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  1. Creating an online classroom is an important step in moving to a remote learning environment. Microsoft Teams for Education provides an online classroom so students and teachers can find new ways to continue to focus on learning — free for schools and universities. Students and educators at.
  2. Edtech’s educational technology’s definition has evolved over the years as a variation of ways of dealing with learning processes (2), a conceptual framework (9), theory and practice (5), and the latest study and ethical practices of dealing with technological processes and resources (1).

A Bibliography of Research and Resources on Technology and Engaged Learning compiled by NCREL's Resource Center. Sustaining Educational Technology: Funding Challenges and Opportunities for Policymakers. To the Point provides short essays and resources for overcoming common obstacles to technology integration. The last few months have created opportunities for educators and developers of education technology to innovate. Students are learning to use digital tools to create things that would otherwise be done by hand, exploring the world virtually through maps and videos, and even inventing ways to stage group musical performances from a dozen tiny.

AV technology in schools. AV technology has been used in schools for decades, but only in the form of a TV and video player to show short educational films. Now it is the computer that shows these educational films and homework is also being done increasingly on PCs.

Technology has impacted almost every aspect of life today, and education is no exception. Or is it? In some ways, education seems much the same as it has been for many years. A 14th century illustration by Laurentius de Voltolina depicts a university lecture in medieval Italy. The scene is easily recognizable because of its parallels to the modern day. The teacher lectures from a podium at the front of the room while the students sit in rows and listen. Some of the students have books open in front of them and appear to be following along. A few look bored. Some are talking to their neighbors. One appears to be sleeping. Classrooms today do not look much different, though you might find modern students looking at their laptops, tablets, or smart phones instead of books (though probably open to Facebook). A cynic would say that technology has done nothing to change education.

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However, in many ways, technology has profoundly changed education. For one, technology has greatly expanded access to education. In medieval times, books were rare and only an elite few had access to educational opportunities. Individuals had to travel to centers of learning to get an education. Today, massive amounts of information (books, audio, images, videos) are available at one’s fingertips through the Internet, and opportunities for formal learning are available online worldwide through the Khan Academy, MOOCs, podcasts, traditional online degree programs, and more. Access to learning opportunities today is unprecedented in scope thanks to technology.

Technology

Opportunities for communication and collaboration have also been expanded by technology. Traditionally, classrooms have been relatively isolated, and collaboration has been limited to other students in the same classroom or building. Today, technology enables forms of communication and collaboration undreamt of in the past. Students in a classroom in the rural U.S., for example, can learn about the Arctic by following the expedition of a team of scientists in the region, read scientists’ blog posting, view photos, e-mail questions to the scientists, and even talk live with the scientists via a videoconference. Students can share what they are learning with students in other classrooms in other states who are tracking the same expedition. Students can collaborate on group projects using technology-based tools such as wikis and Google docs. The walls of the classrooms are no longer a barrier as technology enables new ways of learning, communicating, and working collaboratively.

Technology has also begun to change the roles of teachers and learners. In the traditional classroom, such as what we see depicted in de Voltolina’s illustration, the teacher is the primary source of information, and the learners passively receive it. This model of the teacher as the “sage on the stage” has been in education for a long time, and it is still very much in evidence today. However, because of the access to information and educational opportunity that technology has enabled, in many classrooms today we see the teacher’s role shifting to the “guide on the side” as students take more responsibility for their own learning using technology to gather relevant information. Schools and universities across the country are beginning to redesign learning spaces to enable this new model of education, foster more interaction and small group work, and use technology as an enabler.

Technology is a powerful tool that can support and transform education in many ways, from making it easier for teachers to create instructional materials to enabling new ways for people to learn and work together. With the worldwide reach of the Internet and the ubiquity of smart devices that can connect to it, a new age of anytime anywhere education is dawning. It will be up to instructional designers and educational technologies to make the most of the opportunities provided by technology to change education so that effective and efficient education is available to everyone everywhere.

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The importance of audio visual (AV) technology in education should not be underestimated. There are two reasons for this; one, learning via AV creates a stimulating and interactive environment which is more conducive to learning; two, we live in an audio-visual age which means that having the skills to use AV equipment is integral to future employment prospects. Therefore exposure to AV technology in education is imperative.

AV Technolog

The AV technology used in education currently is mainly the interactive whiteboard. More than two million interactive whiteboards are now installed worldwide, and this product continues to show strong growth. It is predicted that one out of every five classrooms worldwide will have an interactive whiteboard by the end of 2013.

Children are exposed from a young age to a range of other AV technologies, which previous generations were not. This includes the television, DVDs, iPods, Nintendo Wiis, computer games and the Internet. Statistics which show the link between children and AV technology include:

• Mobile market trends report that between 2010 and 2012, over 7 million mobile subscribers are aged between 0 and 10
• A further 2 million are aged 11 to 14 years old (BECTA, 2008).
• A report by Mintel in 2011 found that “half of all children aged 7 to 12 visit social networking websites’
• An estimated 0.97 million children, go on Facebook everyday.” (Mintel, 2011)

Therefore it is clear that children of primary school age have the interest and capacity to learn and navigate AV technologies.

The importance of AV technology in education for future career prospects

AV skills are essential in the world of business today. In the current economic climate the government needs to make long term plans to ensure that the skills set of the UK match the evolution of AV. A research report conducted by ‘Prospects’ (a United Kingdom graduate careers company) identified that:

“there are strong signs that the IT industry will continue to grow across a range of industries and IT is the essential component which ensures businesses can run effectively and efficiently.”
The report furthered:

“There will be an increasing need for employees to possess higher level IT skills to cope with the demand for producing more innovative IT products. These skills need to be continually refined if the UK is to remain a significant player in the IT sector in the future.”

