EDU71002 Essay: Technology's Influence on Education & Relationships

This essay critically analyzes the transformative impact of technology on schools and educational settings, focusing on alterations to teacher pedagogy and the evolution of student-teacher relationships. The introduction highlights the digital revolution and the adoption of technology to improve the learning process. The main body explores factors driving technology adoption, such as diverse learning rates and the need for teachers to stay updated. It examines how technology is used in classrooms through visual aids, recorded lectures, online grading, and online learning, influencing teaching methods. The essay discusses both the positive impacts, like increased engagement and improved relationships, and the negative impacts, such as the need for teacher training. The essay references various research papers and personal experiences to support its arguments, concluding with a reflection on the overall impact of technology on education and the need to address the challenges it presents. The essay also touches upon the impact of technology on student learning rates and the advantages it provides in today's job market.

The Increase in use of
Technology Within Schools
and Educational Settings
has Altered Teacher
Pedagogy and the
Relationships that can be
Formed Within

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................9
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................10

INTRODUCTION
Through the digital revolution in the past decades and the widespread adoption of the
internet, numerous innovative digital technologies have been invented that have the potential to
be applied to various sectors and industries for improving them. Today as digital technology is
used by instructors and teachers in schools and educational settings, it has simplified and
revolutionised the approach through which student have been engaged in the learning process
(Bulman & Fairlie, (2016)). This report provides critical analysis and reflection for the alteration
of teacher pedagogy through the increase in use of technology within schools and educational
settings and the changes in relationships formed because of this.
MAIN BODY
In the current digital age, technology has advanced so much that it has effectively
become a part of our lives and all of our subsequent operations. This trend has also resulted in
current technologies also having immense impact on the operations within education sectors,
from how students learn, where they learn from, how teachers and instructors teach, where they
teach from and to changes in the resulting relationships that are formed between teachers,
students and even their parents. Research into how technology is used today in mainstream
schools and educational settings and the impact this has had on the learning operations of
students, pedagogy of teachers and changes to formed relationships have provided varying
results, with their existing several major and minor advantages to making use of technology in
schools and educational settings in addition to some drawbacks as well that result out of the use
of such technologies in schools and educational settings (Scherer, Siddiq & Tondeur, (2019)). In
my own experience the use of technology in schools and educational settings also provided me
with many advantages that aided my learning process and improved the effectiveness of my
teacher’s pedagogy approaches, but also highlighted to me the disadvantages that such use of
technology in schools and educational settings provides to both teachers and students.
There are several factors present in the traditional schools and educational settings that
have led to the current adoption and use of technology in these educational institutions. These

factors relate the issues and problems which students and teachers face in traditional schooling
and educational environments that are solved using current technological solutions. When I was
a young and budding learner, studying various subject part of my primary school, my classmates
and I were never introduced to technological solutions and inventions geared to improve our
learning process and enhancing our teacher’s pedagogy approach. But during my secondary
schooling, technology was used. This also allowed for me to gain an understanding of the factors
relating to why technology is used today in schools and educational institutions. These are as
follows:
 One of the most significant factors for making use of technology in schools and
educational settings is that most students have different rates at which they learn, absorb
and retain new information. In a traditional classroom, the teacher cannot realistically
mould their pedagogy approach to suit the needs, requirements and learning rates of all
their present students, which has a negative impact on some student’s learning operations.
This is solved with the use of technology in schools and educational institutions as
students who possess a slow learning rate can revisit recordings of past lectures and
classes to better learn and develop themselves in a non-threatening environment (Selwyn,
(2016)). I too was a slow learner in my primary school and when technology was finally
used in my secondary school I found it to be immensely productive for my learning
experience as I was now able to learn new subjects and areas at my own pace.
 One such factor relates to the teacher’s and instructor’s operations in traditional schools
and educational settings relates to the immense challenges they face in relation to being
consistently up to date with the new information and practises of their areas of expertise.
Technology allows for teachers to be consistently updated with findings, research papers
etc., information which can be used by teachers to provide relevant current information to
the students instead of older information that might not be relevant in today’s world. This
factor is more apparent in higher level educational institutions than in primary schools.
 Another major factor that results in the current use of technology in schools and
educational institutions is that students on graduating are required to make use of
technology for almost all current jobs in the world today (Jääskelä, Häkkinen & Rasku-
Puttonen, (2017)). Rather than having them learn to make use of the internet and digital
technologies at their jobs, it is more effective and efficient to teach them to make use of

