Running head: HOW TECHNOLOGY AFFECTS EDUCATION

How Technology Affects Education

Brianna Lysne
College of Southern Nevada
Professor Blake
EDU214-1006
19 November 2016

HOW TECHNOLOGY AFFECTS EDUCATION

Abstract
Technology has become convenient in all aspects of twenty-first-century life and its use in
the field of education is no exception. Technology is beneficial to todays classrooms because
it allows teachers to engage students in more active participation and learning, assists with
formative assessment, and better enables teaching to all students possessing various learning
styles and preferences. Technology has revolutionized the nation in recent years and its role
in education is vital. There are many uses of technology in education, hardware and software,
and the methods and modes are constantly changing and evolving to better meet the needs of
teachers and students. Formative assessment in and of itself can be an incredibly useful tool
for teachers, allowing them to gauge student understanding and comprehension. A teachers
ability to utilize technology effectively can have a positive and lasting effect on both
teaching style and student learning.
Keywords: ed tech, formative assessment, Plickers, Quizlet, Tagul, Wordle, learning
styles, differentiated instruction

HOW TECHNOLOGY AFFECTS EDUCATION

How Technology Affects Education

Over the past two decades, technology has become an integral part of daily life and is
an important resource for education. The landscape of education has changed dramatically
and technology has become an effective tool for teachers and schools. Technology in
education is constantly evolving and changing to meet the needs of students and teachers and
prepare students for the world they will face outside of school. Thanks to advances in
educational technology teachers are able to engage students in lessons and research, perform
formative assessment, and better reach students of all learning styles.
Technology and its applications are unavoidable in todays twenty-first-century world.
Current grade school students have lived their entire life in an age of great technology
advances and have grown-up virtually surrounded by technology. It is only understandable
that technology should reinvent and transform education as well. An article surveying
teachers favorite ed-tech tools expressed the integral role of technology in education saying,
Although many educators had favorites, most had difficulty picking a single piece of
technology as the most effective for teaching and learning because todays teachers use so
many tech tools in combination (Wurster, 2009).
One way technology is changing education is that it provides a more student-centered
approach to lessons and allows teachers to incorporate more creativity into lessons. Teachers
can now design lessons and projects where students are expected to research material,
publish their work, and digitally collaborate and connect with students across the globe. The
internet and its easy access to information mean that students can feel more comfortable in
gathering research and providing facts and ideas behind their education. This is a

HOW TECHNOLOGY AFFECTS EDUCATION

fundamental change from traditional education models that placed the teacher at the center of
the classroom and now gives the students the ability to direct lessons.
Another key use of educational technology is the emerging use of technology to aid in
formative assessment. Formative assessment is defined by the textbook (Lever-Duffy &
McDonald, 2015) as feedback that ensures a way to facilitate the continuous flow of
information as a system is implemented so that corrections and adjustments can be made
while the process unfolds (p.52). Basically, this translates to assessment or knowledge
checks while the lesson is in progress versus the standard summative assessment which
would take place after a lesson. In an article for the Northwest Evaluation Association, Kelly
Goodrich (2012) highlighted the use of formative assessment saying, With formative
assessment the results are immediate, giving the teacher the time needed to adjust his or her
teaching strategy to meet the needs of all students. Formative assessment can be a great tool
for teachers to help them judge if the lesson is being understood by the students and to
identify which students are still struggling with the concept. Teacher Vicki Davis (2015)
discussed the positive uses of formative assessment and shared a story where she thought
that she had sufficiently taught a lesson on binary numbers, but after asking the students to
solve a problem only two were able to answer correctly (Intro, para. 1-2).
There are many applications and websites geared toward providing teachers with
tools for formative assessment. Most of these tools work best with student access to
technology devices such as tablets or computers, but one system called Plickers does not
require student technology at all, only that the teacher has a smartphone. With the Plickers
application, each student is given a printed paper card that is then assigned to them in the
Plickers app. Using these paper cards the teacher can ask a multiple choice question and the

