Uses of Computers in Education
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ScribdTranslationsUses of Computers in Education
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ScribdTranslationsTopic: The use of computers in education
1 - What are the four most important and significant uses of the computer in
education?
• The computer as an object of study or literacy
This use is given in schools, so that students know them and manipulate and
understand their important parts.
There are elements such as:
-Recognition and uses of physical components: (hardware)
This is an input and output device, it has the ability to differentiate various types of
hardware.
-Recognition and use of computer logic and instructions:
It allows the operation of the physical components through the programs: word
processor, image processor, spreadsheets, databases, antivirus, communication
system.
-Management, maintenance and computer updates:
Disk and peripheral capacity for system expansions and improvements.
• Computerized educational and didactic medium
This tool, once the software is incorporated, immediately becomes an educational
medium of high pedagogical and educational value.
They have a design capable of storing and processing programs that is developing
a great boom in educational centers worldwide where educational computer
courses and chairs are created.
• Technical-teaching use of computers by educators and
administrative support.
They were initially created to streamline manual processes for the preparation of
statistical data, such as communications between computers, archiving, access
and processing of information.
Likewise, computers can be used to support teachers so that they have files of
their classes or notes. But above all, to modernize their teaching and the learning
process of their students.
• The computer as an advanced technology tool
It is a computerized tool because it processes information in its computerized
memory. In this sense, a computer can be used in the classroom as a tool in the
following services: Internet, email, among others.
2 - What are the real uses that educators give to computers in secondary
schools in Panama?
Today's multimedia capabilities of computers offer educators extensive
opportunities to improve their teaching techniques.
However, these tools have created new problems, especially in the context of a
technological mono-culture. Education is therefore faced with the challenge of
changing the superficial and algorithmic use of computing to find efficient solutions
to these problems. Solutions to the new problems must not deviate from the
framework of metacognition or liberating pedagogy according to Freire's thought.
Free software represents a paradigm shift in the previous context and, at the same
time, its use can contribute to solving the most common problems that educators
face every day in their classes.
Information and communication technologies (ICT) have revolutionized the way in
which teaching is conceived, to the point that they have rethought what is
understood as effective pedagogy with its multiple possibilities. Computers in all
their forms (desktop, laptop, netbook and more recently tablets) have become tools
closely linked to others due to their high multimedia capabilities.
In fact, the idea of the teacher as the sole transmitter of knowledge does not
adequately respond to the new reality created by this post-globalized world.
• The idealization of technologies, the software monoculture and
its manifestations in education
The new technological context bombards teachers with an optimistic view of
technology in general. Teachers, therefore, face a veritable avalanche of resources
that are often idealized or promoted indiscriminately, without any pedagogical or
philosophical criteria to recommend their use.
• The relationship between the use of computers as tools in
teaching and Freire's thought of liberating education.
“Advanced” classes on technological resources (among which computers play a
major role) for future teachers and refresher workshops for experienced teachers
are limited to showing a few computer resources, but do not promote any critical
view of them. For example, future educators learn how to create PowerPoint
presentations, but they are not taught basic aspects of the tool, such as how to
install it in case they do not have it on their computers.
• The relationship between metacognition, meaningful learning
and the use of computers in teaching-learning.
Although some people may think that computer science is not directly related to
educational practice or to the philosophical principles of education itself, this
position is inadequate. It is increasingly common to find students using their cell
phones or laptops to clarify terminology in a class or to expand on the information
in the class.
