Technology and Education: A New Approach

They say experience is the best teacher I believe that as we grow, we finally come to understand the meaning of this saying well. Just two days ago I was telling my friends that we have been in school all our lives and some of us still want to go back to school. Honestly, in Africa, most people go to school especially to do their masters or PhD just to escape unemployment. There are no jobs even after your first degree and so instead of staying at home and being frustrated, people just enrol for further studies.

If only they had the chance to work and earn a living, most people wouldn’t even bother to pay again for masters or even PhD. Looking at the western world, most people do not go back to school after college and even as they are in high school and even college, they still have flexible schedules to work while schooling. I can’t say same for Africa because it’s more like the system in working against you. Back in the university and even today, I still feel some of our lecturers were more like our enemies of progress because they literally wanted us to fail all the time. Why do I say this? I’m a teacher now and so I’m able to see things from both perspectives.

I’ve been a student and now I’m a teacher. I see the struggles these students go through on daily basis and I’m able to relate with them because I was in their shoes a while back. Being a student is hard. Having to study everyday, go to class, have a life and so much more is just exhausting. For average students, you can imagine the extra work they have to put in to make things work for them academically. Every student is different, we have the extremely smart ones who will party all semester and still pass their exams and then, we have those who have to sit their butts down and burn the midnight candle to make the grades.

At some point in my school life, I came to realise I was working hard, but not smart. I would study the whole night and still not be able to ace my exams like I wanted to until I found my style of learning. I’m very good at cramming but I only do that in desperate times. Regardless, the goal was to pass the exams for most part of my school life. One thing I’ve come to realise about most students is that we learn to pass and not to know and that alone takes away the beauty of everything and I learnt this the hard way. When you learn to know, you’re indirectly learning smart but when you learn to pass, you’ll have to work hard with little to no results sometimes.

Exams are not meant to be hard. It’s more like a test to make you know your strengths and weaknesses . Students dread exams so much these days. I remember having an open book test in level 200 and even with our phones and lecture notes, we still couldn’t answer most of the questions. How do you search for something you have no understanding of. We had all the materials at our disposal but we still couldn’t find our way around it because we didn’t even know what the whole concept was about.

Now, we have the emergence of AI and all these technological tools which in a way have made students very lazy instead of boosting their productivity. Imagine giving out an assignment where all the answers are in the handout and these students still go and copy wrong answers from AI for you. It’s frustrating, but that’s what the world has come to. Even now, I believe examinations have become more flexible than before. Back in my day, we used to write objectives and theory for exams but now it’s strictly objectives. Even though it’s standard, I believe it’s still flexible. But you know students, not everyone would be able to make it.

Taking a look into things, I believe the problem is not entirely related to the educational system but also the students. While the educational system need to be worked on drastically,these students also need a mentality shift so as to make everything easier on both sides. That’s the only way we will move forward and do better in this era of technology.


all images belong to me.


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18 comments
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It is necessary to have a balance between teaching methods. Technology can assist in many ways, but it is also important to encourage students to seek knowledge to use it for growth, not just to make things easier. Good text and perspective on this topic!

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Thanks for adding the photos, giving me nostalgia, I miss my college days.

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This is one of the reasons why I said examination should be used as an assessment because cramming is a very common thing among students. The majority of the students read to pass and when you ask what they did in the previous semester, they barely remember anything.

Instead of blaming, I think the people in charge of the system and students should do the needful.

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I totally agree with you. We need to stop all this and fix our educational system.

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Things are truly changing, back in the days many lecturers find pleasure in the failure of students. Students can be very funny and they few they are playing smart.

We keep putting our best and hope for things to change

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Now, teachers are better than back in the day.🤭

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Truly exams are not meant to be hard and it can't determine the level of a students. What most people does is that they do not know what is best for them, just as how you discovered yourself. If students can discover themselves there won't be any problems.

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You’re right. Students need to less pressured so they can focus on learning and getting it right.

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Teachers need to assess what knowledge the students built, so making exams hard and impossible arent a way to prove that.

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That’s very true. Some teachers just find joy in failing students.

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You're so right about most student cramming to pass and not reading to understand the concept, making exams seem more like what they need to pass at the moment for their goal, which is just getting the certificate and not even being able to put what they studied into good use, I believe a balance in the traditional way of examination and today's blend of technology is the answer we need

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I agree with you. We need to follow the trends and adapt to the changes for a better future.

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