How is technology, social media, gaming, multimedia transforming education?

We live in a time where our students can use technology that gives them continuous mobile access to endless resources and information. They can choose what they want to learn, who they trust to learn it from at their convenient time of choice. The small study groups from the traditional education system are now replaced with people from all over the world that can collaborate on ideas at any time. Students are now accustomed to finding the answers to their unknowns from instantaneous and limitless resources. An education system that ignores these changes cannot be successful.

A successful education system should not compete against increasing usage of technology or prevent students from exploring social media, instead, it should create an engaging personalized system that considers the ever-changing needs of the students and fits students’ daily lives and the needs of their future. An attractive education system should use the endless possibilities of multimedia and social media to support student learning in areas that are of particular concern or interest to them. For example, on my class’s website, I often provide several resources for my students that introduce accurate information while applying interesting methods (like interactive demonstrations, games and videos).

However, there are also a number of challenges and concerns in use of technology in education. For example, students will need to be informed about the inaccurate or misleading information. It is not always easy to recognize the correct information from all the different replies to their questions in a social media or the various resources on the internet. It has cost my students and me much precious time in my physics classroom to erase or replace their inaccurate information about a challenging concept.

The future of the education system can be exciting, beneficial or even scary to us. But regardless, technology is a great part of our education system and will play an increasingly vital role. We educators should be able to utilize these prevailing tools to improve students’ success.