This highlights the absolute necessity of the role of the national curriculum to educate children with the AV skills that are necessary to perform the jobs of the future.

AV technology in schools

AV technology has been used in schools for decades, but only in the form of a TV and video player to show short educational films. Now it is the computer that shows these educational films and homework is also being done increasingly on PCs.

Children learn differently and audio visual equipment gives teachers the chance to stimulate each child’s learning process with a combination of pictures, sounds and attention grabbing media. We are surrounded by audio visual equipment and children are keen to understand technology and keep up to date with applied science. Having this opportunity in the classroom helps to facilitate learning.

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More and more schools are taking advantage of AV technology to teach their students. This equipment can be used to present information to students but also the fact that they are interacting with AV technology on a daily basis also makes them proficient in using technology.

Not exposing children to different forms of technology is depriving them of vital learning opportunities that could benefit them in later life for example through increased career opportunities. AV lessons should not just consist of children working in pairs on a PowerPoint presentation or rewriting a piece of work using Word, ICT should be challenging, exciting and fun.

Barriers to AV technology

Schools are sometimes reticent to recognise the benefits that technology offers to children who are in contact with them every day. Also, a child’s technological ability often outweighs that of the teacher (Burns, 2012). This creates a clear barrier to using AV in education effectively.

A report written by Becta in 2004 on ‘a review of the research literature on barriers to the uptake of AV by teachers’ evidences many factors to illustrate this gap. For example:

“Resistance to change is a factor which prevents full integration of ICT in the classroom.”
Also:

‘A very significant determinant of teachers’ levels of engagement in ICT is their level of confidence in using the technology. Teachers who have little or no confidence in using computers in their work will try to avoid them altogether.’

Therefore in order to use AV technology successfully in education, these bariers need to be overcome.
Interactive Whiteboards

According to the report ‘Interactive Whiteboards in Education,’ they help in improving learning in education in the following ways:

• They make it easy for teachers to enhance presentation content by easily integrating a wide range of material into a lesson e.g. a picture from the internet, and teacher annotations on these objects.
• They allow teachers to create easily and rapidly customised learning objects from a range of existing content and to adapt it to the needs of the class in real time.
• They allow learners to absorb information more easily.
• They allow learners to participate in group discussions by freeing them from note-taking.
• They allow learners to work collaboratively around a shared task or work area.
• When fully integrated into a VLE (virtual learning environment) and learning object repository there is potential for widespread sharing of resources.
• When used for interactive testing of understanding for the entire class, they can rapidly provide learner feedback.

DVDs

The British Film Institute (BFI) has been working with local authorities to provide schools with packs of seven DVDs containing 55 short films, and has trained primary and secondary teachers to think about film in terms of narrative, structure, editing and sound. They have found, he says, that film can often spark a response in children who otherwise appear uninterested in literacy.
Many teachers who have used the films have found that children who previously said very little, or had poor writing skills, demonstrate a much more sophisticated vocabulary and writing ability than they had previously shown,
A research report by Jackie Marsh of the University of Sheffield and Eve Bearne of the United Kingdom Literacy Association, entitled ‘Moving Literacy On’, says that the BFI project resulted in a measurable improvement in children’s literacy to the extent of improving SAT scores in some local authorities.

iPod Touches

Learning consultant Professor Stephen Heppell ran a project in which he gave 13 and 14 year-old students iPod Touches (MP3 players with screens that allow you to browse the internet) and asked them to complete certain tasks. To his surprise, he found that their search engine of choice was not Google, but YouTube, because it provided them with a clear, visual set of results rather than a series of short paragraphs.

YouTube

YouTube and other similar sites such as TeacherTube and Teachers TV are powerful tools that are freely available to anyone and, offer vast potential for the use of audio-visual materials in education. YouTube has a wealth of educational content – from science experiments (there are 47,000 in all) through to PowerPoint presentations and simple demonstrations of how to play a musical instrument.

Mobile Phones

Resources

A recent Becta report by Elizabeth Hartnell-Young, ‘How Mobile Phones Help Learning in Secondary Schools’, showed how mobile phones could be used in a variety of imaginative ways, from taking photographs of designs or experiments in Design Technology or science lessons to making a recording of the teacher reading a poem that the student could listen to later.

Some primary schools have successfully used Create-A-Scape, a free learning resource from Futurelab that uses the GPS and camera functions of a handheld device such as a PDA, enabling learners to create learning journeys that are enhanced by audio-visual materials: collections of sounds and images are triggered when the user moves into a particular geographical area.

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The Internet

The internet doesn’t just give students access to a vast range of information, it also enables them to share their work with others. For example an Essex school created podcasts by students which now have 1,000 subscribers. Dan Sutch, a Senior Researcher at Futurelab says:

“Podcasts are a great example of where a fantastic resource, of an expert, such as a teacher, explaining something, can be accessed when the student needs it. It might be in revision, on a reflection of the lesson, or it might be a lesson the child hasn’t physically attended but as it’s been podcast they potentially have access to it.”

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In other words, it puts the choice of how to learn in the hands of the learner, by enabling them to learn in their own time, at their own pace and in their chosen way

The future of AV technology in schools

Audio-visual technologies will play a huge role in the future of schools thanks to the development of technology and the increasing body of evidence which proves its ability to improve learning and future employment prospects. The National Curriculum describes AV as something that:

“Prepares pupils to participate in a rapidly changing world in which work and other activities are increasingly transformed by access to a varied and developing technology.”

A wide selection of AV tools make teaching and learning a rich and enjoyable experience, inspire learners with creative and innovative multimedia activities and will also save time in lesson preparation. The ability to share this information will eventually create a ‘global curriculum’

(Source, Carding – Education Closet View Here)