speech on education technology

Speech on Technology for Students and Children

3 minutes speech on technology.

We live in the 21st century, where we do all over work with the help of technology. We know technology as the name “technological know-how”. Read Speech on Technology.

Also, it implies the modern practical knowledge that we require to do things in an effective and efficient manner. Moreover, technological advancements have made life easier and convenient.

We use this technology on a daily basis to fulfill our interests and particular duties. From morning till evening we use this technology as it helps us numerous ways.

Also, it benefits all age groups, people, until and unless they know how to access the same. However, one must never forget that anything that comes to us has its share of pros and cons.

Benefits of Technology

In our day-to-day life technology is very useful and important. Furthermore, it has made communication much easier than ever before. The introduction of modified and advanced innovations of phones and its application has made connecting to people much easier.

Moreover, technology-not only transformed our professional world but also has changed the household life to a great extent. In addition, most of the technology that we today use is generally automatic in comparison to that our parents and grandparents had in their days.

Due to technology in the entertainment industry, they have more techniques to provide us with a more realistic real-time experience.

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Drawbacks of Technology

On the one hand, technology provides users with benefits or advantages, while on the other hand, it has some drawbacks too. These drawbacks or disadvantages negatively affect the importance of technology. One of the biggest problems, which everyone can easily observe, is unemployment.

In so many sectors, due to the over practice and much involvement of technology the machines have replaced human labor leading to unemployment.

Moreover, certain physiological researches teams have also proved their disadvantages. Because of the presence of social media applications like Facebook, Whatsapp, Twitter, Instagram, etc. the actual isolation has increased manifold. And ultimately it leads to increased loneliness and depression cases amongst the youngsters.

Due to the dependence of humans on technology, it has deteriorated the intelligence and creativity of children. Moreover, in today’s world technology is very important but if the people use it negatively, then there arises the negativity of the technology.

However, one thing that we need to keep in mind is that innovations are made to help us not to make us a victim of this technology.

How to use Technology?

Today we have technology that can transform lives. We have quick and vast access to the reservoir of knowledge through the Internet. So, we should make good use of it to solve the problems that we have around the world.

In the past, people use to write a letter to people that take many days to reach the destination, like the money order, personal letter, or a greeting card, but now we can send them much easily within few minutes.

Nowadays, we can easily transfer money online through our mobile phone and can send greetings through e-mail within a matter of minutes.

Besides, we cannot simply sum up the advantages and usefulness of technology at our fingertips.

In conclusion, I would say that it depends on a person that to what degree she/he wants to be dependent on technology. Moreover, there is nothing in the world that comes easy and it’s up to our conscience to decide what we want to learn from the things that we are provided to us.

Technology is not just a boom but a curse too. On one hand, it can save lives, on the other hand, it can destroy them too.

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Harnessing Technology for Engaging Learning Experiences

Having students try podcasting or storytelling with virtual reality is an effective way to increase engagement and reinforce critical content.

In education, we often talk about student engagement. Years ago, I completely misunderstood what student engagement was, why it mattered, and its impact on student learning. Student engagement is more than just being attentive: It means that students become curious about learning and more interested in the content, and, as a result, process the information at higher levels. Engaged learners are more likely to develop their critical thinking skills and have a deeper understanding of the material, which will lead to academic success.

When we create learning experiences that shift students from consumers of content to creators, it helps to increase their engagement in and, hopefully, excitement for learning. So, how can we keep students engaged? We have to spark curiosity and perhaps take some risks in our classroom with new ideas. Providing a variety of options for students to develop their content area knowledge and skills in ways that meet their interests and needs also promotes autonomy and will lead to an increase in engagement. In my own classroom, teaching Spanish and an eighth-grade STEAM course, I decided to explore a few new ideas centered on telling stories—with the help of some emerging technology.

Immersive Storytelling

Storytelling is a fantastic way for students to be creative and engage in a variety of learning experiences that meet their specific interests and needs. Whether students create something using paper and markers or choose from the many digital options available, it is all about promoting choice in learning.

Rather than use the traditional tools that I had in the past, I took a risk and used CoSpaces Edu to explore immersive storytelling in my Spanish II class after some students asked why they couldn’t explore the augmented and virtual reality tools the way the STEAM class did. Whether using CoSpaces Edu like I did or using options available through resources like Experiments with Google , there are many ways to bring these opportunities to our students.

