In the twenty first century the use of technology became a part of daily life. The teachers are using it to their advantage to transfer knowledge to students. The down side is that there are also some disadvantages.
One of the disadvantages faced by teachers is the possibility of students to use the online resources without any control. The unauthorized use of online resources, plagiarism and numerous sources will greatly increase the student’s chances to use it to their advantage, without relying on their own intelligence. Also a student may discuss the topics given with other students, as well as other people. This would make the work less individual and the views expressed and information used will be representative of a collective of people instead of that particular student. To combat this problem teachers can use an open book policy, which will give students the resources to find the information and focus their work and attention on analyzing the knowledge presented, through expression of their own opinion and logical contemplation of the topic itself. Another disadvantage for both teachers and students is the technology itself. Sometimes there are problems with downloading, loading and the speeds of the connection or the work of the computer. And this fact itself can become a disadvantage to the teachers, since a student can say that their computer has broken down or the internet connection has failed.
But the advantages of technology greatly outweigh the disadvantages. One of such examples is the fact that teachers have the ability to research and analyze online sources and information before giving out the assignments. They could pool this knowledge into one database, cooperate with other teachers to collect the data and then examine the work of the students with the acquired material. As there is an extremely great amount of information on the internet it would be very hard for a single teacher to do it alone but by using the technology teachers can work as a unit and be more productive. A huge advantage is that with a great amount of software and people who can work on and create this software with numerous capabilities, there are programs that can store all the topics and assignment ideas in one place and then electronically generate a random order of assignment questions. This will guarantee that a large number of students will all get different questions, which will prevent any sort of cheating between students. This is similar to an in-class exam where people sitting beside each other receive different version of exams, containing different topics and questions, making it impossible to lean over and ask or copy down neighbor’s work. But the biggest advantage of technology is how easy information can be accessed from any place in the world. All that is needed is the device and the internet access. This virtual exchange of information makes the life of teachers very easy, as well as students’. Teachers can transfer their skills to a great amount of people, who can study the same material from different places in the world, look at the same pictures and articles, watch videos and exchange advices and opinions. This distant access will also allow teachers to battle the problem of cheating by restricting the number of times a student views the information of the task and even keep the record of how many times the information was viewed and for what duration of time.
Technology is without a doubt a good thing, it is only a matter of skill and knowledge to decrease its negative sides and improve on the positive ones.