Friday, July 01, 2005

Emerging Technologies in Education

http://www.globaled.com/articles/PantelidisVeronica2003.pdf

This article is all about teaching courses online and what is its importance to their education. The article gives thier Virtual Reality course an example to their online instruction. The strengths of their online instruction is the accessibility from far away locations, enhancing self-study and lessen transportation fees and time. However, they need to consider about their hardware and software specifications, expected to do large e-mail checking, and lack of personal contact. In conclusion, they are still continuing to teach their Virtual Reality courses online.

My personal forecast of the education 10 years from now will be more interactive and not always based on the tradition based education because new technology helps instructors deliver their lesson in a different way. I expect that modern education will be more holistic because the instructional technology will be more focused on applications of the theories learned in the classroom. I believe that the classroom will have more equipment inside, to aid teachers deliver their topics. Distance learning will be more prominent in educational institutions because clients may be come from a far away place. Web tools such as e-mail, blogs, discussion forums, chatting and other web-based tools will aid teachers and students alike, in instructional technology. Unfortunately, economy still dictates the final outcome of instructional technology in our country. My forecast is assumed to have the economy to be fixed so far...

The primary challenge to teachers and educators is their morale and their devotion to what their doing because teaching is a profession, not a job. However, due to lack of sufficient funds to pay teachers, their work output is affected; some teachers are just teaching because of money not because they really want to help other people. Second, as the result of the economy crisis, the materials and equipment used for instructional technology will be insufficient to all instructors in this country. Instructional Technology in this country will be affected due to the fiscal crisis; IT in this country will be far more be outdated than IT in other countries, especially in America and Europe... and the Middle East might be a promising place for this kind of technology. Instructional technology and the instructional tools for teachers is not really the problem in this country... it is just the economy.