Table of Contents
- Defining the Information Age
- Information Technology in Caribbean Academics
- Disadvantages of the Information age on Caribbean schooling system
- Impact of extra-regional countries on the Information Age
The onset of the Information Age is associated with the Digital Revolution, just as the Industrial Revolution marked the onset of the Industrial Age.
During the Information Age, the phenomenon is that the digital industry creates a knowledge-based society surrounded by a high-tech global economy that spans over its influence on how the manufacturing throughput and the service sector operate in an efficient and convenient way. In a commercialized society, the information industry is able to allow individuals to explore their personalized needs, therefore simplifying the procedure of making decisions for transactions and significantly lowering costs for both the producers and buyers. This is accepted overwhelmingly by participants throughout the entire economic activities for efficacy purposes, and new economic incentives would then be indigenously encouraged, such as the knowledge economy.
The Information Age formed by capitalizing on computer microminiaturization advances. This evolution of technology in daily life and social organization has led to the fact that the modernization of information and communication processes has become the driving force of social evolution.
The Information Age in the Caribbean education system
Information and communication technology has become an inseparable influence on our modern day Caribbean education system and helped carrying out educational and social activities easier with also being more time and cost effective. This can be carried out in a split of a second using the internet, smartphones, tablets, other various gadgets and social media.It has helped the education system in the various ways (advantages):
• access to variety of learning resources
• immediacy to information
• anytime learning
• anywhere learning
• collaborative learning
• multimedia approach to education
• authentic and up to date information
• access to online libraries
• teaching of different subjects made interesting
• educational data storage
• distance education
• access to the source of information
• multiple communication channels-e-mail,chat,forum,blogs,etc.
• access to open courseware
• better accesses to children with disabilities
• reduces time on many routine tasks
IT in Education
Information Technology in Education, effects of the continuing developments in information technology (IT) on education. The pace of change brought about by new technologies has had a significant effect on the way people live, work, and play worldwide. New and emerging technologies challenge the traditional process of teaching and learning, and the way education is managed. Information technology, while an important area of study in its own right, is having a major impact across all curriculum areas. Easy worldwide communication provides instant access to a vast array of data, challenging assimilation and assessment skills. Rapid communication, plus increased access to IT in the home, at work, and in educational establishments, could mean that learning becomes a truly lifelong activity, an activity in which the pace of technological change forces constant evaluation of the learning process itself.• Access to variety of learning resources
In the era of technology. IT aids plenty of resources to enhance the teaching skills and learning ability. With the help of IT now it is easy to provide audio visual education. The learning resources are being widens and widen. Now with this vivid and vast technique as part of the IT curriculum, learners are encouraged to regard computers as tools to be used in all aspects of their studies. In particular, they need to make use of the new multimedia technologies to communicate ideas, describe projects, and order information in their work.
• Immediacy to information
IT has provided immediacy to education. Now in the year of computers and web networks the pace of imparting knowledge is very very fast and one can be educated anywhere at any time. New IT has often been introduced into well-established patterns of working and living without radically altering them. For example, the traditional office, with secretaries working at keyboards and notes being written on paper and manually exchanged, has remained remarkably stable, even if personal computers have replaced typewriters.
• Any time learning
Now in the year of computers and web networks the pace of imparting knowledge is very very fast and one can be educated .One can study whenever he wills irrespective of whether it is day or night and irrespective of being in India or in US because of the boom in IT.
• Collaborative learning
Now IT has made it easy to study as well as teach in groups or in clusters. With online we can be unite together to do the desired task. Efficient postal systems, the telephone (fixed and mobile), and various recording and playback systems based on computer technology all have a part to play in educational broadcasting in the new millennium. The Internet and its Web sites are now familiar to many children in developed countries and among educational elites elsewhere, but it remains of little significance to very many more, who lack the most basic means for subsistence.
• Multimedia approach to education
Audio-Visual Education, planning, preparation, and use of devices and materials that involve sight, sound, or both, for educational purposes. Among the devices used are still and motion pictures, filmstrips, television, transparencies, audiotapes, records, teaching machines, computers, and videodiscs. The growth of audio-visual education has reflected developments in both technology and learning theory.
Studies in the psychology of learning suggest that the use of audio-visuals in education has several advantages. All learning is based on perception, the process by which the senses gain information from the environment. The higher processes of memory and concept formation cannot occur without prior perception. People can attend to only a limited amount of information at a time; their selection and perception of information is influenced by past experiences. Researchers have found that, other conditions being equal, more information is taken in if it is received simultaneously in two modalities (vision and hearing, for example) rather than in a single modality. Furthermore, learning is enhanced when material is organized and that organization is evident to the student.
