The application of technology in education

Technology in Education

Education is the most  important thing in our life because it can enhance and improve the quality of human resources . Because of this reason we must put more attention for good education in the future. We know that education influenced by many factors , one of them is technology. Education and technology have  unseparated relationship . All the aspects of application technology in education must be emphasized to face 21th century.  Realize  this target we must know  what the technology in education is,  take the advantages  and minimize the negative effects of it.

Technology has many advantages , such as the application of distance education/ e-learning/ online learning in university . The government of Denpasar city give the statement about e-learning, he said that  e-learning  is  a set of teaching methods with learning and teaching process separately,  it is alternative to equal opportunities in education, this system can rises some problems that caused by the limitations of qualified  lecturers. We can see in online learning  has profits for  lecturers  and students. With online learning the lecturess  get the eases in teaching, because it is easy to use, allows the creation of online courses and classroom materials online quickly and easily, only needs minimal exercises, enable the teacher to teach and controll the learning based  the situation in the class. Whereas the benefits of online learning for students are the flexibility in takingn courses, studen can enrich the materials than that obtained in the classroom, can work directly and cover the materials from lecturers ,a class discussion,a  study buddy, and a joint projects. Darin E. Hartley [Hartley, 2001] explained that, “ E-learning is a type of  teaching and learning process  that enables the delivery of teaching material for  students using the medium of the internet, intranet or other computer network media”. Romi  Satria Wahono (lecturers, researchers and technopreneur CEO and founder of  PT Brainmatics Computer  Science community) support the Hartley’s statement with his additional explanation, e-Learning can be run by students anytime and anywhere because  e-learning can take the form of interactive multimedia, or as plain text that is stored in a learning management system (LMS).

As a complex process, the technology in education  raises many problems. The problems cover morality, physicly, and emotionality. Many students do not use the technology properly. They do the activities out of the topic and take the pictures and videos are not suitable with their age. Than the secrecy of test kits for education is increasingly threatened. The secrecy of materials are not maintained because of the student’s ability. Students can take the key answer if they know the password of teacher’s data. Technology can make the students everything like students want. They can hack and steal the password of their teacher’s data, therefore they get the key answer. This situation makes the education is not effective. These are  examples of morality problem from the technology in education that can damage the next generation of human resources.  Other problem is students become lazy, because they  depend a  technology to do their task. They always use the internet to finish the job without have brainstorming before, consequently they never use their brain to think. The solution of their duty only obtained based the information from their searching and there is no critical thinking to paraphrase or develop the information as good as possible. Physicly,  technology in education  declines of student’s health. We can see from the use of computer,  stare the computer too long cause the decrease eye health and create the strees.  Retina of the eyes  can be damaged by rays of the LCD that can make the students  use the glasses.  Our  emotion can grow fast if we face the computer too long , than we get a strees because actually we can meet the rays of LCD only in four hours. Those are the negative effects of technology in education .

            There are so many benefits and bad effects of technology in education. It is complicated situation to reach the good quality of education for our future, but  as a good human resources we must know and take the action to response it. Such Dudley’s statement in his essay “ Computer and Educationj in America “, he mentioned that the technology ( Computer, the Interbet, and the Web ) will not cover all of the needs of student if there are no reading, studying, good teaching, and social interacting that accompany the application of technolopgy in education. Students can enjoy the benefits of it but as a human, it is possible if they do the mistakes . So, the impoortant things are how we can know the technology in education itself, develop the function as good as possible, and decrease the negative effects in applicating the technology in education.

Resources :

Romi, S.W. (2007, Oktober 03) .E-learning: penerapan e-learning dengan model motivasi komunitas. Journal of Technodik.Retrivied from http://romisatriawahono.net