HOW TECHNOLOGY AFFECTS EDUCATION

students answer by holding the card a certain way to correlate with choices a, b, c, and so on.
This is a helpful tool because it allows for formative assessment and provides more honest
student feedback because the answers are anonymous. Good formative assessment removes
the embarrassment of public hand raising and gives teachers feedback that impacts how
they're teaching at that moment. Instant feedback (Davis, 2015).
Another great aspect of this form of formative assessment is that it requires relatively
little access to technology, which means that it could be used even if the students do not have
individual devices. Only the teacher needs to use a smartphone to record the students holding
their cards. In a 2015 article discussing various forms of formative assessment, one benefit of
Plickers is stated, The above tools require that students have their own computing devices.
Other similar tools do not. For example, Plickers (www.plickers.com) uses a smartphone to
collect student data, but only the teacher needs a device (Mader/Smith, 2015). This system
offers a simple and cost-effective way to incorporate formative assessment even if the
students or classroom lack technology access.
As well as allowing formative assessment, technology in the classroom can help
teachers reach students with different learning styles and preferences. A teacher can go over a
lesson orally and incorporate various visual aspects as well. One example of visual
technology is Tagul or Wordle, which are websites that create word clouds, a picture
compiled of the different entered words. These word clouds can help students think about
relationships between certain words like verbs or different plants or even numbers or math
problems. There are also numerous resources to augment lessons for auditory learners such
as using YouTube or similar sites to read from a popular book. For kinesthetic learners, there

HOW TECHNOLOGY AFFECTS EDUCATION

are sites like Quizlet which let them create their own flashcards or study material or websites
with learning games that help with activities that reinforce classroom lessons.
In a website article titled Inclusion in the 21st-century authors Bobby Hobgood and
Lauren Ormsby (2011) note the benefit of educational technology allowing better instruction
for all students and limiting the need for review saying, Technology also addresses the
necessity to cover a wide range of content in a short amount of time by minimizing the need
to take curriculum at a slower pace. By providing audio, visual, or concept-mapping support
while introducing new concepts, teachers lessen the need for review and remediation after
the initial instruction. There are so many ways to incorporate technology so that instruction
is differentiated and lessons remain dynamic and interesting for everyone.
Technology in education is no longer just a computer used to type papers, but has now
become a valuable tool to assist teachers in lesson planning and bringing more creative
methods to their classrooms, involving students in a more active role in the education
process, supplying teachers with authentic formative feedback to gauge lesson effectiveness,
and allowing teachers to better teach to different learning styles. Uses of technology in
education have come a long way in the past twenty years and can only be expected to keep
evolving and advancing in the future. Teachers have more resources and information at their
disposal now than ever before and it is their responsibility to keep knowledgeable and
informed about the advancements and uses of new technology.

HOW TECHNOLOGY AFFECTS EDUCATION

References
Davis, V. (2015, January 15). 5 Fantastic, Fast, Formative Assessment Tools. Retrieved
November 17, 2016, from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/5-fast-formative-assessmenttools-vicki-davis
Goodrich, K. (2012, September 12). Formative Assessment vs. Summative Assessment: What's
the Value of Time? Retrieved November 18, 2016, from
https://www.nwea.org/blog/2012/formative-assessment-vs-summative-assessmentresults-timing-matters/
Hobgood, B., & Ormsby, L. (2011, March). Inclusion in the 21st-century classroom:
Differentiating with technology. Retrieved November 19, 2016, from
http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/every-learner/6776
Lever-Duffy, J., & McDonald, J. B. (2015). Teaching and learning with technology(5th ed.).
Pearson Education.
Smith, B., & Mader, J. (2015). Formative assessment with online tools. The Science Teacher,
82(4), 10. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.library.csn.edu/login?
url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/1672869016?accountid=27953
Wurster, P. (2009, June/July). What Is Your Favorite Ed Tech Tool? Educators Hail the Benefits
of Many Technologies during 30 Years of Effective Teaching and Learning. Learning &
Leading with Technology, 36, 26-28. Retrieved November 17, 2016, from
http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ842807.pdf