Technology enables individuals to perform tasks more efficiently

Support, quotes, and analysis

Craig Downing (online debater). Economist Debate Series: Education. October 15, 2007 – “I support the position of Dr Kozma, not because technology provides some intrinsic benefit but because it facilitates some other more important benefit. Historically the introduction of new technology has ‘stuck’ when it enables (not when it is cast as having some intrinsic value of its own) improvements in productivity, health or safety. In educational terms the benefit comes from the automation of routine, expensive and mundane tasks. For example, if you can get to the information faster then, by avoiding the commute to the library, you can cover more material. The internet really just exposes the jumbled nature of traditional educational resources. I know of no educator who has ever expounded the benefits of performing routine administrative tasks, at the expense of quality face to face student time. The thrust of my perspective is that technology, well tailored and applied (with a sound ‘business’ case), liberates educators to interact more personally and more ‘relationally’ with students and peers because it removes or dramatically lessens the amount of routine and mundane work.

Anonymous commentator. Economist Debate Series: Education. October 16, 2007 – “Technology is a tool used to accomplish tasks more efficiently. After said accomplishment, a person may use the time gained to do non-productive tasks, or use the extra time for productive purposes. It is a teacher’s and student’s responsibility alike to find ways to utilize newly introduced technology in a responsible and effective manor, and use the benefits of increased efficiency appropriately.”

Thoff (online debater). Economist Debate Series. October 20, 2007 – “As an honors high school student, I have seen the progress made by the institution of methods depending upon the use of technology. As state standards increase and materical is constantly getting more difficult, technology is welcomed in order to offset these factors and make students understand the materical quicker and more efficiently.”

Grahamj (online debater). Economist Debate Series. October 19, 2007 – “Having studied science in the 60s, I cannot imagine how beneficial new technology would have been. Undoubtedly Sir John Daniel is correct in likening technology to ‘a fancy new tool’. But what a tool. Would anyone wish to spend hours with log tables or slide rule to calculate experimental resuts? To spend weeks in the library consulting abstracts and then trying to find the journal articles. To be unable to revise your dissertation as it would take another half hour to re-type the page. New technology is a precious tool that allows learning to be quicker, deeper and more accurate. I allows us to demonstrate that knowledge in clearer and better presented form. OUr thoughts can be shared more quickly with a wider audience. What it does not do is make a teacher better. The old skills that inspired us of enthusiasm for the subject and varied ways of engaging the students are still pre-eminent.”

DaneyD (online debater). Economist Debate Series. October 18, 2007 – “technology helps me to do my work faster than handwriting and focus on analysis.”

1353890 (online debater). Economist Debate Series. October 18, 2007 – “To be anti-technology is to fly in the face of reality. Education uses what is available from books to text messages and the richer the technology the richer the opportunities to learn in different ways. Powerpoint is not learning: Powerpoint is a delivery platform for information and it can be good and bad. give me a powerpoint presentation any day to an illegible blackboard that is erased before I can write it down; give me a word processor rather than read my handwriting: give me google than a futile search in a library for an article that can be at my fingertips in two seconds. Technology enhances my life AND my learning why try to separate the two processes?”