Should We Use Technology in Education or Not?
Shantika Erina Azel
In this fourth-revolution-industry era, people are highly depended on technology and internet. We use technology which is connected to internet as a tool or media to communicate and share information with others. Technology and internet are used in most of aspects of our lives. They cannot be separated from the life aspect of ours, especially in Education aspect.
Nowadays, the existence of technology and internet gives a lot of benefits to our education development. We can easily find information that we need through internet. Even we can find millions number of articles, journals, and e-books related to the topic that we search within seconds by typing one keyword only in the search engine.
The sophistication of the technology in which we can easily access information within seconds has enabled us to upload or download any kinds of information or data through internet. We become a bit less dependent on published book. Because we can get the information that we need by reading articles online or downloading the free journals or e-books available on the internet. It is for sure, saving our time and money. Because we do not need to buy book and read the whole book anymore. We only need to type the keyword to get the information needed. For instance, some of us no longer bring English-Indonesian dictionary anymore. Because we can easily access dictionary for free using our gadget whether it is online dictionary such as Oxford Online dictionary, Merriam Webster dictionary, and Google Translate in our browser or even we can access the offline one by installing the dictionary application in our smartphone or laptop.
The technology has also enabled us to create our own ‘local’ knowledge or any kinds of our own piece of writing. We become a bit less dependent on what experts say because we are motivated, able, and want to write our own opinion about an issue, even some of us become more creative and have bravery to upload, share, or publish the writings on some sites or applications such as, blog, social media (e.g., Facebook and Instagram), social messaging (e.g., WhatsApp, LINE, Skype, and BBM) or even the official sites of published writings and thought (e.g., Quora, wikiHow, and Academia).
The technology has also made the process of exchanging information and communication with other people from other parts of the world become much easier. For example, we can find some special interest group or supporting group to support and help us if we have any difficulties in learning a language. We can discuss about issue happened through the chatroom of group of Whatsapp, LINE, Skype and many more. We can also get information of what phenomena happen in other countries even though we are not there. Even, we can conduct English Language Teaching online through Google Classroom and other similar applications when the lecturer cannot come to teach in class.
Technology in education also has enable teacher or other people to earn money by their published writings on blog or other official sites. Money also motivates some people to keep on writing to make their blog or site get more visitors so that some company will to display their advertisement on that blog or site. And the writer will get money from every click of advertisement, even some writer get money from every visit of the blog or site.
There are a lot of good impacts of technology in education. We cannot deny that technology plays a vital role in the success of education. We get a lot of benefits from the technology. But, there are also some bad impacts of technology in education because of the misusing of the technology itself. For instance, because of the speedy access of internet students tend to do their assignments in last-minute time before the assignments are submitted. Some of the students are also too lazy to do their assignments. They do not want to think critically to write their paper. They just easily copy- paste others’ writing. And even in English Language Learning they translate one language into English or vice versa using Google Translate or other similar application without considering whether the dictions or the translations are equivalent or not. It means that the technology also increases the number of plagiarism and decrease the motivation and interest of students in learning the lessons if it is misused.
All of us have already known the technology has the advantages and disadvantages. But the use of the technology is still discussed since not all schools and students has ICT to support the learning and whether the technology brings more harms or good. Therefore, to bring more good than harms of the use of the technology, we must use the technology for good things only and do not ever misuse the technology itself. Why do we want to take the bad of technology? if it is much more beneficial if we use it in a good way.
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