What is Educational Technology and Why should it Matter?

 

ICT stands for Information and Communication Technologies. ICT is a part of our lives for the last few decades affecting our society as well as individual life. ICT which is now broadly used in educational world. Teacher, Student, administrator and every people related to education are popularly used ICT. Teacher use ICT for making teaching learning process easy and interesting. A competent teacher has several skills and techniques for providing successful teaching. In modern science and technological societies education demands more knowledge of teacher regarding ICT and skills to use ICT in teaching and learning process.. Now a days ICT are transforming schools and classrooms a new look by bringing in new curriculum based on real world problems, projects, providing tools for enhancing learning, providing teachers and students more facilities and opportunities for feedback. ICT also helps teachers, students and parents to come together. Continuous and comprehensive evaluation helps students as well as teachers to use more technology for making teaching learning more attractive for the betterment of our future generation. Teachers must know the use of ICT in their subject areas to help the learners for learning more effectively. So, the knowledge of ICT is very much essential for the both prospective teachers as well as in-service teachers also. This will help teachers to know integrated technology with classroom teaching.

      Every aspects of life are related to science and technology. Huge flow of information is emerging in all fields throughout the world. Now information and technology is popularly using in educational field for making teaching learning process successful and interesting for students and teacher both. In 1998, UNESCO World Education report refers about student and teachers must have sufficient access to improve digital technology and the internet in their classroom, schools, teacher educational institutions. Teachers must have the knowledge and skills to use new digital tools to help all students achieve high academic standard. In 20^th Century’s education defined this as a pen and paper way of teaching mainly because the activities are copied on board and the students answered using a pen and paper. This kind of teaching is teacher centered, meaning the teacher is the host of the class and the students talk less. It didn't provide opportunities for the students to enhance their communication skills. In other hand 21^st Century education the students get more chances to talk more. It is performance based. The teacher makes use of roleplay, research, or group reporting or discussion as their project activity. The collaboration, communication, creativity and critical-thinking of the students were tapped. The use of computers and other technology based materials are the major partners of the teachers to effectively deliver the content or lesson.  

Huge flow of information is emerging in all fields throughout the world. Now information and technology is popularly using in educational field for making teaching learning process successful and interesting for students and teacher both. In 1998, UNESCO World Education report refers about student and teachers must have sufficient access to improve digital technology and the internet in their classroom, schools, teacher educational institutions. Teachers must have the knowledge and skills to use new digital tools to help all students achieve high academic standard.  

The scenario of the classroom is changing. There is a technological gap between the progress of the society and instructional activities of the teacher in the classroom. If we see in our society on the one hand technology has revolutionized our society and on the other hand the teaching learning activities at school level have remained so far away from technology. In our classroom the knowledge is imparted by the teacher in an ancient way, a teacher centric mode which is most of the time boring and not to gain interest to the student. But present 21st Century's education is student centric education. Students learn from multi sources and for this reason use of ICT & Multimedia is very much essential in educational field and simultaneously teacher's knowledge of ICT and Multimedia also required.  we know that there is a lot to digest when we talk about educational technology trends. 

 Lets click up This Video link 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVvj7f8bsSs  Education Transformation: The Importance of ICT in 21st Century Education at ITU Telecom World 2013  

However think about the fact that technology has revolutionized the entire teaching and learning process in school. Especially eLearning, a teaching tool that improves accessibility and convenience while  altering the attitudes and actions of students toward learning.