Earlier this month I had the pleasure of attending a focus group for parents and community members about Rockford’s middle schools. Many good ideas and topics were raised at the meeting, but the one that stood out the most to me was technology and how it can be used in the world of education. Technology can benefit education in three major ways: how students are taught, what they are taught and communication with students.

At the bare minimum, technology serves to increase the efficiency of education. SMARTboards allow teachers to more effectively organize their lesson content — even erasing is cut down to mere seconds. A plethora of online resources can also be accessed that previously would have been unavailable to students and teachers.

The benefits of technology to instruction also go beyond the physical benefits of using a SMARTboard in class or utilizing the Internet. In our increasingly digital and technological world, students are having their attention competed for by more than just school — cellphones, video games and social media all vie for their attention.

Compared to these engaging activities, sitting in a classroom does not capture a student’s attention well. The use of technology gives schools and educators the ability to compete with other aspects of a digital world for student focus. Schools can ban digital products, but wouldn’t everyone be better off if the schools were more engaging with them?

Technology also can have a significant impact on what students are taught. In an increasingly globalized world, knowledge of other cultures is increasingly beneficial to students. Technology such as the free communication program Skype, which can be used to communicate with people via webcam all over the world, can assist with this movement toward globalization.

Why not use Skype in the classroom? Instead of teaching students about foreign cultures using a textbook, set up a program with any given sister-city where students can communicate with others in another country regularly. Think of it as a technological innovation on the concept of a pen pal.

This would revolutionize what students learn about foreign cultures. Instead of getting second-hand information about the world from textbooks, students would experience a culture in the best and most informative way possible other than studying abroad.

The final, major way technology can impact education is by benefitting the communication between educators and students and parents. The most obvious way to utilize technology is by increasing the use of social media websites.

Social media offers an opportunity for further group collaboration by students to address any issues while they are doing homework. For instance, people can join various groups on Facebook to discuss issues and topics that interest them. Teachers can create groups for their classes so that students can discuss homework and other issues in a group setting and have constant access to it.

While this is only truly applicable to high school students, and certainly could not be required as part of official class policy, it has interesting implications. Teachers would not be answering isolated emails. If a student has a question, the whole group has access to the answer. It also would give students the opportunity to assist each other, instead of relying more on the teacher.

The benefits acquired by technology in terms of how students are taught, what they are taught and how they communicate are invaluable in the modern world and need to be pursued as wholeheartedly as possible.
