Education in the Information Age

Education within the ‘Information Age’ has effected how students and teachers work within schools, colleges, universities and any other place of learning. Technologies effects the way in which we, the students, learn. It has also affected the styles of teaching with more variety in lessons due to the advancements in technology.

Obviously the level of technology which is used varies depending on the level of education. Within primary schools students are taught the basic ICT skills, such as using Microsoft Software such as Word and PowerPoint. Primary schools in this day and age now have interactive whiteboards, which I will come to later. Teaching progresses when students go to secondary school, they start to learn more in dept about the different uses of computers  and just how useful some technology can be.

Student Information Management System or SIMS for short is used for capturing and handling student data. SIMS is also used for a variety of tasks such as; holding personal details, monitoring attendance, taking the register and student and teacher timetables. Before the advancement of technology all of these tasks would require hundreds of piece of paper for an average sized secondary school, this would take up valuable time that could be used for something else. Another advantage of SIMS is that it allows the operator to have all the information on pupils in one place this allows the school to create an individual programme on each student in the school – this can be useful in seeing if the students has any past history at the school which could be seen as a problem. Again SIMS helps saves time and is much quicker than any paper records would be. Although in my opinion the positive’s of SIMS largely out weight the negatives there are negatives present. Like most electronic systems they are prone to crash this means that records could possibly be lost, this however is not a problem with paper records.

Personal Experience

I have had firsthand experience with paper systems and the SIMS system. Obviously my experience with paper registers was in primary school at a very young age but I don’t think they are a very good idea with paper sheets beings very easy to lose. SIMS, however, is a much more organised system with no records being lost, in my experience, and it is a fast and easy to use system.

The systems that are used, such as SIMS, are not the only things that have been affected by the ‘information age’. The equipment we use now, such as interactive whiteboards and large computer suites are now available in every school I know. Firstly, interactive white boards allow the teacher to show things such as PowerPoint Presentations on large screens so everyone in the room can view them.  However, in my opinion, the biggest advantage of having interactive whiteboards is, obviously, the interaction they provide the students. These whiteboards allows the students to play games and simple games with links to the topic they are learning about, which there for enhances their learning.

Computer Suites offer a new dimension for teachers to use. Computer Suites can be used for any subjects, not just ICT; with the new software they can be used for anything from academic maths and sciences to creative Art and Textiles. There are downsides to this technology. The interactive whiteboards especially are expensive to install and if these systems go wrong then they can be quite hard to fix.

More recently (in the last few years) there have been talks about supplying students in education with laptops that they would be able to have as a portable ‘workstation’. Some schools already have this system in place and supply the students with laptops for lesson. This could be a benefit because the students would be able to take their work with them anywhere they go in a laptop instead of carrying around lots of books. However some schools discourage their students staring at screens none stop all day, this could be seen as a downfall.

Another way in which the information age has changed education is the subject’s that are taught. ICT is now taught in schools all over the UK and is an important part of the curriculum. ICT is seen as a useful skill to acquire due to world outside school become ever more reliant on technology. ICT skills are looked for by employers and are useful in a variety of situation. Many people argue that ICT isn’t as important as people make it out to be and students begin to become dependent on computers. Some student’s handwriting starts to deteriorate as they become ever reliant on computers this can become a serious problem in exams when their writing becomes un-readable. It is also believed that writing notes by hand makes them easier to learn than when typing them.

Most textbooks now come with a compact disc which allows students to view all the text within the book from a computer – this comes in handy when partnered with a interactive whiteboards. This is a good system to use because it allows the school to have 1 compact disk for each class this is a good alternative to every student having a textbook of their own.  As previously mentioned I believe that interaction in lessons make learning a lot easier. However to access these tools you have to have access to a computer.