technology right from their schooling days. I too can attest to this factor as upon
graduation my job required extensive use of ICT devices and internet and having
experience with using them from my secondary school was an immensely massive
advantage than having to learn use of technology at job.
Currently, the use of technology has had immense impact on the way students learn at
schools and educational institutions in addition to the evolution of the teacher’s pedagogy
approach. Teachers make use of technology as part of their pedagogy approach in schools and
educational institutions in the following ways:
Visual aids: Teachers can now make use of visual aids such as projectors, presentations, videos
etc., as part of their pedagogy approach with the intention to provide dynamic, interactive and
engaging learning lessons to students in schools and educational institutions. This allows for far
more dynamic learning environment for both the teachers and students to effectively articulate
complex ideas and subject through the use of visual aids which are far more productive and
effective for the student’s learning operations (Casey, Goodyear & Armour, (2017)). I too find
visual aids such as presentations, projections and videos to be far more compelling as part of a
learning process as compared to traditional books which can become boring and stressful in my
personal opinion.
Recorded Lectures: Through the use of technology in schools and educational institutions,
teachers are now able to record their physical lectures for students to consult and review in case
they have doubt later or are unable to absorb and retain the information that was provided in a
particular lecture. This is also immense beneficial as not all students are capable of possessing
100% attendance and rather than miss out on the information provided on their missed days, they
can consult the recorded lectures later at their leisure. These also decreases the stress on teachers
and has resultantly evolved their pedagogy approaches as they now do not have to consistently
explain concepts which they have done in previous lectures, allowing teachers to focus better on
future lessons. I too find recorded lectures to be immensely beneficial as I can review parts of
parts of specific lecture that might be important for an exam to gain a more in depth
understanding of the subject.

Grading and Plagiarism: Technology has also revolutionised the pedagogy approach of teachers
in relation to their grading operations. Through technology, students can submit their
assignments online, which decreases the onus on the part of teachers in relation to safeguarding
the assignments of 100s of students (Zinger, Tate & Warschauer, (2017)). Teachers can also
make use of technology to check the student’s assignments for signs of plagiarisms from online
websites and other student’s assignments showcasing to them which students are actually putting
the effort to make the assignments themselves, which is not possible to be done by teachers to
current levels of accuracy that technology provides to teachers. Furthermore, teachers can grade
the assignments of students and publish their results online which diminishes the communication
gaps that might be present between the teachers and their students, making the entire process
immensely efficient. I too find online grading to be immensely efficient as this technology
allows for me to directly evaluate my grades without having to showcase them in public, which
is a prospect that makes me nervous.
Online Learning: Technology has also evolved the pedagogy approach of teachers, as now they
can make use of technology to conduct online learning sessions for their students, without the
students having to travel to the physical classrooms for their learning operations. Making use of
the internet for learning operations is immensely important in today’s world that has completely
been halted due to the Coronavirus (COVID=19), as this technology allows for students to
continue their learning and development without fear of actually coming to schools and
educational institutions, a prospect which might endanger both the student’s and teacher’s health,
safety and lives. I too find the use of internet technology for online learning in schools and
educational institutions to be immensely productive for both teachers and students.
Use of technology has had immensely huge impact on the teacher’s pedagogy
approaches, student’s learning operations and the relationships between them. These impact are
both positive and negative in nature and are as follows:
Interactive and Engaging: Technology allows for the lessons provided by teachers to students to
be much more engaging and interactive for both parties involved. Not only does this provide the
teachers with enhanced ability to better articulate their lessons in a way that students might find
engaging and understandable, it also increases the student’s ability to understand, absorb and
retail the information that the teacher is trying to give in their lessons. Visual aids are far more

interactive and engaging for both teachers and students and end up having an immensely positive
impact on the productivity and effectiveness of both teacher’s and student’s operations in schools
and educational institutions (Wiziack & dos Santos, (2016, June)). I too find technology has an
immensely positive impact on both teacher’s pedagogy and student’s ability to learn as through
technology I found my lectures and learning operations to be highly engaging and interactive
which made me better absorb and retain the information.
Relationships: Through the use of technology, students now have a chance to view their teachers
in a completely different light than was possible in traditional classrooms, where teachers had to
enforce discipline to control their bored and unruly students. As with technology, the learning
lessons have become much more interactive and engaging for both the students and their
teachers, new productive relationships can be formed between them which also increases the
productivity and effectiveness of their learning operations. Technology in schools and
educational institutions also allows for the student’s parents to assess the learning progress of
their children more dynamically than previous parent teacher meetings, allowing for productive
relationships to be established between the parents and teachers as well. In my personal opinion
technology in schools and educational institutions allows for better relationships between
teachers and students as I still have good relationships with my teachers who I had the
opportunity to interact with outside of a traditional classroom environment.
Learning Rate: Another majorly positive impact of making use of technology in schools and
educational institutions is that through technology teachers are able to make sure that all of their
students are able to understand, absorb and retain essential information, irrespective of their
individual different learning rates, as technology allows for teachers to record their lectures
which students can consult at their personal pace (Palaiologou, (2016)). In my opinion this is the
biggest positive impact of use of technology in schools and educational institutions as I have
always been a slow learner, being forgetful of the complex topics taught in class. Being able to
access past lectures of my teachers is the sole reason I was able to graduate with flying colours.
In contrast the use of technology in schools and educational institutions also has some
negative impact on the teacher’s pedagogy and the student’s learning operations. These are as
follows:

Teacher Training: Because nowadays new technologies are used in schools and educational
institutions, the teachers have to be explicitly trained in their effective and efficient use. Not only
does this increase the already present onus and pressure on the teachers, it also takes up
considerable part of their time to get trained in the effective and efficient use of new technologies
for their existing operations. This is a major drawback of using technology in schools and
educational institutions as the financial and timing resources that are spent on training the
teachers are significant and teachers that are not able to make effective use of technologies end
up losing their jobs, irrespective of how knowledgeable they might be as instructors of their
chosen area of expertise. I too find this drawback to be a significant negative impact resulting
due to the use of technology in schools and educational institutions, as one of my favourite
teachers in secondary school was fired due to her inability to become acclimated to the new
technologies and pedagogy approaches and paradigms.
Consistency of Pedagogy: Use of technology in schools and educational institutions has another
major drawback as when these technologies and information systems are not maintained properly
and become disabled due to various human and operational reasons, the teachers then again have
to change their pedagogy approach to more traditional one, until the system and technology
become repaired or replaced, resulting in another change of teacher’s pedagogy approach. This is
immensely problematic for both teachers and their students as inconsistent pedagogy approaches
result in a huge loss of productivity and efficiency to their learning operations in schools and
educational institutions, as teachers are required to become proficient in multiple pedagogy
approaches, while students who might prefer one approach of pedagogy more than the other are
also adversely affected by this drawback (Loreman, (2017)). In my personal experience, this too
is a major drawback to the use of technologies in schools and educational institutions, as in my
secondary high school, when digital technologies were initially installed, these technological
solutions ended up malfunctioning every week, with sometimes the projectors not working,
sometimes the bandwidth of the internet not able to cope with usage and sometimes the entire
online grading system of the school getting stopped due to logical errors in the code. This had
immensely negative impact on me and my teachers as one day we would study using interactive
and engaging pedagogy approaches and the next day having to slug through textbooks, trying to
understand topics that would have been much easier through the use of functioning technology at
the school.

CONCLUSION
Based on the findings of the report, it can be effectively concluded that use of innovative
and advanced technological solutions and devices has revolutionised the learning operations of
educational setting and schools in relation to how teachers and instructors engaged in pedagogy
and the relationships that were formed in the process. This report provides critical evaluation and
personal reflection of how teacher pedagogy has evolved directly as a result of the increased use
of technology in schools and educational settings. The report also includes how relationship
formed within schools and educational settings have been changed as a direct result of the
increased use of technology in educational settings and schools.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Bulman, G., & Fairlie, R. W. (2016). Technology and education: Computers, software, and the
internet. In Handbook of the Economics of Education (Vol. 5, pp. 239-280). Elsevier.
Casey, A., Goodyear, V. A., & Armour, K. M. (2017). Rethinking the relationship between
pedagogy, technology and learning in health and physical education. Sport, education
and society. 22(2). 288-304.
Jääskelä, P., Häkkinen, P., & Rasku-Puttonen, H. (2017). Teacher beliefs regarding learning,
pedagogy, and the use of technology in higher education. Journal of Research on
Technology in Education. 49(3-4). 198-211.
Loreman, T. (2017). Pedagogy for inclusive education. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of
Education.
Ng, W. (2016). NEW DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY IN EDUCATION. SPRINGER
INTERNATIONAL PU.
Palaiologou, I. (2016). Children under five and digital technologies: implications for early years
pedagogy. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal. 24(1). 5-24.
Scherer, R., Siddiq, F., & Tondeur, J. (2019). The technology acceptance model (TAM): A meta-
analytic structural equation modeling approach to explaining teachers’ adoption of
digital technology in education. Computers & Education. 128. 13-35.
Selwyn, N. (2016). Is technology good for education?. John Wiley & Sons.
Wiziack, J. C., & dos Santos, V. D. (2016, June). Incorporating technology into education
processes: Proposal for an extension of the “Technology, pedagogy, and content
knowledge” framework by applying integrated cognitive competencies. In 2016 11th
Iberian Conference on Information Systems and Technologies (CISTI) (pp. 1-8). IEEE.
Zinger, D., Tate, T., & Warschauer, M. (2017). Learning and teaching with technology:
Technological pedagogy and teacher practice. URL: https://www. researchgate.
net/publication/320270142_Learning_and_Teaching_with_Techn
ology_Technological_Pedagogy_and_Teacher_Practice, 577-593.