Assignment Educational Technology

                                                     Educational technology

                                                           Assignment  

1. W.rite a note on role of teachers in digital era

There is a global concern that our educational systems are obsolete and failing to promote the necessary skills that can adequately prepare our children for the future. The earlier generations’ drive to study was robustly rooted in conscientiousness. The new generations have different motivational profiles: in their lives interest, emotions, and engagement matter much more. Teachers' role in the 21st century has become more complex in the present changing world; here knowledge is almost unlimited. Teachers are expected to become technologically oriented and responsible not only for their teaching but also for their students' learning. They have to cater for particular needs of individual students in heterogeneous classes, and create a student-centered learning environment which endeavors for excellence, and offers opportunities for enquiry and dynamic learning. Teachers need to meet the standards of the curriculum while enhancing students' creativity, curiosity and motivation. They need to ensure a safe ambience in their classrooms and maintain relationships with students, parents and staff. However, the question of how to push in technological changes in education without posing a risk to human values remains unresolved. 

Higher education institutions face a number of opportunities and challenges as the result of the digital revolution. This is because higher education institutions perform a number of scholarship functions including teaching and research which are affected by the availability and usage of digital technologies.In the new digital and knowledge society in the 21st century, education is facing great challenges from traditional ways of learning towards innovative ways of learning. It also raises great demands for the transformation of teacher roles from the traditional knowledge transmitter to a new set of roles such as facilitator and coordinator. This transformation requires that teachers can face their new tasks in a more flexible way and be prepared for their new roles.

Today teachers are required to be facilitators helping learners to make judgements about the quality and validity of new sources and knowledge, be open-minded and critical independent professionals, be active cooperators, collaborators, and mediators between learners and what they need to know, and providers to scaffold understanding.The role of teachers has transferred to a more broad and diverse definition to meet the needs of learning communities. I think the way of how teachers view or interact with students is changing as well. In a diverse society, teachers should view each student as an individual and facilitate learning based on personal interests. It’s the diversity and individualization that make the world unique and special. Even though it sounds difficult but it is not impossible. The rising question is how teachers know all kinds of knowledge and skills to teach every student with different talent? As a result, this is where networked learning comes into play.

Teachers have to make the available support structures and systems for them to develop skills like interactive learning, collaborative learning and independent learning among the students. The teachers’ role expands to nurture critical thinking, creativity and scientific temper among the students to transform them into life-long learners and innovators.A teacher equipped with digital command can nurture critical thinking, creativity and scientific temper among the students to transform them into life-long learners and innovators. It’s teacher’s role to expose the learner to advanced level of knowledge and skills (blended learning, expert lectures, seminars, workshops etc. Teacher can play a pivotal role in preparing a complete repository comprising the details on the academic, personal and psycho-social support and guidance services (professional counselling/mentoring/academic advice) provided to students. Teacher ought to use e-library resources to augment the teaching-learning process.

A teacher is the centre of any teaching learning process. In this digital era, a teacher has got a no. of responsibilities in addition to his/her prior role to keep pace with the changing technologies and changing teaching learning environments. A teacher is accountable to the society which trust him/her for shaping its coming generations for better civilizations and to the nation which trust him/her for making its future more bright and progressive. To deal with this accountability, a teacher need to use ICT effectively with its traditional techniques of teaching to facilitate critical and innovative thinking in his/her classrooms and it is only then one can dream of a knowledge society and a better digitalized education World around us. The one who can correlate learners’ needs and desires with the objectives of curriculum to achieve desired educational goals is the teacher required in the present digitalized world.

2.Differentiate between Synchronous and asynchronous learning.

Synchronous learning refers to a learning event in which a group of participants is engaged in learning at the same time whereas If synchronous learning takes place at the same time, asynchronous learning refers to the opposite. The instructor, the learner, and other participants are not engaged in the learning process at the same time. There is no real-time interaction with other people

Synchronous learning	Asynchronous learning
Traditional classroom	Recorded class
Instant messaging	E-mail
Immediate feedback from instructor and peers	Sending a question and waiting for an answer
Phone call	Recorded voice message
In-person training	Online training courses (without live video)
Live webinar	Recorded webinar
Group-paced	Self-paced
	Submitted by Darsana Prakash L PHYSICAL SCIENCE