Although I was nervous about bringing alternate reality and virtual reality tools into the classroom, it seemed to be something they would enjoy. I thought that trying something new would boost their engagement. I randomly assigned students into groups and provided instructions for narrating a story that happened in the past.

Students could select any template and then had to work together to find the right objects and add animated characters with speech bubbles, audio, and more. The templates available helped students to get started and then focus on the content and how they could bring their stories to life. In all prior years of teaching the same content, I had not seen students enjoy an activity as much nor retain the content, especially learning how to tell stories using the different past tenses as they did. It was a risk worth taking and one that was a different way to engage students, especially with the use of an emerging technology. 

Sharing Stories through podcasts

As someone who has hosted a podcast for several years, I have always considered doing this in my classroom. This past school year, I tried something really different in my STEAM course, and I could not have predicted the benefits that I observed. We started by listening to a few podcasts that I had selected. I asked students about what they thought the focus was and if they could determine anything about the hosts or the “brand.”

When I revealed each podcast logo and host, the students were surprised at all of the different styles. I then dove into helping students design their own podcast and logo and create a brand for themselves. For some, it was uncomfortable at first, but with some guidance and collaboration with classmates, it didn’t take long for it to become something quite fun for them and me. 

I decided to focus on podcasting for about four weeks so that students could really learn about the value of podcasts and how to use them for their own learning as well as for building speaking skills and confidence. For our class, students would have time to explore podcasts before diving into creating their own. The learning activity required them to create a name, logo, intro, and topic first. Then, they had to record an intro and have some of their classmates provide feedback. The next step was to practice their interviewing skills by having a few classmates as guests. The final component was drafting an email to a teacher to invite them as a guest. I provided some templates for students to follow, and they had to take the lead to schedule and then produce the podcast. 

My students used either Spotify for Podcasters or Soundtrap for Education to record their podcasts and Canva to design the logo. As I listened to their episodes, it was great to hear their excitement, to see their confidence build during the experience, which allowed them to create, collaborate, problem-solve, and move through the classroom more. Students learned about each other and their teachers and developed their speaking skills and confidence. This was a fantastic way to learn more about my students and their interests. Students developed skills in collaboration, communication, creativity, and problem-solving that will benefit them in the future. Some students even decided to continue their podcasts after our work in class ended.

To keep students engaged, try a variety of methods and tools, and continue to model the excitement for learning.

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• Speech on Technology

Technology in This Generation

We are in a generation, where technology has surrounded us from all sides. Our everyday life runs on the use of technology, be it in the form of an alarm clock or a table lamp. Technology has been an important part of our daily lives. Therefore, it is important for the students to be familiar with the term technology. Therefore, we have provided a long speech on technology for students of all age groups. There is also a short speech and a 10 lines speech given in this article.

Long Speech on Technology

A warm welcome to everyone gathered here today. I am here to deliver a speech on technology which has taken a tremendous role in our day to day life. We all are in a generation where everything is dependent on technology. Let’s understand what technology is through the lens of Science. 

Technology comes in the form of tangible and intangible properties by exerting physical and mental force to achieve something that adds value. For example, a mobile phone is tangible, and the network connection used by the phone is intangible. Technology has taken its place as indispensable, wherein it has resulted in economic benefits, better health care, time-saving, and better lifestyle.

Due to technology, we have a significant amount of knowledge to improve our lives and solve problems. We can get our work done efficiently and effectively. As long as you know how to access technology, it can be used and proves to benefit people of all ages greatly. Technology is constantly being modified and upgraded every passing year. 

The evolution of technology has made it possible to achieve lots in less time. Technology has given tools and machines to be used to solve problems around the world. There has been a complete transformation in the way we do things because of contributions from scientific technology. We can achieve more tasks while saving our time and hence in a better place than our previous generation. 

Right from the ringing of the morning alarm to switching off the fan, everything runs behind the technology. Even the microphone that I am using is an innovation of technology and thus the list continues. With several inventions of hi-tech products, our daily needs are available on a screen at our fingertips. These innovations and technologies have made our lives a lot easier. Everything can be done at the comfort of your home within a couple of hours or so. These technologies have not only helped us in the digital platform but have also given us innovations in the field of medical, educational, industrial as well as in agricultural sectors. If we go back to the older generations, it would take days to get any things solved, even if there were not many treatments for several diseases. 

