Technological advancements have made life easier for human beings in many ways. No longer do we have to use animals to plow our fields, or have to walk miles just to get water and firewood.
Instead, we have tractors for plowing, cars for traveling, and elaborate systems for transporting water and gas to our very homes. One very crucial sector that has been revolutionized by technology is education.
The modern school systems are very similar to their older counterparts. We still have a classroom and a teacher who gives a lecture. But the way these things work has come a long way.
Teachers now have access to multimedia that helps them give better examples and showcase new concepts. Students have access to more resources that improve their learning. So, let’s take a look at some ways in which technology has changed the education sector.
How Technology Has Facilitated Learning
These are some comprehensive changes that technology has made to help in teaching and learning.
Improved Note Making
It used to be that students had to push themselves hard when taking notes to keep up with the lecture. Teachers would write stuff on the blackboard/whiteboard and articulate the subject verbally.
Students had to both listen to the teacher and comprehend their words, while simultaneously taking notes. This divided their attention between two tasks.
If they only listened to the lecture without taking notes, then they would not be able to understand anything later on (when they forget something). Just taking notes would result in less understanding because they didn’t listen to the teacher.
However, all of that can be easily dealt with using technology. Students can simply snap pictures of the board and record the lecture using their phones. During the lecture itself, they are free to devote their complete attention to the teacher and their words.
Afterward, they can utilize a speech-to-text tool and an image-to-text tool to convert their pictures and recordings into text form. Now, usually, such recordings would translate to a huge amount of text.
This large amount of text is not suitable for revision. So, they need to be reduced to a smaller size. Students can do this manually when creating their notes. And they can also opt for a summary generator as well.
A summary generator can automatically reduce the length of some given text without removing anything important from it.
So, students can conveniently create notes without much hassle with the help of summarizing tools.
The best thing about tools such as the summary generator is that they are free to use. Most of them also do not require any sort of paid account, so they are great for students who usually do not have the financial capacity to afford paid tools.
Improved Quality of Write-ups
As students, it is a necessity to write a lot. This writing can take the form of essays, assignments, long answers to questions, and even debates.
Now, it is obvious that how well you can write is very important in student life. In subjects such as literature, your vocabulary, and sentence formation affect your grades.
However, even in scientific subjects where grammatical accuracy is not mandatory, poor writing skills can hurt you. You may end up writing stuff that is factually incorrect due to poor wording or improper grammar.
But this kind of stuff can be easily dealt with. Of course, the solution is online tools again. You can simply find a paraphrasing tool that can help you improve your write-up.
Among the different kinds of paraphrasers available online, an AI paraphrase tool is one of the best. They can change the text in much better ways than the standard paraphrasers.
That’s because AI tools can understand the context of the given text and use vocabulary suited to it. They can also automatically correct any grammatical errors in the write-up.
As such, students can improve their essays, notes, and other types of write-ups by using AI paraphrasing tools.
Group learning/Teaching Software
Schools and colleges are no longer bound by conventional rules. Today it is a reality that you can take classes at home or at work on your phone/computer via the internet.
There are many specialized software that allow people to host a “meeting” that others can join. Teachers use such software to host a class that their students join. Teachers can share their own screens and all the students can see them.
This means that teachers are not limited to using text to teach. They can use graphics, and animations as well. Usually, visual media is much better at explaining things than simple text.
This kind of software is not limited to classrooms either. Students across the country can use it for group study sessions as well.
People who are pursuing a higher education such as a master’s or a bachelor’s degree can do so without having to give up their jobs.
E-Books
Gone are the days when students had to lug expensive, huge books on their backs all the way from home to school.
Nowadays, it is a simple task of buying or finding an e-book online. E-books cost less as they don’t exist in a print format which is usually pricier. That makes them more affordable.
They also have the advantage of being able to incorporate multimedia such as sounds and animations.
Many people prefer the feel of printed books, but nobody can deny that e-books are the more versatile medium.
Better Resources for Teaching
There are overall more resources available for learning and teaching due to technological advancements. Students are no longer bound by the curriculums of their institutes, and they can choose to learn any course they wish through online platforms.
There are both paid and free courses available that help people learn new skills and techniques.
Teachers have access to tools that can help them create tables, graphs, and designs that they can incorporate into their lectures.
They can rely on interactive tools to involve their students and make the lectures more interesting.
They can rely on lesson-planning tools to efficiently divide the time of the lecture between teaching the concept, giving examples, and then making the students solve the problems.
Conclusion
These were just five ways in which the education sector has been revolutionized due to technology. These new methods of learning and teaching come with their own challenges. However, they solve more problems than they raise, which is a good thing.
Pursuing education has now become easier than ever with the help of technology and we can only hope that it will get even better.
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