COMMUNITY PROBLEM REPORT

Digital Media in Education

Viviana Rey

RWS 1301

11/10/2017
 Abstract

With the rapidly growing development of digital media, the use of technology-based

learning method has become more and more common among professors, even those who rather

stick to traditional methods have started to introduce these methods in their classrooms due to the

promising results they have shown in students of all academic levels.

Many technology-based methods are used every day in classrooms, showing promising

results in students capacity to develop their own critical thinking, and this paper will address

some of them in order to comprehend the way they work and why they do so.

Technology may be an ally or an enemy depending on the way its used, and finding the

balance between traditional learning and methods that include technology is crucial in order to

create an effective system where students and professor can get the most out of every lesson they

go through in the classroom.

Thesis

Students develop a critical thinking more efficiently when they use technology-based

learning methods, such as videos, digital platforms and visual material, but even though these

methods may be really helpful, they also have their disadvantages if they are not used correctly.

Introduction

Just as everybody has experienced in their everyday lives, digital media has a great

impact in peoples lives, and students in the classroom are not the exception. The use of different

media devices has shown a great improvement in the way students retain information and helps

by motivating them by turning every lesson into something more dynamic and interactive.

Professors are presented to a wide array of visual media material that can be used in

classroom in order to help students to develop different aspects of critical literacy skills,
historical thinking, and similar skills related to the development of critical inquiry (Pearcy 2015,

41). Many authors share the same idea about the use of visual material and technology in class.

Reychav (2015), for example, says that the use of these methods has made it easier for student to

achieve that deep learning necessary to demonstrate their critical thinking, develop strong

arguments, and recognize untrusty information and statements that would most likely lead to the

elaboration of weak arguments and lack of credibility (Reychav et al. 2015, 23) leaving the

students unprepared for the exigencies of the real world once they graduate college and start

looking for a serious job in their majors field.

At the University of Texas at El Paso, students get to interact with technology in most of

their classes, using the virtual portal Blackboard to upload their assignments, the IClicker Reef to

check their assistance and answer questions related to the class through their phones or laptops,

making and watching PowerPoint presentations and doing assignments that require them to

create visual material, such as videos or presentations.

Even though technology in the classroom can be really useful when trying to experiment

with more dynamic methods and interactive lessons, it is not enough just to have sophisticated

digital teaching methods in order to make the best out of every students learning experience in

school, educators need to be pedagogically, cultural and socially adapted in order to use

effectively the technologies used in the classroom (Lupton et al. 2017, 105), but once the balance

between classic teaching skills and new technology-based methods is achieved, students can

make the most out of every lesson.

Technology in the Classroom

Students have presented a direct link between the use of technology in the classroom and

important learning behaviors, and each device works better in different environments depending
on what it is being used for and what exactly it is being used for, but there are qualities in

common shared between most technology-based methods, the most important of them all is the

increase of motivation in students because of the variety of possible ways to teach the same

subject using different presentations, dynamics or resources that technology makes possible by

providing so many possibilities (Reychav et al. 2015, 23).

Although some professors are still having second thoughts about technology in their

classrooms, it has been proven that the use of technology among professors and students

facilitates the communication between them and the transmission of knowledge, this also

increases the confidence of students, as well as the professors (Reychav et al. 2015, 24) and

makes collaboration easier among them.

The use of multimedia and visual material in the classroom facilities the presentation of

material and enhances the learning experience for students, because this active teaching

environment keeps students attention focused on what is being taught due to the visual

stimulation that they are being presented to (Ulbig 2010, 186) because the key purpose of

graphic material is to make thing more attractive, appealing and memorable, and this helps to

increase the students engagement, attitude, and keep the constant motivation towards the

subjects taught in the classroom.

Advantages, Disadvantages, and effectiveness of The Use of Technology in the

classroom

The inclusion of technology in the classroom is no longer considered an issue for most

institutions, it has already become part of the educational system and has been used to solve

many problems easier than it would be with traditional methods, however, it is important to keep

in consideration that there exists a risk when using new technologies in the classroom if they are
not used properly, because just as they can help the students and the professors approach certain

topics more easily and clearly, they can distort reality as well depending on how they are being

used by educators and students (Rossi 2010, 192). The real issue now that technology is part of

our system is the fact that the effectiveness of these new methods depends mostly on the

professors knowledge, perception, and assumptions rather than technology itself (Mishra and

Sharma 2005, 26). Pedagogical decision making in the formulation of teaching strategies is

crucial in order to create a proper system that makes multimedia technologies work at its

maximum effectiveness in the classroom, because without this pedagogical focused system,

multimedia technologies tend to have a lack of impact in exchange of a lot of time, money and

effort creating useless practices in educational institutions.

It's no easy task to achieve that balance between traditional and technology-based

learning techniques, but once its done, there are plenty of positive effects that students and

educators can take advantage of. The correct use of technology can provide students the means to

create scientific, literary of artistic inventions, amplify the students imagination due to the

massive collection of images that amplify their perception of reality, facilitates the resolving of

problems presented in real life by reproducing real life situations, or incorporate most of the

human senses to experience every lesson in the most complete and human way possible (Rossie

2010, 200).

Multimedia Educational Methods

Every individual assimilates information more efficiently in their own way, not

everybody will understand information using the same method, and it is important to keep this in

consideration in order to have a variety of different procedures that fit the necessities of each
student to aid them in the development of their implicit learning, where the person learns almost

without noticing it due to the effectiveness of the methods used (Bourgoyne and Alt 2017, 1568).

Films, video, and art are recurrent tools used in order to motivate students develop a

critical reasoning by making them analyze the significance and meaning of abstract works,

incorporate multiple perspectives to their knowledge, and focus on different issues about

different topics. There is a great impact in the way visual culture influences in the classroom,

taking for example the fact that students feel more encouraged to actively criticize what they see

rather than just passively absorb it (Pearcy 2015, 41).

Just as important and effective as the visual material previously mentioned, there also

exist the technology based methods that require more practical participation from the students,

such as online platforms that engages students outside and inside the classroom. As time passes,

more and more classes are starting to base their evaluations in online platforms that do not

require face to face interaction between the students and the professors, and although this may

sometimes become counterproductive because this makes the students feel like the professors

comments on their work is impersonal, there are some useful tools that these platforms provide

us that facilitate the participation in class for some students that might not feel as comfortable to

participate directly in the classroom as other students. These methods look towards encouraging

active learning, giving feedback anytime, and reduce the time it takes to complete a task (Kontos

2015, 37).

Conclusion

The fast growing of technology and visual methods turned into the inclusion of them in

most classrooms really suddenly, this presented a great opportunity for educators to improve

their teaching methods as well as a challenge to develop their techniques in a way that allows
them to cause a positive impact successfully. The University of Texas at El Paso provides

students the opportunity to use these methods in a relatively limited way, but allows the students

to get familiar with these methods. As long as the educators find a balance between classic

teaching techniques and new technology-based techniques, the results obtained are most likely to

aid students in the development of their critical thinking.

Mobile devices in education. Digital Image. GlobalAccessibilityNews. July 6, 2015. Accessed

November 25, 2017. www.globalaccessibilitynews.com

Technology makes classrooms more accessible for students.

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