EDUCATION AND TECHNOLOGY

 

What negative implications does technology have on education?

                  How does technology affect our memeory?

                  How does technology affect communication?

 

                       

                                      Student name: CALEB OIRA

                                    Date:24-04-2020                                                                                                                                                        

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

           Does technology have a negative implication on education?

                                      Introduction

Technology is the application of scientific knowledge and machinery and equipment developed from such knowledge in the accomplishment of day to day objectives. Modern education has seen a rise in the use of techology to advance its course in the impartment of knowledge to scholars all around the world. Technology,however useful it has been proved to be in the education sector, has got its adverse implications in the same sector. The major implications include but not limited to;time wastage,extinction of good handwriting,distraction and so forth.

                                           Negative Implications

Technology is a distractor to students. Learners in most parts of the world tend to overstay on the screens of modern technological devices like smartphones, laptops or even televisions as opposed to doing any other handiwork that requires their undivided attention. Texting and socializing on social media apps has been proven to be the leading source of distraction for learners during the school hours according to a research done by Christopher Ruel and posted on Wiley.com. Professors have had a not-so-easy time in most recent years when they are repeatedly asking students in lecture halls to quit texting on their phones and laptops during lectures.

          Technology has equally been seen to erode the culturally nice and impeccable handwriting of school learners. This is so because with the advent of modern devices such as tablets and laptops, students prefer to type their assignments and notes rather than handwrite it themselves. This continous use of technology inevitably leads to the erosion of good handwriting that is essential in contributing to fluency as it activates visual perception of letters. As a result of illegibility of handwriting, most scholars are deprived of the basic ‘clear thought and natural structure’ as alluded to by Oscar, a seventeen-year old interviewee.

            Technology has dehumanized the learning environment. Kemp at al (2015 p.4) opines that “teaching has been ripped from the realm of human endeavours and morphed into a technological leviathan that is slowly usurping the soul of the profession.” Learning in the recent past has dissociated itself from the neccesity of a tutors presence to guide a student. Most if not all content that a student seeks from a teacher can be accessed online through technological devices. This realisation has brought about minimized teacher-student interactions and have pulled the students from the physical reality into a zombie-like state.Wilkins(2014) cites that “using technology hampers the rapport between teachers and students and forms an obstacle to easy communication between them.

             

 

                              Does technology affect our memory?

Factually speaking, the millenials of our generation have a hard time keeping away their smart devices away even for an hour. A study done by psychologist Larry Rosen reveals that anxiety levels in nomophobic people(those heavily addicted to mobile phones) increases per unit time as they are away from their phones. Addiction to this technology is positively yet still adversely affecting our brains in terms of memory.

Emilliano Santernnechi, an assistant professor at Havard Medical School in Boston conducted a research with the intent of unearthing the effects of video game addiction to the brain matter and memory at large. 29 players of an online FPS (First Person Shooter) game were subjected to the test where each played the FPS game for eight hours a day for two weeks. MRI scans of the players were taken before the experiment began. Thereafter, MRI scans were done on their brains and 80% of the players were seen to have had an expanded sensory cortex; where the perceiption of the body is stored. Their left lingual gyra;(processes vision) were also noted to have developed. Professor Santernnechi and his crew concluded that “During an online match, a person makes several decisions in a fraction of a second,all requiring high attention levels, flexibility and fine visuomotor skills.”

FPS games take the human player in the first person visuality as if he/she were in the battle field in reality. This prompts the player to take decisive decions lest he/she be shot dead. In essence, these types of technology increase a person’s decisiveness and agility in times of physical need. Visual skills of a person are also enhanced.

Nonetheless, technology also negatively affects memory in certain different ways. The ‘google effect’ has been proven as a perfect example to elucidate on this. Take for instance a university student. An average student in his/her third year will not care to grasp the lecturer’s content in a lecture session. Reason? Why struggle to grasp content when you can get it first hand by googling it up on your smartphone or laptop? How often do people forget things they read a day ago? My take, very! Availability and accessibility of almost everything a person can think of on the internet has made the general population overly reliant on google for even the simplest tasks that can be sorted by thinking them through without having to initiate an online search. The development of calculators has crippled the ability of users’ brains to do basic sums. Highschool students in Kenya rely on the calculator to do very basic mathematics of multiplication as simple as 9x9=81. Technology is slowly and quietly blurring our brains.

The light emitted by the most recent technological creations like iPads and laptops affect our sleep cyles. The bright blue light emitted by smartphone and laptop screens makes enhances visuals even with the sun shining bright. At night however, the blue light mimicks the sun prompting the brain to think that it is still daytime. As a result, heavy smartphone users especially at night tend not to sleeep as early as they used to before acquiring the smartphone. Most teenagers have to watch a long series into the night before they get to sleep,lulled only by the visuals of the scenes they are watching.

                                    How Does Technology Affect Communication?

Merriam Webster defines communication as ‘the process of using words, sounds,signs or behaviours to express or exchange information or to express your ideas,thoughts,feelings, etc,to someone else.’In this light, technology has come in handy over the years in ensuring effectiveness in comunication.Technology has solved the urgency problem which had bedevilled the communication sector long ago in the medieval age where communication was mainly through arcane and crude means such as smoke signals and horn blowing. With the advent of modern technology, communication has morphed into something better,something dependable.

Cost effectiveness has been realised by the communication sector with the advent of modern technology. This happens to be the most significant impact of technology on communication in my view. The development of devices and networks that can transfer information between parties or entities miles apart within seconds has greatly cut down on the costs incurred when physically transferring it (the information.) Post offices are almost becoming obsolete with the development of  apps such as Gmail which can send mails to any part of the globe within seconds. Sending an email over a device only requires data or wifi which are very cheap to acquire contrasted with the transport costs to the post office and service fees charged. On top of all this, large volumes of text and information at large can be transfered cheaply since there are no text limits. Telegrams in the past had severe text limitations to cut down on costs. This had the ripple effect of sending brief, unclear and hardly comprehensible messages.

The quality of information developed is of higher quality with the recent advancements in technology. The numerous editing apps on the internet has made editing of documents easier. Resulting documents are without gross errors or very minimal if there are. Languages that are unfamiliar to the reader can also be translated to familiar ones. Social networking apps such as Whatsapp and Facebook have made possible what was initially incomprehensible to fathom. Pictures and videos can be shared in real time high quality. Governments have adopted online administration through websites where they post governance issues. Citizens can keep to date with government’sprojects that benefit the general population easily. The Kenyan government for example has put up its website; www.mygov.go.ke where it directly communicates with the citizenry regarding its operations. This has liberalised communication and enhanced democracy.

Based on the preceding illustrations, I hereby conclude that technology has in more than one way positively impacted communication.