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Ian Ohari

Mr. Donald

Writing For College

23 January 2018

Revolutionizing Our World: Modern Technology and Its Role in Education

As humans evolved out of the ice age, technology advanced rapidly to keep pace.

Though war technology has always been at the forefront of history, information technology

has been just as important, if not more. The dawn of the 21st century gave birth to many

important information technology advancements. Innovative creations, such as the

personal computer, the mobile cellphone, and projectors, have made education more

comprehensive and accessible than ever before. As a result, new ideas and approaches to

education have sprouted. New, creative approaches to education—fostered by information

technology—include accessible learning to anyone over the internet, expanding the

vastness and accessibility to research, and teaching young students through video games,

and more recently, virtual reality.

Widespread inaccessibility to acceptable education is a major challenge yet to be

completely resolved with modern technology. That’s why working on technology that can

expand accessibility of education is the main focus of many businessmen, scientists,

students, and researchers around the world. Students are especially important in the

process of creating new technologies because their ideas and innovations will shape the

world they’ll live in. When a student, Sahil Doshi, winner of the Top Young Scientist award

in the 2014 Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge, was interviewed about learning

devices of the future,

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He suggested imagining a baseball cap connected directly to a student’s brain. The

device would allow the student to access “everything in the world, every possible

public file out there.” That’s important for students, he added, so they’ll realize “that

nothing is impossible because they have [access to] every bit of information.”

(Schaffhauser)

A student’s vision into the future of learning devices is extremely important because it

shows the direction that education will follow.

While the visionaries of the future may be the students of today, they aren’t the only

ones who play a major role in shaping the future. Scott McLeod, director of innovation at

the Prairie Lakes Area Education Agency, believes that interactivity with the environment

is the key to building learning devices of the future. Full immersion in the learning

environment through technology would allow for impressive flexibility. Teachers and

students would no longer be constrained to the restrictions of the real world but instead to

the tools at their disposal online. Devices that could do such a thing would more than likely

make classrooms much more efficient. Teachers would no longer have to look for students

cheating on tests: they would simply be able to see all the students’ screens at once on their

own screen, or the system would alert the teacher if a student were cheating. Group

projects would be massively streamlined, and students would be able to know what the

rest of the group is working on so no one overlaps. To be brief, learning devices of the

future would expand the amount of data that is present at any given time. (Schaffhauser)

While the classroom is, and always will be, the main place of education for students,

students should be expected to learn outside of the classroom too, whether it’s a homework

assignment or a reading assignment. Before laptops, homework assignments could only be

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conveniently completed at school, the library, or at home. If one wished to do his/her

homework at the park, it would require them to lug all the necessary supplies with them.

With the advent of the laptop, not only was completing homework made faster, it also

expanded the types of homework that could be assigned. Now students can read online

textbooks, complete online quizzes, and watch educational videos on the subject. And if a

student wishes to do work at the park, all he/she needs to bring with them is a laptop.

Looking at the big picture, it should be realized that utilizing technology to educate

outside the classroom is distance learning. Distance learning provides numerous

advantages over traditional classroom education: students can learn anywhere they please,

the latest resources are at the students’ immediate disposal, and students on a tight

schedule are offered massive flexibility. For students in countries ravaged by poverty, poor

education systems—or the lack of education systems—are a massive problem: they inhibit

the growth of students in the modern world. Distance learning is considered by many as

the means to an end of the inaccessibility of education.

Efforts to increase the quality of education are being made all around the world.

However, not all countries have a satisfactory education system in place. Additionally,

literacy rates in such countries are too low by today’s standards. Literacy is an important

skill for the modern world, and no one should be left out. Pakistan is a primary example of

how war, poverty, and oppression have negatively impacted the country’s literacy rates.

