Barriers in Education & Technology Use

As our world is in its pivotal time of growth, technology has proven to take over. How we work, learn, communicate, entertain, and essentially live our lives is heavily influenced by social media platforms. Specifically focusing on education, technology is slowly (if not already) eliminating the typical tools in teaching such as chalkboards, white boards, and pencil/paper. This new digital drive is very resourceful for all students as they are able to stay more engaged in learning, communicate better with their peers and teachers, and helps them master a difficult topic/ problem.

At this point, you might be asking yourself, well then what wrong can technology do?

Although technology can be great in every way, I think as future teachers we need to acknowledge the many barriers we may face when trying to incorporate technology into our classrooms. For example, there are still schools who do not have enough technology or poor use of technology like bad wireless connection. Or some teachers have not yet formed a positive attitude towards technology use. This is because of the lack of skills which is related to poor schoolwide emphasis on technology use by principals.

But one of our biggest and most relevant barriers for this time that we live in is the COVID 19 Pandemic. One billion school children around the world continue their education from home, yet many do not have the technology necessary for remote learning. This creates an exposing divide between the students with computers and internet access — and those who don't. The imbalance is preventing families and their children from enjoying the same type of education in comparison to average and high-income homes.

So how can we prevent any of these barriers if we were to bump into them in our teaching journey? For example, if there are limited computers in a classroom or in schools, teachers can use it as an opportunity to teach "prioritizing your time properly and sharing" by having groups of students take turns using the computer. 

What else can be done? This is something we should definitely consider and think about as future teachers! 

 

Linda @NU