Digital Age and Global Education: Technology's Role in Education

This essay provides a comprehensive analysis of the digital age's profound impact on global education, examining the evolution of classrooms, the integration of technology, and the changing roles of teachers and students. It explores the current scenario of education, the emergence of new types of teachers and students, and the influence of digital technologies on learning environments. The essay discusses the rise of eTexts, virtual libraries, online school portals, webcams, teleconferencing, mobile apps, and augmented reality, highlighting their transformative effects on educational practices. It also addresses the challenges and opportunities presented by the digital environment, emphasizing the need for a shift in culture and the importance of adapting to new digital habits. The essay concludes by emphasizing the critical role of technology in shaping the future of education and the need for educators to embrace these changes to meet the demands of a globalized world.

Digital Age and Global Education
By
Abstract
The focus of all of this intense interchange was the shape and future of learning institutions. Our
charge was to accept the challenge of an Information Age and acknowledge, at the conceptual as
well as at the methodological level, the responsibilities of learning at an epistemic moment when
learning itself is the most dramatic medium of that change. This is an idealistic claim about the
primacy of learning that the single most important characteristic of the Future of classroom
learning in a Digital Age is its capacity to allow for a worldwide community and its endlessly
myriad subsets to exchange ideas, to learn from one another in a way not previously available.
We contend that the future of learning institutions demands a deep, epistemological appreciation
of the profundity of what the Internet offers humanity as a model of a learning institution.
Keywords: Internet, Digital World, Classroom, Technology
Introduction
Current Scenario of Our Education System
During the last decade, as the Internet and multimedia technology became widespread,
enthusiasm for the use of computers in schools also became more evident across the United
States. Attendance at educational technology conferences rose sharply; hundreds of businesses
started up to offer hardware, software and related services to education; and thousands of
teachers took courses to help them utilize newer technology in their classrooms. Outside the
school system enthusiasm grew as well despite the publication in newspapers and magazines of
several articles critical of the growing reliance on computers in schools (Ronald, Anderson and
Ronnkvist, 1998) Will classrooms still exist in 20 years from now? Do we have traditional
classrooms in a physical sense anymore? What is the classroom anyway?

For most of me, a classroom consists of four walls, ‘closed’ doors, chairs, tables, perhaps
a blackboard, and sometimes a desk - simple but efficient pieces of furniture. A quick glance at
the history of pedagogical practices reveals that the classroom has scarcely evolved over a period
of many years. Is the traditional classroom intrinsically outdated or has it rather survived the test
of time because it is already self-reconfigurable and has been adapted in many different contexts
of use? Do we even need a classroom anymore? Do we need a teacher in the classroom? What do
we teach and what do we want pupils to learn? What kinds of knowledge and skills will be
required in the future? These are some of the questions that one should bear in mind when
thinking about the classroom of the future (Siegl, Zottmann, Kaplan and Fischer 2010).
Nowadays, it is a global trend that young brains are being attracted more towards
technological education. There is no doubt that science and technology are complementary in
nature and have to grow hand in hand. Besides, the growth of knowledge, research in
fundamental science always adds an inevitable input to the advancement of technology. Malik
and Malik (2019) find that having a home computer is associated with higher test scores in
mathematics and reading, even after controlling for family income and for cultural and social
capital. However, children from high socioeconomic status (SES) homes achieve larger
educational gains from home computers than do lower SES children. Boys' performance
advantage is larger than girls' (Attewell and Battle (1999). Quick and highly paid job
opportunities have always been an added advantage for the technology graduates. Further, they
are not encouraged to have crazy ideas. The prevalent system of teaching and evaluation
(especially in Nigeria) does not provide any opportunity for this purpose. Starting from the
primary to the higher education, the present emphasis is on maximization of the quantity of
information instead of leaving room for imagination or recreation of minds. Malik and Malik

