The Importance Of Computer Technology

One of the defining traits of today’s society is the increasing dependency on computer technology (CT). Its remarkable effects on all aspect of economic and social life allowed individuals from all corners of the world to be able to have access and transmit information at unimaginable speed. Thus inter-relating users create a virtual network that introduces our society to the near future. One of the many outcomes that theorists have noted is the shift from individual communities to “the global village” where geographical limits are nothing else but a mere convention. Historically, formal transmittal of knowledge has followed a well-defined linear and unidirectional pattern from teacher to student (Bransford, 1986). Therefore, it was the teacher who managed the pace and amount of information that would be disseminated among students who would be therefore perceived as a unit taken through the gradual stages of learning. Lecturing was the main method of imparting knowledge. This kind of static transfer of knowledge encouraged passive learning, as students were simply exposed to the information presented by the teacher who acted as the only recipient of knowledge in the classroom. Consequently, all instructional planning processes were geared toward fortifying the “omniscient” role of the

New learning units/programs have been developed as a direct result of the infusion of CT into the structure of schooling as an illustration of the substantial impact educational software has had upon instruction. Out of the wide range of computer software applications (databases, graphics, spreadsheets, word processing programs, etc.), “computer-assisted learning” (CAL) is specifically designed for academic purposes. CAL involves three primary approaches: computer-assisted instruction (CAI), computer-managed instruction (CMI), and computer-enriched instruction (CEI; Niemiec & Walberg,