But today with the innovations of technology, many diseases can be treated and diagnosed within a shorter period of time. The relationship between humans and technology has continued for ages and has given rise to many innovations. It has made it easier for us to handle our daily chores starting from home, office, schools and kitchen needs. It has made available basic necessities and safer living spaces. We can sit at home comfortably and make transactions through the use of online banking. Online shopping, video calling, and attending video lectures on the phone have all been possible due to the invention of the internet. 

People in the past would write letters to communicate with one another, and today due to technology, traditional letters have been replaced by emails and mobile phones. These features are the essential gifts of technology. Everything is just at our fingertips, right from turning on the lights to doing our laundry. The whole world runs on technology and hence, we are solely dependent on it. But everything has its pros and cons. While the benefits of technology are immense, it also comes with some negative effects and possibly irreversible damages to humanity and our planet. 

We have become so dependent on technology that we often avoid doing things on our own. It as a result makes us lazy and physically inactive. This has also led to several health issues such as obesity and heart diseases. We prefer booking a cab online rather than walking a few kilometres. Technology has increased screen time, and thus, children are no longer used to playing in the playgrounds but are rather found spending hours on their phones playing video games. This has eroded children’s creativity, intelligence, and memory. No doubt, technology is a very essential part of our life, but we should not be totally dependent on it. We should practise being more fit and do regular activities on our own to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

The other aspects that have been badly affected us are that since technology replaced human interference, is unemployment. Social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc., were meant to connect people and increase our community circle. Still, it has made people all the more lonely, with cases of depression on the rise amongst the youth. 

There are several controversies around the way world leaders have used technology in defence and industrialisation under the banner of development and advancements. The side effects of technology have resulted in pollution, climate change, forest fires, extreme storms, cyclones, impure air, global warming, land area getting reduced and natural resources getting extinct. It’s time we change our outlook towards selfish technology and bring about responsible technology. Every nation needs to set aside budgets to come up with sustainable technological developments. 

As students, we should develop creative problem solving using critical thinking to bring clean technology into our world. As we improve our nation, we must think of our future for a greener and cleaner tomorrow. You would be glad to know that several initiatives have been initiated to bring awareness amongst children and youth to invent cleaner technology. 

For example, 15-year-old Vinisha Umashankar invented a solar ironing cart and has been awarded the Earth Shot Prize by the Royal Foundation of the duke and duchess of Cambridge and honoured to speak at the COP26 climate change conference in Glasgow, Scotland. Her invention should be an inspiration to each one of us to pursue clean technology.

The top five technologically advanced countries are Japan, America, Germany, China and South Korea. We Indians will make our mark on this list someday. Technology has a vital role in our lives but lets us be mindful that we control technology and that technology doesn’t control us. Technology is a tool to elevate humanity and is not meant to be a self-destroying mechanism under the pretext of economic development. Lastly, I would like to conclude my speech by saying that technology is a boon for our society but we should use it in a productive way. 

A Short Speech on Technology

A warm greeting to everyone present here. Today I am here to talk about technology and how it has gifted us with various innovations. Technology as we know it is the application of scientific ideas to develop a machine or a device for serving the needs of humans. We, human beings, are completely dependent on technology in our daily life. We have used technology in every aspect of our life starting from household needs, schools, offices, communication and entertainment. Our life has been more comfortable due to the use of technology. We are in a much better and comfortable position as compared to our older generation. This is possible because of various contributions and innovations made in the field of technology. Everything has been made easily accessible for us at our fingertips right from buying a thing online to making any banking transaction. It has also led to the invention of the internet which gave us access to search for any information on google. But there are also some disadvantages. Relying too much on technology has made us physically lazy and unhealthy due to the lack of any physical activity. Children have become more prone to video games and social media which have led to obesity and depression. Since they are no longer used to playing outside and socialising, they often feel isolated. Therefore, we must not totally be dependent on technology and should try using it in a productive way.

10 Lines Speech on Technology

Technology has taken an important place in our lives and is considered an asset for our daily needs.

The world around us is totally dependent on technology, thus, making our lives easier.

The innovation of phones, televisions and laptops has digitally served the purpose of entertainment today.

Technology has not only helped us digitally but has also led to various innovations in the field of medical science.