(2019) opine that one should not forget that the creative mind always has no problem in
acquiring information on its own.
New Type of Teacher and Student
Teachers taking part in remote education must fulfill various essential pre-requisites. They will
have to be fully familiar with all distance education technology. Teachers should be trained in
the use of new technologies. This training will be continuous given the constantly changing
demands of distance education and the new opportunities offered by the rapid renewal of
technologies. Their homes and workplaces should be well equipped. Quality education requires
teachers’ homes to be supplied with standard computer and communications equipment. This
equipment must be updated periodically. New digital habits must be acquired. The process of
transition from a predominantly analog classroom academic world to a digital and virtual world
is slow. Teachers should eliminate printed information wherever possible, replacing paper by
bits.
Digital Presence and Digital Futures
Digital technologies increasingly enable and encourage social networking and interactive,
collaborative engagements, including those implicating and impacting learning. And yet
traditional learning institutions, whether primary or institutions of higher learning, continue to
privilege individualized performance in assessments and reward structures. Born and matured
out of a century and a half of institutional shaping, maturing, and hardening, these assessment
and reward structures have become fixed in place. But they now serve also to weigh down and
impede new learning possibilities. Digital technologies have dramatically encouraged

selflearning. Web interfaces have made for less hierarchical and more horizontal modes of
access.
The Web has also facilitated the proliferation of information, from the inane and banal to the
esoteric and profound, from the patently false, misleading.
New Digital Culture
In practice this road towards greater unity in human society requires a change in culture,
beginning with a profound change in daily working habits. This in turn supposes special training
which is not easy but is worth the effort as the advantages are obvious. In the first place there is a
leveling of leisure and study time. The stress of change will be reduced. Initially, hybrid
situations will exist, such as the coexistence of printed and digital texts, as when an architect
displays a design on paper that has been generated by computer, and which could be consulted
directly on the screen. With time it is possible to acquire the habit of communicating without
paper. Even fax paper turns out to be obsolete in the face of the modem/fax that enables
messages to be sent and received directly from computers. Once the network between students
and professors has been established, progress is made at a different pace.
Technology in Today’s Classrooms
Do you remember lugging your books to and from school every day? How about stuffing them
in your locker while trying to keep track of your calculator, pens, and pencils? For future
students and even some current ones, these common school quandaries may never be a problem
again. Computers and advancing technology are changing the way classrooms work and
providing students new ways to learn. The formidable expansion of the digital environment in
our planet is one of the most urgent challenges of this century. This new environment supports

most human activities around the world today. Among the multiple social changes empowered
by the digital environment we must emphasize the transformation of the education of the new
generations, the so-called “digital natives.” The access to this digital environment is now
becoming a hope for millions of students and teachers, a way to overcome ignorance and
poverty. It is a human right, and a value in itself. At the same time the digital environment is
becoming the common ground for the mind, brain and education sciences. Malik and Malik
(2019) thinks that the future of education will depend on the increasing integration of these
sciences. And education is the hope of humanity. The teacher is facing new pedagogical
challenges in a globalized world. We should however acknowledge the fact that while we have
significant information about the learning brain we lack a similar knowledge of the teaching
brain. Our expectation is to bridge this neuro-cognitive gap in the next years (Battro 1997).
Today, the blackboard has become a whiteboard; chalk has become a magic marker; the slates
that students used have been replaced by notebooks; and classes have sometimes gotten smaller.
Little else has changed. True, some schools are providing their students with laptops, and
teachers are increasingly using technology and encouraging collaboration. But the methods are
essentially the same—with the teacher dictating learning (Wadhwa, 2015).
Technologies that has Changed the Digital Classroom
In the past, the suggestion of getting a college degree without ever cracking a book meant
paying a degree mill. It meant the degree was in name only, reflecting neither learning nor effort.
Then distance learning meant correspondence courses, perhaps combined with some coordinated
telecasts. Technology has already changed all that, and the future will change it even further and
they are:

1. eTexts - Now, online college students can obtain legitimate college degrees without cracking a
book– but that doesn’t mean they don’t have to read. Even with hard copy texts available, most
students download their textbooks in password protected Portable Document Format (PDF). Not
only is this a “green” alternative, but you avoid the weight of having to carry around textbooks.
Students can copy the PDF to mobile devices, and carry all of their texts on one iPad or Galaxy
Tab. They choose to print whole books, only parts, or just use the digital document. A drawback
to depending on protected PDFs is that they only open with active internet connections — but
once opened students can use them until closed.
2. Virtual Libraries Most online school programs — even those which still use correspondence
course designs have robust virtual libraries – something that never existed 15 years ago. Many
colleges and universities contract with EBSCO Publishing to maximize available peer reviewed
journals. Even traditional students use in college libraries. Distance learners access the same
journals as campus students — from anywhere in the world. Students quickly build up their own
virtual libraries of thousands of journal articles, just as mobile as any e-text. Renaming these
files as closely as possible to the required bibliographic format, and cataloguing them, keeps
them organized, accessible, and easy to cite in papers.
3. Online School Portals - Until now resources for modern distance learning seem only different
in form from correspondence courses. That changes with portals. These virtual campuses come
complete with individual rooms for each class. They are so significant an innovation that they
could change the future of on campus studies. Anticipating how ubiquitous technology should
become, some schools already require even on-campus students to take at least one class online.
This innovation means students need not all be present at once. More, many schools are now

