¶ … archetypal scene of the educational process is for most of us a child and a teaching sitting next to each other, their heads bowed together intently over a book. It is an island, in this high-tech world in which we live, of the low-tech: A world that depends upon communication and human interactions rather than machines and gadgets. Education seems to be one of those realms in which it is still possible to believe in and practice the humanistic arts.
But this idealized picture of the teaching process is, like so many idealized pictures, not exactly accurate - as well as being a little out of date. Education has, in fact, always made use of technology in our human attempt to pass onto each new generation what the generation before it holds to be important. Slate boards and books were high-tech in their own time - and most children now use calculators and computers. The question on the nature of the relationship between education and technology should not, therefore, be "How can we prevent technology from corrupting the process of education?" But rather "How can we use technology most effectively and yet also most appropriately in the process of education?"
Technology tends to be appealing on its own (most of us deep down have a pretty compelling attraction for gadgets). This is no doubt for many the root of their distrust of having technology become too important in the education process is that they fear that the machines and gadgets will become an end in themselves rather than a tool in the process of education. The most important question in considering how technological advances should be incorporated into the educational process must always consider the appropriateness of the technology being employed.
The next most important question to ask is what form of education is at issue - teaching the names of colors to preschoolers or advanced physics to graduate students? This paper will focus on the use of technology in the elementary grades. This is not to imply that issues about the appropriate blending of technology and education do not come up in other educational arena. However, the question of how best to use technology in education has perhaps just a touch more importance for elementary-age children.
Children below this age - those toddlers learning their colors, for example - are generally given relatively low-tech tools to use (crayons are certainly a form of technology, but they are generally already used in an appropriate manner - if we exclude the times when children use them as projectile weapons and add crayon shavings to their snack foods). Students in high school are grown, by virtue of having some fairly considerable experience in their culture, relatively sophisticated about the ways in which technology can and should be used.
But children in between, during their elementary years, do not yet have a great deal of experience with or sophistication about technology, and so it must be introduced into their school lives with great care. And yet, at the same time, because children at this age are capable of such (to adults) astonishing feats of learning, every attempt must also be used to incorporate appropriate technology into their lives in such a way that they can make the best possible use of their education during their first years at school.
Literature Review
Having decided to focus on the elementary education level, we may at this time want to focus our examination of the interaction of technology and education still more closely. In doing so - or at least in attempting to do so - w come to the crux of this project, which is to determine in what arenas of primary education can technology be most profitably employed.
We should, before proceeding, define what we mean by "technology" because the term covers a great deal of ground. Technology is simply the use of tools to make various kinds of work easier, and by this definition pencils are technological devices - as, for that matter, are tables and chairs. Certainly these devices do make our lives easier, and certainly it is easier to teach when children are sitting at desks or tables with a roof over their heads (luxuries that of course not all students and teachers have).
But given that most American schoolchildren have access to such basic technologies (and given that their use in school is no longer questioned), we shall focus here on what we may loosely (if rather redundantly) call high-tech technology. Specifically this includes the use of computers and their associated technologies (printers,...
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