. (2004). Defining the Role of Technology Education by Its Heart and Its Heritage. Journal of Technology Studies, 30, Retrieved September 20, 2008, from http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JOTS/v30/v30n1/pdf/snyder.pdf United States Department of Justice. Identity Theft and Identity Fraud. http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/fraud/websites/idtheft.html Uzgiris, Rimas (2007). Philosophical Dialogue and the Status of Writing in Plato: A Response to “Plato: Reader, Writer and Professor” by Emilie Kutash. CALIPSO Conference Addresses of the Long Island Philosophical Society Online.

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Volume1. Issue 1. Spring. Retrieved September 30, 2008 from http://myweb.brooklyn.liu.edu/mcuonzo/calipsovol1no1.htm Wesch, M. (2007) A vision of students today. [Video file]. Video posted to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o&feature=user Wesch, M. (2007) Information R/evolution. [Video file]. Video posted to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4CV05HyAbM&feature=user Wenglinsky, H. (1998) Does it Compute? The Relationship Between Educational Technology and Student Achievement in Mathematics. Princeton, N.J.: ETS Policy Information Center. Zuga, K. F. (1992). Social Reconstruction Curriculum and Technology Education. Journal of Technology Education, 3, Retrieved September 21, 2008, from http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JTE/v3n2/html/zuga.html

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