Teach English in Potou Zhen - Aba Zangzu Qiangzu Zizhizhou —

Today's generation is filled with innovative technologies that help every field of study. In areas where educational technology is available, teachers can spark their student’s curiosity with captivating teaching methods by incorporating technology. When students enjoy class, they tend to learn beyond notebook paper. However, as much as there is good to using developed technologies for education, technology itself can become an obstacle to learning, if unbridled and uncontrolled. Based on the pros and cons to using developed technology, one can learn how to bridle technology as an educational tool. First, educational technology can motivate self-assessment. In a traditional classroom, whether a student was diligently studying or not, no one had a completely objective method to track each student’s real time progress, except when they take quizzes or tests. As a result, students were designed to wait till the final test score to finally see their level of understanding, when it is too late for them to assess and make adjustments to their study methods. But with the modern technology applied in the educational field, real time self-assessment has become possible for any student. For example, Quizlet serves the best educational platform students to assess themselves and even for teachers to utilize it as a motivational tool. A teacher can create an on-line classroom where his students can study a set of flash cards pre-made by the teacher, take practice tests for an upcoming exam, and the results will show how ready they are. Students can access Quizlet on their laptop or on their smart phone. Quizlet application on their smart phone allows the students to study a certain subject any where at all times, even in the form of a competitive quiz game. They could be waiting for a school bus for several minutes, it’s a perfect time for them to pull up their Quizlet app to quickly go through the flash cards. They can go through one set of a hundred flash cards within five minutes only by using their thumb, swiping through the flash card set. Although students can easily pull up the Quizlet app to study, they can become very easily tempted to play games such as Fortnite, Minecraft, or Angry Birds. Smart phones, tablets, or any other similar devices have become great tools for both education and entertainment. Smart phones have already become an essential in many students’ life, and tablets are slowly replacing paper textbooks. If a school allows teachers to collect students’ phones before class, it would make an idealistic environment where students don’t get distracted. And yet, there comes a tablet for students in lieu of paper textbooks. Students with gifted talents have been notoriously known for changing the settings to play games or to access the internet on the school-provided tablets. Thus, educational technology can motivate the students to study and assess themselves, but, if possible, it must be strictly limited for educational purposes. Second, educational technology can broaden student’s level of understanding. For example, smart pen is considered a revolutionary tool for early childhood and elementary education. This does not have to do with the Apple’s or Samsung’s smart pen for their phones and tablets. The educational smart pen works on a pre-coded paperback, where students touch a picture of a lion, the smart pen makes a roaring sound. It will not work on regular books or pictures. The smart pen is programmed to respond to a pre-coded signals only. Tap the whole paragraph next to the lion picture, then the pen will read it to you. Tap the music symbol on the top right corner, then the pen will sing you a jungle-version ABC song. Parents, who are concerned with their children being exposed to various tablets and phones, can use this care-free technology, since the children flip through actual paperbacks and learn in an interactive way. However, familiarity with this developed technology can render an old-fashioned way of learning, such as reading a paperback, less intriguing and ineffective. What if there is no smart pen when a child picks up a book to read? He tries to tap the paragraph with a pen, so he can listen to somebody else reading for him. He tries to tap all the animals to hear the sound. He looks for a music symbol to listen to a song. Yet, not all the books in the world will be pre-coded to respond to a smart pen. Plus, at some point in their lives, they will have to bid farewell to the smart pens, if they want to go to college. The point here is that parents or teachers using this type of educational technology must help the students transition into not using the smart pens when reading a book. Technology in the field of education can serve both a great tool and a great obstacle. On one hand, it can motivate self-assessment and broaden student’s level of understanding. On the other hand, it can easily distract students from learning and bore them in its absence. As ironical it may seem, the key is keeping the balance between using technology to learn and being independent from technology to learn. Educators and parents must keep in mind that educational technologies can have distractive entertainment on other side of the coin. Students must challenge themselves to achieve academic goals with or without the use of technology, no matter how innovative and effective it may be. Technology must remain a tool and should not become one’s master, especially in the field of education.