According to the Economic Survey of Pakistan, “the country’s literacy rate has declined

from 60 per cent to 58 per cent” (Sarfaraz). While not exceedingly negative, statistics such

as this prove that the literacy rate is declining. However, “Although Pakistanis are officially

reported to have 58% literacy rate . . . those who are called . . . ‘Literate’ are only able to
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read and write” (Sarfaraz). Thankfully, not all hope is lost. Programs such as Ilm on Wheels,

Digital Hall Study (DiSH), and Digital Means are utilizing distance learning techniques

through modern technology to provide students a better education and improve literacy

rates. While not a perfect solution, as not every student will have equal access to computers

or smartphones, distance learning is a necessary part of education, and technology can only

make it easier and more efficient.

As humans continue to expand their knowledge of the world, the need for more

effective information technology grows. Since World War II, research technology has

become more and more effective, allowing researchers to create and run more complex

simulations, experiments, and research projects than ever before. While in the past, devices

such as the telephone or the computer supercharged research, today, researchers are

looking towards cloud-based software to streamline research. Ryan Smith, cofounder and

CEO of Qualtrics, noted that, “Adding technology to the mix reduced the potential for

human error and increased the speed of the research process” (Smith). <- (Need to expand)

Progress towards the future can only be made if one looks to the past. That’s why

it’s important to recognize to roots of modern research, and trace it all the way to present.

Before the Internet and computers, researchers were limited to the resources around

them: books, (often outdated) research papers, and colleagues. The lack of information—

and the pure distances between researchers—kept large, complex research projects from

being undertaken. So, on January 1, 1983, when ARPANET, the predecessor to the Internet,

switched to using (the widespread) Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol

(TCP/IP), it was a big deal. Olivier Dumon, managing director at Elsevier, argues, “While

this may not be the best-known advancement in the development of the Internet, [it’s] one
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of the most significant, since it was this change in protocol that established the course of

the Internet” (Dumon). This is important to note because while the Internet serves as the

backbone for everybody’s daily lives, it also helped to accelerate research technology to

where it is today. Researchers no longer need to rely solely on books, outdated research

papers, or colleagues, but instead, can call upon new and updated information simply by

typing up a search query and pressing enter. Within seconds, current information is at their

disposal. With the aid of new technology—especially the Internet—research is only limited

by the ingenuity and cleverness of the researchers, and no longer by physical constraints.

(Dumon)

Thanks to modern technology, research has become easier, and because of that,

scientific knowledge has expanded exponentially. One example of this is cancer research. In

1898, Marie and Pierre Curie discovered Radium and Polonium—elements that are mildly

radioactive, and were found to be effective in treating cancer. Today, however, doctors can

use pembrolizumab to more effectively treat cancer by targeting specific proteins to boost

the immune response. This shows just how far scientific knowledge has come—with the

aid of advancing technology. Where unsolvable problems existed for decades, they can now

be solved by the smartest minds of today, aided with the cutting-edge technology of the

future.

While researchers looking to make groundbreaking research may get all the top-of-

the-line technology, today’s students can benefit from the smaller technological

innovations. While, in the past, teens read books and listened to lectures to learn, teens

today have an entire wealth of information at their fingertips, only a few clicks away. New

resources, brought on by new technologies, are creating different study habits in today’s
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teens. According to a survey asking teachers about what resources their students use for

research, 94% of teachers said their students use Google or other search engines, 75% said

their students use Wikipedia or other online encyclopedias, and 52% said their students

use YouTube or other social media sites. This is a stark contrast from the research methods

used by students before the digital age and the expansion of the Internet.

Ever since the personal computer was invented, video games have been a globally

prevalent entertainment medium. Today, there is an estimated 1.8 billion people who play

video games globally, and that number keeps on growing. Due to the prevalence of video

games in today’s society, many researchers and scientists have wondered if video games

could be used to enhance education. This idea is not new, and can be traced all the way

back to popular games such as The Oregon Trail, and Mario Teaches Typing. Research being

done today on the efficacy of video games to supplement traditional schooling is primarily

looking at improving foreign vocabulary retention. Alshaiji, a researcher from the King

Saud University, states that, “The necessity to learn a foreign language has been on the rise

due to globalizing world and unprecedented developments in the information and

communication technologies . . .” (Alshaiji). The point of Alshaiji’s study was to show that

video games are completely beneficial to learning and education, despite parents’

preconceptions that video games only expose and desensitize kids to violence. The result of

the study was a success, as Alshaiji went on to say,

It can be concluded from the results of this study that Video Games have positive

effects on vocabulary learning processes in kindergarten classes of Saudi children.