Earlier it took years to diagnose and treat any particular disease, but today with the help of technology it has led to the early diagnosis of several diseases.

We, in this generation, like to do things sitting at our own comfort within a short period of time. This thing has been made possible by technology.

All our daily activities such as banking, shopping, entertainment, learning and communication can be done on a digital platform just by a click on our phone screen.

Although all these gifts of technology are really making our lives faster and easier, it too has got several disadvantages.

Since we all are highly dependent on technology, it has reduced our daily physical activity. We no longer put effort to do anything on our own as everything is available at a minute's click.

Children nowadays are more addicted to online video games rather than playing outside in the playground. These habits make them more physically inactive.

FAQs on Speech on Technology

1. Which kind of technology is the most widely used nowadays?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the field of technology that is being used the most nowadays and is expected to grow even more even in the future. With AI being adopted in numerous sectors and industries and continuously more research being done on it, it will not be long before we see more forms of AI in our daily lives.

2. What is the biggest area of concern with using technology nowadays?

Protection of the data you have online is the biggest area of concern. With hacking and cyberattacks being so common, it is important for everyone to ensure they do not post sensitive data online and be cautious when sharing information with others.

REALIZING THE PROMISE:

Leading up to the 75th anniversary of the UN General Assembly, this “Realizing the promise: How can education technology improve learning for all?” publication kicks off the Center for Universal Education’s first playbook in a series to help improve education around the world.

It is intended as an evidence-based tool for ministries of education, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, to adopt and more successfully invest in education technology.

While there is no single education initiative that will achieve the same results everywhere—as school systems differ in learners and educators, as well as in the availability and quality of materials and technologies—an important first step is understanding how technology is used given specific local contexts and needs.

The surveys in this playbook are designed to be adapted to collect this information from educators, learners, and school leaders and guide decisionmakers in expanding the use of technology.  

Introduction

While technology has disrupted most sectors of the economy and changed how we communicate, access information, work, and even play, its impact on schools, teaching, and learning has been much more limited. We believe that this limited impact is primarily due to technology being been used to replace analog tools, without much consideration given to playing to technology’s comparative advantages. These comparative advantages, relative to traditional “chalk-and-talk” classroom instruction, include helping to scale up standardized instruction, facilitate differentiated instruction, expand opportunities for practice, and increase student engagement. When schools use technology to enhance the work of educators and to improve the quality and quantity of educational content, learners will thrive.

Further, COVID-19 has laid bare that, in today’s environment where pandemics and the effects of climate change are likely to occur, schools cannot always provide in-person education—making the case for investing in education technology.

Here we argue for a simple yet surprisingly rare approach to education technology that seeks to:

• Understand the needs, infrastructure, and capacity of a school system—the diagnosis;
• Survey the best available evidence on interventions that match those conditions—the evidence; and
• Closely monitor the results of innovations before they are scaled up—the prognosis.

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The framework.

Our approach builds on a simple yet intuitive theoretical framework created two decades ago by two of the most prominent education researchers in the United States, David K. Cohen and Deborah Loewenberg Ball. They argue that what matters most to improve learning is the interactions among educators and learners around educational materials. We believe that the failed school-improvement efforts in the U.S. that motivated Cohen and Ball’s framework resemble the ed-tech reforms in much of the developing world to date in the lack of clarity improving the interactions between educators, learners, and the educational material. We build on their framework by adding parents as key agents that mediate the relationships between learners and educators and the material (Figure 1).

Figure 1: The instructional core

Adapted from Cohen and Ball (1999)

As the figure above suggests, ed-tech interventions can affect the instructional core in a myriad of ways. Yet, just because technology can do something, it does not mean it should. School systems in developing countries differ along many dimensions and each system is likely to have different needs for ed-tech interventions, as well as different infrastructure and capacity to enact such interventions.

The diagnosis:

How can school systems assess their needs and preparedness.

A useful first step for any school system to determine whether it should invest in education technology is to diagnose its:

• Specific needs to improve student learning (e.g., raising the average level of achievement, remediating gaps among low performers, and challenging high performers to develop higher-order skills);
• Infrastructure to adopt technology-enabled solutions (e.g., electricity connection, availability of space and outlets, stock of computers, and Internet connectivity at school and at learners’ homes); and
• Capacity to integrate technology in the instructional process (e.g., learners’ and educators’ level of familiarity and comfort with hardware and software, their beliefs about the level of usefulness of technology for learning purposes, and their current uses of such technology).

