Technology as Education Environment

Technology in Education

The rapid and constant pace of change in technology is creating both opportunities and challenges for schools. The opportunities include greater access to rich, multimedia content, the increasing use of online course taking to offer classes not otherwise available, the widespread availability of mobile computing devices that can access the Internet, the expanding role of social networking tools for learning and professional development, and the growing interest in the power of digital games for more personalized learning.

At the same time, the pace of change creates significant challenges for schools. To begin with, schools are forever playing technological catch up as digital innovations emerge that require upgrading schools’ technological infrastructure and building new professional development programs. Some schools have been adept at keeping up with those changes, while many others are falling far behind, creating a digital divide based largely on the quality of educational technology, rather than just simple access to the Internet.

The rapid evolution of educational technologies also makes it increasingly challenging to determine what works best. Longitudinal research that takes years to do risks being irrelevant by the time it is completed because of shifts in the technological landscape. The iPad, for instance, became popular in schools soon after it was released and well before any research could be conducted about its educational effectiveness.

Homeschool Environment

Homeschooling, also known as home education, is the education of children inside the home, as opposed to in the formal settings of a public or private school. Home education is usually conducted by a parent or tutor.

HISTORY

For much of history and in many cultures, enlisting professional teachers (whether as tutors or in a formal academic setting) was an option available only to the elite social classes. Thus, until relatively recently, the vast majority of people, especially during early childhood, were educated by family members, family friends, or anyone with useful knowledge.

The earliest public schools in modern Western culture were established in the early 16th century in the German states of Gotha and Thuringia. However, even in the 18th century, the majority of people in Europe lacked formal schooling, meaning they were homeschooled, tutored, or received no education at all. Regional differences in schooling existed in colonial America; in the south, farms and plantations were so widely dispersed that community schools such as those in the more compact settlements were impossible. In the middle colonies, the educational situation varied when comparing New York with New England until the 1850s. 

Formal schooling in a classroom setting has been the most common means of schooling throughout the world, especially in developed countries, since the early- and mid-19th century. Native Americans, who traditionally used homeschooling and apprenticeship, vigorously resisted compulsory education in the United States.

In the 1960s, Rousas John Rushdoony began to advocate homeschooling, which he saw as a way to combat the intentionally secular nature of the public school system in the United States. He vigorously attacked progressive school reformers such as Horace Mann and John Dewey, and argued for the dismantling of the state's influence in education in three works: Intellectual Schizophrenia, a general and concise study of education, The Messianic Character of American Education, a history and castigation of public education in the U.S., and The Philosophy of the Christian Curriculum, a parent-oriented pedagogical statement. Rushdoony was frequently called as an expert witness by the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) in court cases.

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Immersion Environment

Community Immersion
is an experimental process of being with the people in communities. The process helps concretize theoretical classroom discussion through actual experiences. It also raises the level of awareness and consciousness of the realities besetting the people in the communities. And lastly, it promotes involvement and service to the communities.

Each community needs to find its own solutions to its own problems. There are no easy or "universal" answers that can be brought in from the outside. Human factors (more than technical ones) are what make community activities fail or succeed. 

To serve those whose needs are greatest, community programs must make every effort to help the weak gain and keep control (sometimes this may mean refusing or limiting assistance from those in positions of power-whether inside or outside the community). 

Fieldtrip Environment

Field trips

A field trip or excursion is a journey by a group of people to a place away from their normal environment. When done for students, it is also known as school trip in the UK, New Zealand, Philippines; and school tour in Ireland.

The purpose of the trip is usually observation for education, non-experimental research or to provide students with experiences outside their everyday activities, such as going camping with teachers and their classmates. The aim of this research is to observe the subject in its natural state and possibly collect samples. Field trips are also used to produce civilized young men and women who appreciate culture and the arts. It is seen that more-advantaged children may have already experienced cultural institutions outside of school, and field trips provide a common ground with more-advantaged and less-advantaged children to have some of the same cultural experiences in the arts.

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Traditional Learning Environment

Traditional teaching is concerned with the teacher being the controller of the learning environment. Power and responsibility are held by the teacher and they play the role of instructor (in the form of lectures) and decision maker (in regards to cirriculum content and specific outcomes). They regard students as having 'knowledge holes' that need to be filled with information. In short, the traditional teacher views that it is the teacher that causes learning to occur (Novak, 1998)