Using Video Games in the classroom results in facilitating the English vocabulary
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learning among kindergartens children. Children’s English vocabulary learning

process and retention become much more enjoyable. (Alshaiji)

It should be noted, however, that these results are purely based on English vocabulary

retention, and cannot be extrapolated to other subjects, such as science or math.

While many parents may have the preconception that video games expose and

desensitize kids to violence, the benefits of using educational video games to supplement

learning can outweigh the negatives. While the preconceived notion of exposure to violence

through video games is well-based in the observation of many current popular video

games, such as Call of Duty, or Battlefield—which are both gory first-person shooter

games—parents may not realize that not only can video games enhance learning, but they

are perhaps the best option to do so. The reason why education video games such as The

Oregon Trail were so popular in schools is because they were fun to play. The core of the

game was meant to immerse the player in the world of the Oregon Trail, forcing them to

make decisions that people who actually traversed the Oregon Trail may have made. The

notion of being totally immersed in a virtual world is truly exhilarating, which can explain

why The Oregon Trail, despite being made to educate players about the Oregon Trail, was

so hugely popular. A more modern equivalent to The Oregon Trail can be made in Assassin’s

Creed: Origins. In this game, players take control of an assassin in ancient Egypt. While the

idea of becoming an assassin worries parents of potential (violent) side effects—and for

good reason—people who play this game may actually receive benefit from playing, as the

game is historically accurate, and also includes a discovery mode, which focuses heavily on

depicting historically accurate scenes and educating the player (Webster). So, while video

game violence is an understandable concern, the educational benefits that video games
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bring may outweigh those concerns. Since many children today grow up with technology

and video games around them, playing an educational video game is the modern equivalent

to watching an educational documentary.

With the release of Assassin’s Creed and other similar titles, a new generation of

educational video games began. Games that are historically accurate are becoming

increasingly popular, and that begs the question, “What will the future of educational video

games look like?” The answer isn’t precise, but one could argue that it would be essentially

the same as games that are around today, but more technologically advanced. Looking to

the most recent innovations in the world of technology would suggest that virtual reality

(VR) and augmented reality (AR) are the next step. There is, in fact, already proof that VR

and AR are beneficial to education and learning. There have been a few cases so far, where

doctors used VR or AR to help prepare them and practice for an upcoming difficult surgery.

One such case involved a patient who required a valve replacement surgery. Her surgeon

used 3D modeling and AR software to virtualize the patient’s CT scans into an interactive

3D virtual object. This allowed the surgeon to analyze the patient’s anatomy beforehand, so

that he could anticipate what he would do and what he would see. Software like True 3D,

the software used in the example, can not only help to save lives, but also educate future

doctors, engineers, scientists, and researchers. 3D VR and AR technology, when applied to

video games, could easily become the next step for educational video games. In fact, a game

called Surgeon Simulator VR—a game that simulates being a surgeon in virtual reality—

already shows proof that education virtual reality games could be successful. While crude

and mostly for humor, Surgeon Simulator VR presents proof-of-concept that an educational

virtual reality games could be implemented to train future surgeons.

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Modern progress in educational video games is advancing rapidly, but some argue

that instead of making video games more educational, education should be based on video

games. This thought, while sounding ridiculous at first, begins to make sense when looking

at the influence of video games on young children. Many children who play video games

often fantasize about the game, and as a result, their fantasies may become more realized

than reality. Misconceptions can also take hold, as young children do not have enough

knowledge to discern subtle fantasy elements from reality. An example of this would be

young children who play Minecraft. Many misconceptions gained through playing Minecraft

include inaccurate naming and representation of objects and actions, particularly ores,

stones, and smelting. These misconceptions, however, may not be totally detrimental, as

Lara Sharp explains,

Without having to play computer games ourselves, as educators we are able to use

these games as aids for sparking an interest in science in the classroom and beyond.

