The failing education system is one of the problems which the USA is currently facing. I chose to look at this problem more closely because it is indeed rather concerning. One of the most important reasons why the quality of education is not improving is that technologies are rarely used in the classrooms even when they are available (Court, Davarakis, and Villemur, p. 44). The articles which I found mention the idea of increasing the use of technology in the classroom to fix this problem. Briefly, this idea could help by facilitating the perception of the study materials, making the learning process easier, and arising more interest in the school subjects. Although some keep to the idea that the use of technologies will not help to fix this problem, I believe that such a solution will necessarily work, because the use of technological advancements has always been beneficial for any kind of human activity.
The first article under consideration is “Improving Faculty Use of Technology in a Small Campus Community”. This article comes from THE Journal (Technological Horizons In Education) and was written by Steven Marx. The article was published in 2005, which means that it is relatively up-to-date. The main idea which the article focuses on is the development of a special grant-based program that can help improve the faculty’s use of technology in one of the state universities. This program allows the teachers to adjust their courses in a way that would improve students’ problem-solving abilities and help them with their project-based work (Marx, p. 21). The researcher has found that the use of this program resulted in teachers’ starting using technologies in the classroom, which was quite beneficial for the students (Marx, p. 21). Such a solution is quite interesting; I believe it might help deal with the problem because teachers’ interest in technologies will make the students interested in them as well. I think this idea should be adopted by the authorities because it might improve the quality of education in the US.
The second article, “Faculty Development and Educational Technology” was written by Julie Cagle and Steven Hornik in 2001. It comes from the same journal as the first article. The basic idea of this article is the use of special instructional technology to help the students to reach their curricular objectives (Cagle and Hornik, p. 92). The study describes how different teachers applied GE Technology Workshops for three years and which benefits it had for them and their students. The article also points at what the application of this technology requires. The researchers mentioned that the use of this technology will demand training and thorough scheduling of developmental workshops (Cagle and Hornik, p. 92). I do not think that this technology can help to solve the existing problem, because it is too sophisticated to apply. It might work only in the universities where the teachers are trained specifically for it. This idea should not be adopted because it requires too much time and resources and the risks that it will not work are too high.
In sum, the articles under analysis suggest solutions for the problem in US education. Both the articles advise implementing technologies to improve the quality of education. However, the methods which the first article proposes are more reasonable and easier to implement. The program which the researchers of the second article have designed seems too complicated unless the educational establishment is specially trained for it. Therefore, the grant-based program proposed by the first article should be used by the educational institutions to increase the use of technologies in the classroom and improve the United States’ quality of education.
Works Cited
- Cagle, Julie A.B. and Hornik, Steven. “Faculty Development and Educational Technology: Xavier University-General Electric Partnership Encourages Instructional Technology in the Classroom.” T H E Journal (Technological Horizons In Education) 29.3(2001): 92.
- Courtiat, Jean-Pierre, Davarakis, Costas, and Villemur, Thierry. Technology enhanced learning: IFIP TC3 Technology Enhanced Learning Workshop (TeL’04). London: Springer, 2005.
- Marx, Steven. “Improving Faculty Use of Technology in a Small Campus Community.” T H E Journal (Technological Horizons In Education) 32.6 (2005): 21.