Can new technologies help students?
“With the help of technology students nowadays can learn more information and learn it more quickly.” I agree with this statement. Technology has helped a student cross national boundaries, open up new views and increase the speed at which he imbibes information.
New technology in the form of Internet has helped breach the limitations of a country’s frontiers. A student sitting in a small town of India can access the latest course material released by MIT on his topic of interest. He can gain access to the latest info that his happening in physics and thus improve his existing warehouse of knowledge. He can browse through the previous papers in physics and dwell deeper and deeper in his specialized study. And how long does this all take? A click of a mouse. Compare this with searching through the mazes of his small hometown library, only to find some outdated articles and consuming a great part of his daily activity.
Technology has helped open up many new avenues that previously were considered impossible. Take for example the simple LCD projectors. They give a visual feel of the subject that the student is studying helping him to learn not only quickly but also effectively. Or for that matter video conferencing. A student can ask questions and clear his lingering doubts when he interacts with a professor considered as the authority in his field.
An overlooked aspect of technology is the transportation. With rapid advances in transportation, a student in Japan does not think twice before signing up for a program in the US. Would this have been possible 100 years back? Certainly not.
In concluding I would like to say that technology has played a major role not only in increasing the speed at which students learn but also in bringing a radical change in the way they learn it.
