Assalamualaikum and Hello Dr Burn,

We are moving to the 21st  century where everything is keep changing and constantly moving. Technology is one part of it and it influences the pattern of our educational system from time to time. 

We can see the implications either from the positive side as well as the negative side of it. One of the positive sides that can be seen is from the perspective of the teaching materials/ teaching aids provided by the educators itself. Several years ago, educators do not really have opportunity and chance to diverse their teaching method as technology is not really being applied in the education system. Chalk and talk is the common method used by educators back then in delivering their lessons.

However, nowadays there is no boundary for educators to inculcate the use of technology in their teaching approach. The good side of it, students is able to experience a more interesting teaching and learning condition as they are exposed to a variety of teaching and learning method. Instead of just listen to the teacher, they can also watch the slides or even videos shown in the classroom. Indirectly, it will enhance their understanding about the topic discussed. In fact, it will also meet the needs of different learning styles among students. Some students might prefer to watch the materials that is being discuss  instead of just listen to what the teacher is saying. 

Vice versa, from the negative point of view, not to mention students nowadays do not have the same attitude compared to the older generation of students. They become lazier as they know that they can access to everything that they wish for just by click and type it on the internet. They don’t have the courtesy to read anymore and sometimes just wait for teachers to spoon feed everything. Plagiarism is another aspect that needs to take into consideration. Since everything is so easy to access, they tend to just copy and paste without even do a research or reading about it.  Lastly, students also learned inappropriate words as for instance taboo words from the internet. Worst, they even use some of the words in their academic writing without even bother to search for the actually meaning.

In term of education field, there’s a lot of changes occurred due to rapid movement in technology. Policy in education is one of the aspects that keep changing from time to time until some of the teachers can’t get into the right track. It is due to the fact that the Ministry of Education keep changing and altering all the policies exist in order to cater the needs for 21^st century of education. It is indeed a good practice in making sure that our education system is competitive in the eyes of the world. However, there are some issues occurred as for instance in term of workload as well as confusion among the teachers themselves about all the new policies that have been introduced. 

Consequently, most of the changes can’t be use as teachers themselves don’t know how to work on it. Other than that, the ministry should also provide funds and facilities such as computers/laptops and internet at each and every school if they really want all the policies/programs that was introduced to be carry out.

Above is my opinion regarding this issue which we have discussed in the previous class. I might be wrong as I am still new in the teaching career. However, this is what I observed in 4 months being an English teacher.

Thank you for your time.