integrating social media into their portals – so students can correspond about classes and socially
connect for pleasure.
4. Webcams & Teleconferencing - With the advance of higher bandwidth, real time webcasts
have become a reality for online courses. Some schools still set most of their distance learning
around attending formal classes, and allow this method as a supplement. Other colleges choose
to use up such heavy bandwidth only for specific lessons, allowing students and teachers to get
to know each other better. Lectures that do not change need not have all the students watch at
once, so schools now make them available to download as needed. Downloading is quickly
replacing mailed audio and video recordings as a preferred media delivery method. Webcams
and teleconferencing have added a new element of interactivity to the virtual classroom that
cannot be matched.
5. Mobile Apps & Augmented Reality - Mobile apps may present the biggest challenges for
colleges with growing online programs. Augmented Reality (AR) apps interest schools. This
cutting-edge technology is so young that its full potential still requires exploration. AR allows
students to point mobile device cams at objects around them. The screen image offers
information about what they see. Schools might use them for mobile testing, for example asking
questions about objects on museum visits or historic tours. They could allow astronomy students
to point a device at the night sky for the screen to identify stars, or outline constellations.
Common availability of such apps may still be out of reach (Pricenetwork, 2012).
Effects of Technology on Classrooms and Students
Dunwill (2016) states technology is becoming a bigger and bigger part of the world
today. Technology has evolved and become more central to teaching and learning. Integrating

technology into the curriculum is a priority in schools. When teachers first began to use
computers in a classroom setting, schools evaluate whether the use of educational technology
had a significant and consistent impact on student achievement. When people hear the word
“technology”, computers are the first thing people think. However, there are many different types
of technology other than computers that can be used to improve student learning.
Change in Student and Teacher Roles
When students are using technology as a tool or a support for communicating with others,
they are in an active role rather than the passive role of recipient of information transmitted by a
teacher, textbook, or broadcast. The student is actively making choices about how to generate,
obtain, manipulate, or display information. Technology use allows many more students to be
actively thinking about information, making choices, and executing skills than is typical in
teacher-led lessons. Moreover, when technology is used as a tool to support students in
performing authentic tasks, the students are in the position of defining their goals, making design
decisions, and evaluating their progress. The teacher's role changes as well. The teacher is no
longer the center of attention as the dispenser of information, but rather plays the role of
facilitator, setting project goals and providing guidelines and resources, moving from student to
student or group to group, providing suggestions and support for student activity.
Increased Motivation and Self Esteem
The most common – and in fact, nearly universal – teacher-reported effect on students
was an increase in motivation. Teachers and students are sometimes surprised at the level of
technology-based accomplishment displayed by students who have shown much less initiative or
facility with more conventional academic tasks. Teachers talked about motivation from a number

of different perspectives. Some mentioned motivation with respect to working in a specific
subject area, for example, a greater willingness to write or to work on computational skills.
Others spoke in terms of more general motivational effects--student satisfaction with the
immediate feedback provided by the computer and the sense of accomplishment and power
gained in working with technology.
Technical Skills
Students, even at the elementary school level, are able to acquire an impressive level of
skill with a broad range of computer software. Although the specific software tools in use will
likely change before these students enter the world of work, the students acquire a basic
understanding of how various classes of computer tools behave and a confidence about being
able to learn to use new tools that will support their learning of new software applications.
Accomplishment of More Complex Tasks
Malik and Malik (2009) assert that students are able to handle more complex assignments
and do more with higher-order skills because of the supports and capabilities provided by
technology.
More Collaboration with Peers
Another effect of technology cited by Malik and Malik (2009) is an increased inclination
on the part of students to work cooperatively and to provide peer tutoring. In their study, it was
observed that while many of the classrooms we observed assigned technology-based projects to
small groups of students, as discussed above, there was also considerable tutoring going on
around the use of technology itself. Collaboration is fostered for obvious reasons when students
are assigned to work in pairs or small groups for work at a limited number of computers. But

