The social impact of technology on teachers and students

It is claimed that using the Internet in the classroom increases students’ “awareness of the importance of the world around them, of citizenship” and the academic world around them (Pickersgill, quoted in Bingimlas, 2009, p. 237).  

Our teaching resources contain a considerable amount of group work. In this way, the students are given an opportunity to develop social skills through this project.  Different students have different strengths and weaknesses, so group work enables students to develop cooperation skills and “to learn respect for one another’s strengths and limitations”  (Killen, 2009, p. 189).  Furthermore, an early study conducted by Hawkins et al. (1982) revealed that children are more likely to collaborate together with computer activities than with non-computer activities. 

Group work is especially apparent in the lesson on Gradient, where the students are required to research a practical application of gradient and present their findings in the form of a glogster, a web 2.0 tool.  Gomez  (2012) believes that interactive web 2.0 technologies greatly enhance student collaboration and responsibility sharing. Thus, group work combined with technologies, especially web 2.0 technologies, can have a positive social impact on students.