Microsoft Chairman William “Bill” Gates III must have said it best when he described education, as the “best” investment of a person, while Mr Enrique Zobel, head of Ayala Group of Companies, believed that the quality of education in any country, but much more so in a developing one like ours is a function of the quality of its teachers since the central players in the education of the children remain to be the teachers. He further said that the quality of teachers we have is a function of the quality of training and pay. When we cannot give our teachers the proper training, or hold on to them because of poor pay, then education suffers. As an anonymous writer puts it,” Good education is learning more how to learn than learning how to earn.”
At present, many education authorities claim that children’s quality of education is much more improved because of the infusion of technology in almost every teaching of different subjects. As stipulated in the present curriculum, the enhanced Basic Education Curriculum under the K to 12 program the critical and creative thinking skills of students must be developed and enhanced. through the use of different strategies and the infusion of technology-based teaching.
On the other hand, Carague (2000) stressed that at present, there has been widespread adoption of new technologies for the last few years, however, they, have yet to bring major changes in the way teaching is organized and delivered. Without each changes though, technology-based teaching will remain a marginalized activity, while at the same time leading to increased unit costs.
The developments in the internet, World Wide Web in particular, and developments in multimedia technology are resulting in new approaches to designing and developing teaching and learning in higher education. Some of the characteristics of such developments can be described according to Bates as follow:
- Increased flexibility and access to learning, resulting in new markets being reached, and in particular the lifelong learner market.
- The use of multimedia to develop psycho-motor and intellectual skills development, including problem-solving and decision-making.
- The use of internet technologies to develop knowledge management and collaborative learning skills.
- The use of internet to develop global multi-cultural courses and problems.
- To improve access to education and training;
- To improve the quality of learning;
- To reduce the costs of education;
- To improve the costs effectiveness of education
- To increase efficiency of teachers;
- To improve level of achievement, and
- Ultimately to improve quality of living.
But do we really need technology-based teaching in the classroom? Carague has given four-frequently mentioned reasons in the field of education which are as follow:
Dr. Paulino Y. Tan, President of Asia Pacific College, explained that Information technology (IT) is both a process and a tool: a process that transform data that are systematically collected into useful and timely information, a tool that enables an individual or a company to increase its productivity by using a “software or running an application system. Use of computer is only one aspect of IT. In the field of education, IT prepares the students to be professionals on Information Technology. Specifically the students, by the time they graduate, are envisioned to: 1.) to have developed personal and social values: 2.) have undergone learning in abstract and analytical processes; 3.) have acquired technical skills; 4.) be grounded in appropriate concepts and principles, and 5.) be adaptive to the work environment
References:
Paulino Y. Tan. Information Technology. Fusion. FUSE-CONSTEL manila, Philippines. (1995)
Nilo G. Colinares, Philippine Education In The Third Millennium, Philippines Copyright (2005)
By: Romer M.Valencia | Teacher III | Bonifacio Camacho National High School Abucay, Bataan