even when each student has a computer, there is an increased frequency of students helping each
other.
Increased Use of Outside Resources
Teachers from 10 out of 17 classrooms observed at length cited increased use of outside
resources as a benefit of using technology. This effect was most obvious in classrooms that had
incorporated telecommunications activities but other classes used technologies such as satellite
broadcasts, telefacsimiles, and the telephone to help bring in outside resources.
Improved Design Skills/Attention to Audience
Experiences in developing the kinds of rich, multimedia products that can be produced
with technology, particularly when the design is done collaboratively so that students experience
their peers' reactions to their presentations, appear to support a greater awareness of audience
needs and perspectives. Multiple media give students choices about how best to convey a given
idea.
Changes That Will Shape the Classroom of the Future
Making Education Fully Technological
It’s hard to read the tea leaves of education technology. You never really know what the
classroom of the upcoming year will look like in terms of technology. Will iPads be all the rage?
Will videoconferencing replace face-to-face office hours? Would a Smartphone app be the new
way to turn in homework? Who knows? It’s difficult to discuss the classroom of the future, as if
it is something that it exists in some faraway time. The truth is, education is changing right now.
Technology and expanded knowledge of the learning process have already resulted in a

metamorphosis of the classroom and of teaching methods. There will be even more changes in
the future such as:
1. The layout of the classroom will change immensely. Forget about neat rows of chairs and
desks from which students focus intently on the teacher delivering a lecture and demonstrating
concepts on the whiteboard. That’s already falling out of favor today. Seating arrangements in
the future will be flexible so that they are appropriate for the task that students are working on,
and there will also be more focus on the comfort of the students. Here are just a few things that
will become more commonplace in the classroom of the future:
 Standing desks for students who have difficulty maintaining focus while sitting.
 Accommodation for students who need more movement.
 Private workstations will be available for individual tasks while collaborative workspaces
will be available for group projects.
 Interactive projectors and other technology will replace interactive whiteboards.
 Students will be given more autonomy on how and where to sit.
 Moving walls will make spaces more adaptable.
2. Virtual and augmented reality will change the educational landscape. Imagine this: A
student opens a book to what appears to be a page with a picture of the earth on it. Then, the
student puts on a pair of special glasses and a three dimensional images pops out at them. Now,
instead of seeing a simple, flat image, they can see various landforms; look at a cross section of
the planet to see all of the various layers going down to the earth’s core. Picture a student
walking through an art gallery and scanning a code next to a picture using a special app on their
cell phone and then being able to watch a video of the artist speaking about their own work. This

is all possible today because of a technology known as augmented reality. Apps and other
educational devices act upon trigger images to create an augmented learning experience.
3. Flexible assignments will accommodate multiple learning styles. Today, in the majority of
classrooms, students all complete the same assignments. For example, if the assignment is to use
MS word to write a research paper on tools developed during the Bronze Age, which is the
assignment each student must complete. The only time when exceptions are made is usually
when the student has special needs and accommodations are required. Unfortunately, these one
size fits all assignments don’t take into consideration learning styles. With flexible assignments,
the teacher will be more interested in proof of competency than in receiving 25 assignments all
completed using the same methods
4. MOOCs and other online learning options will impact secondary education.
You have to stay in school. You have to get good grades. You have get your diploma. If
you don’t do these things, you cannot get into college. If you don’t get into college, you won’t be
able to get the degree that leads you to the career that you love. All of these seem like very
logical statement, and chances are most people reading this were raised being told these very
things by their parents and their teachers. There’s just one problem. The diploma simply isn’t as
necessary or as valuable as it used to be, and neither is the college degree. In the future, students
will feel less inclined to spend 4 years in high school learning the basics, plus another 4 years in
college, especially when the first two years is simply covering the basics yet again. Today, a
thirteen year old with an email address and access to the internet can sign up at Khan Academy
and complete courses of study in a variety of academic disciplines, all for free. They can sign up
for free classes designed and taught by professors at prestigious universities that are created and
distributed using MOOC. In the time that it takes to finish high school, a student who is