These findings suggest the value of audio-visuals in the educational process. They can facilitate perception of the most important features, can be carefully organized, and can require the student to use more than one modality.
• Authentic and up to date information
The information and data which are available on the net is purely correct and up to date.
Internet, a collection of computer networks that operate to common standards and enable the computers and the programs they run to communicate directly provides true and correct information.
• Online library
Internets support thousands of different kinds of operational and experimental services one of which is online library. We can get plenty of data on this online library.
As part of the IT curriculum, learners are encouraged to regard computers as tools to be used in all aspects of their studies. In particular, they need to make use of the new multimedia technologies to communicate ideas, describe projects, and order information in their work. This requires them to select the medium best suited to conveying their message, to structure information in a hierarchical manner, and to link together information to produce a multidimensional document.
• Distance learning
Distance Learning, method of learning at a distance rather than in a classroom. Late 20th-century communications technologies, in their most recent phases multimedia and interactive, open up new possibilities, both individual and institutional, for an unprecedented expansion of home-based learning, much of it part-time. The term distance learning was coined within the context of a continuing communications revolution, largely replacing a hitherto confusing mixed nomenclature—home study, independent study, external study, and, most common, though restricted in pedagogic means, correspondence study. The convergence of increased demand for access to educational facilities and innovative communications technology has been increasingly exploited in face of criticisms that distance learning is an inadequate substitute for learning alongside others in formal institutions. A powerful incentive has been reduced costs per student. At the same time, students studying at home themselves save on travel time and other costs.
Whatever the reasoning, distance learning widens access for students unable for whatever reason (course availability, geographical remoteness, family circumstances, individual disability) to study alongside others. At the same time, it appeals to students who prefer learning at home. In addition, it appeals to organizers of professional and business education, providing an incentive to rethink the most effective way of communicating vital information.
• Better accesses to children with disabilities
Information technology has brought drastic changes in the life of disabled children. IT provides various software and technique to educate these poor peoples. Unless provided early with special training, people profoundly deaf from birth are incapable of learning to speak. Deafness from birth causes severe sensory deprivation, which can seriously affect a person's intellectual capacity or ability to learn. A child who sustains a hearing loss early in life may lack the language stimulation experienced by children who can hear. The critical period for neurological plasticity is up to age seven. Failure of acoustic sensory input during this period results in failure of formation of synaptic connections and, possibly, an irremediable situation for the child. A delay in learning language may cause a deaf child's academic progress to be slower than that of hearing children. The academic lag tends to be cumulative, so that a deaf adolescent may be four or more academic years behind his or her hearing peers. Deaf children who receive early language stimulation through sign language, however, generally achieve academically alongside their hearing peers.
The integration of information technology in teaching is a central matter in ensuring quality in the educational system. There are two equally important reasons for integrating information technology in teaching. Pupils must become familiar with the use of information technology, since all jobs in the society of the future will be dependent on it, and information technology must be used in teaching in order to improve its quality and make it more effective.
Disadvantages of modern technology on Caribbean education:
• It has cause a major distraction to many children.• Laziness in Studying
Computers make is so easy to find answers that students barely have to look for them. This may result in them having poor study habits and developing a lazy attitude toward their education.
• Forgetting the Basic Way of Studying
They would no longer rely on the books that are lent by their teachers for them to study since they are already interested to study using the computer. Even simple problems and homework that they need to answer, they are more of seeking the assistance of computers already.
• Discovering Unusual Things in the Computer
Allowing the students to surf the internet doesn’t necessarily mean that all the things that they are going to discover are good for their mind and studies. There are several things that are found in the internet which are not good for the students hence they need to be properly guided by their teachers and parents every time they are going to use the computer.
• Easier Cheating
Another one of the big problems that are argued when it comes to technology in education is just how easy it has become for students to cheat. They are able to simply search an answer to a question and instantly find the answer.
• Extremely expensive to keep up to date. It is not secret that the newest and most up to date technology is very expensive. In order for a school to use technology like this they have to pay for it, which is difficult for most public schools to do because of the sheer cost. This is also difficult for parents because the students become accustomed to some technology that they do not have at home.
• Hinders basic skills
Technology automates just about everything. Instead of learning and understanding basic math, students can simply use their calculator on their phones. Spelling is another example of this, we need to make sure that students retain the ability to problem solve and think for themselves.
Section by Ian Liburd
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