How Has Technology Affected Your Life?

Technology is an essential need in everybody's life. Without technology, many things would notbe able to materialize.

 As for me, technology has made my life more enjoyable and easy.One of the useful products of technology would be the television. Usually, my family would sittogether in the living room to watch television programmes together after dinner. During this time, we would occasionally talk about the shows that are being broadcasted.

 This allows my family to interact with each other more often.In the twenty-first century, one of the most important technologies would be the Internet. The Internet is a system, which allows people to communicate globally. I personally use the Interneton a daily basis and find it useful in many ways. Few examples would be, Internet mailing(email), instant messaging, online shopping and online gaming. With the Internet, I am able tokeep close contact with my aunt who has migrated to France. I often receive mails from her about how she is doing over in France.

 Online gaming is also another big part of my life. When I play games over the Internet, I am able to make friends with people from other countries. Another part of technology in my life would be the mobile technology. In the olden days, peoplewho wanted to communicate with their relatives in far away places would have only two choices.One was to personally take the trouble to travel to their relatives' place and another would bevia sending letters. Both ways needed huge amount of time.

 With mobile technology, people'slives are made easier as they can contact each other anywhere and anytime they want to. I personally have a mobile phone too and it has become more than a necessity in my life. 

Improving education is a huge issue (and always has been). Test scores, our perceived performance against other countries, and other factors have pushed education to the forefront of national politics, right behind healthcare reform. Technology can be used to improve teaching and learning and help our students be successful.

While smaller schools and class sizes are always desired, technology can not do that physically. However, technology can be a “force multiplier” for the teacher. Instead of the teacher being the only source of help in a classroom, students can access web sites, online tutorials, and more to assist them. Education doesn’t stop at the end of the school day because students have access to teachers, resources, and assignments via the web and access these resources at any time. Students can also get help and tutoring at any time, whether from the teacher via email or online collaboration, or from a help web site.

Parental involvement is another factor that can increase student achievement. Most parents these days have extremely busy schedules, work different hours, and can’t always help their child with homework or come to school for conferences. Technology can help. Parents can go to a class website and see what their child is working on, they can contact teachers via email and web sites, and they can even check their child’s attendance and grades through online systems. They can also talk to their children from work via email and instant messaging. 

Inquiry based projects are another way to get students to think rather than memorize. These group projects also help students build important skills such as communications, team work, critical thinking and problem solving. Technology can help with these projects and skills. Students can create things such as web sites, blogs, and multimedia presentations as part of their project. They can use the web for research and as a resource. They can connect with students at other schools and do collaborative work with them. They also learn technology skills while doing these projects.

Money is always an issue in education and technology can help. Virtual field trips, electronic forms instead of paper, email instead of printed memo’s, virtual labs, electronic textbooks, and the thousands of free online resources can all save schools money and give students excellent educational experiences.

Teachers can use technology to find resources and attend virtual professional development seminars and conferences (most are free). They can also create personal learning networks (PLN) with Ning, Twitter, and other resources to find and share ideas and resources, and get support from their colleagues.

Technology can give teachers and students great resources, new opportunities for learning, ways to collaborate and create, and save money. Technology is a very powerful tool for education