There is considerable information to inform us of the games (MinecraftEdu), and the

students will inevitably tell us more than we really want to know (Tromba, 2013).

(Sharp)

Sharp goes on to say, “A cursory glance will reveal how misconceptions might form in

players’ minds. Usefully, this sets up the perfect opportunity for injecting real geological

science into class discussions” (Sharp). Through class discussion, misconceptions about the

geology of Minecraft may be resolved, not only thoroughly, but also in a way that will

interest the students, as they are still talking about a video game they enjoy playing. The

relativity of correcting video game misconceptions through discussion can be seen in the

popularity of the YouTube channel, The Game Theorists. In the YoutTube videos, MatPat—
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the creator and host of The Game Theorists—discusses and corrects misconceptions and

flaky science of various video games by analyzing them with real-world physics, biology,

history, or literature. With over nine million subscribers and counting, the popularity of

these educational videos really speaks to the prevalence of video game misconceptions and

the educational potential in correcting these misconceptions through discussions.

The world is changing rapidly. If the education systems don’t evolve with

technology, schools will be left in the dust. While traditional schooling has its benefits, it’s

undeniable that the wake of modern society has brought up new problems that only new

education methods can hope to tackle. One such problem is the disparity of education

quality between first world countries and third world countries. It’s a problem that has

plagued the world for a long time, but with new innovation in education technology,

modern education can finally be accessible not just those in poverty, but also those with

developmental disabilities. A course of action must be taken, and it should be to use new,

emerging technologies to provide satisfactory education to those who most need it.
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Works Cited

Alshaiji, Ohoud Abdullatif. “Video Games Promote Saudi Children’s English Vocabulary

Retention.” Education, vol. 136, no. 2, Winter 2015, p. 123.

Dumon, Olivier. “How the Internet Changed Science Research and Academic Publishing,

Creating the New Research Economy.” Huffington Post, 3 Jan. 2013,

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/olivier-dumon/how-the-

internetchanged_b_2405006 .html. Accessed 7 November 2017.

“Education 3.0 : How Virtual Reality Will Change the Way We Learn.” Great Performers

Academy, https://greatperformersacademy.com/interesting/education-3-0-how-

virtual-reality-will-change-the-way-we-learn. Accessed 3 January 2018.

Purcell, Kristen, et al. “How Teens Do Research in the Digital World.” Pew Research Center:

Internet, Science & Tech, 1 Nov. 2012,

http://www.pewinternet.org/2012/11/01/how-teens-do-research-in-the-digital-

world/. Accessed 20 November 2017.

Sarfaraz, Iqra. “The International News.” Time to Digitalize.

https://www.thenews.com.pk/magazine/you/230784-Time-to-digitalize. Accessed

10 October 2017.

Schaffhauser, Dian. “What Will the Learning Device of the Future Look Like?” T H E Journal,

vol. 41, no. 12, Dec. 2014, pp. 8–11.

Sharp, Lara. “The Geology of Minecraft.” Teaching Science: The Journal of the Australian

Science Teachers Association, vol. 63, no. 1, Mar. 2017, p. 14.

Smith, Author: Ryan, et al. “How Technology Is Changing Academic Research.” WIRED,

https://www.wired.com/insights/2013/07/how-technology-is-changing-academic-
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research/. Accessed 30 October 2017.

Tatkovic, Nevenka and Maja Ruzic, A Distance Learning Review—The Communicational

Module “Learning on Demand—Anywhere at any Time”. Online Submission, Online

Submission, 01 Feb. 2004. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true

&db=eric&AN=ED490442@site=ehost-live.

Webster, Andrew. “Assassin’s Creed Origins’ New Educational Mode is a Violence-Free

Tour through Ancient Egypt.” The Verge, 20 Feb. 2018,

https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/20/17033024/assassins-creed-origins-

discovery-tour-educational-mode-release.