Before engaging in any new data collection exercise, school systems should take full advantage of existing administrative data that could shed light on these three main questions. This could be in the form of internal evaluations but also international learner assessments, such as the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), and/or the Progress in International Literacy Study (PIRLS), and the Teaching and Learning International Study (TALIS). But if school systems lack information on their preparedness for ed-tech reforms or if they seek to complement existing data with a richer set of indicators, we developed a set of surveys for learners, educators, and school leaders. Download the full report to see how we map out the main aspects covered by these surveys, in hopes of highlighting how they could be used to inform decisions around the adoption of ed-tech interventions.

The evidence:

How can school systems identify promising ed-tech interventions.

There is no single “ed-tech” initiative that will achieve the same results everywhere, simply because school systems differ in learners and educators, as well as in the availability and quality of materials and technologies. Instead, to realize the potential of education technology to accelerate student learning, decisionmakers should focus on four potential uses of technology that play to its comparative advantages and complement the work of educators to accelerate student learning (Figure 2). These comparative advantages include:

• Scaling up quality instruction, such as through prerecorded quality lessons.
• Facilitating differentiated instruction, through, for example, computer-adaptive learning and live one-on-one tutoring.
• Expanding opportunities to practice.
• Increasing learner engagement through videos and games.

Figure 2: Comparative advantages of technology

Here we review the evidence on ed-tech interventions from 37 studies in 20 countries*, organizing them by comparative advantage. It’s important to note that ours is not the only way to classify these interventions (e.g., video tutorials could be considered as a strategy to scale up instruction or increase learner engagement), but we believe it may be useful to highlight the needs that they could address and why technology is well positioned to do so.

When discussing specific studies, we report the magnitude of the effects of interventions using standard deviations (SDs). SDs are a widely used metric in research to express the effect of a program or policy with respect to a business-as-usual condition (e.g., test scores). There are several ways to make sense of them. One is to categorize the magnitude of the effects based on the results of impact evaluations. In developing countries, effects below 0.1 SDs are considered to be small, effects between 0.1 and 0.2 SDs are medium, and those above 0.2 SDs are large (for reviews that estimate the average effect of groups of interventions, called “meta analyses,” see e.g., Conn, 2017; Kremer, Brannen, & Glennerster, 2013; McEwan, 2014; Snilstveit et al., 2015; Evans & Yuan, 2020.)

*In surveying the evidence, we began by compiling studies from prior general and ed-tech specific evidence reviews that some of us have written and from ed-tech reviews conducted by others. Then, we tracked the studies cited by the ones we had previously read and reviewed those, as well. In identifying studies for inclusion, we focused on experimental and quasi-experimental evaluations of education technology interventions from pre-school to secondary school in low- and middle-income countries that were released between 2000 and 2020. We only included interventions that sought to improve student learning directly (i.e., students’ interaction with the material), as opposed to interventions that have impacted achievement indirectly, by reducing teacher absence or increasing parental engagement. This process yielded 37 studies in 20 countries (see the full list of studies in Appendix B).

Scaling up standardized instruction

One of the ways in which technology may improve the quality of education is through its capacity to deliver standardized quality content at scale. This feature of technology may be particularly useful in three types of settings: (a) those in “hard-to-staff” schools (i.e., schools that struggle to recruit educators with the requisite training and experience—typically, in rural and/or remote areas) (see, e.g., Urquiola & Vegas, 2005); (b) those in which many educators are frequently absent from school (e.g., Chaudhury, Hammer, Kremer, Muralidharan, & Rogers, 2006; Muralidharan, Das, Holla, & Mohpal, 2017); and/or (c) those in which educators have low levels of pedagogical and subject matter expertise (e.g., Bietenbeck, Piopiunik, & Wiederhold, 2018; Bold et al., 2017; Metzler & Woessmann, 2012; Santibañez, 2006) and do not have opportunities to observe and receive feedback (e.g., Bruns, Costa, & Cunha, 2018; Cilliers, Fleisch, Prinsloo, & Taylor, 2018). Technology could address this problem by: (a) disseminating lessons delivered by qualified educators to a large number of learners (e.g., through prerecorded or live lessons); (b) enabling distance education (e.g., for learners in remote areas and/or during periods of school closures); and (c) distributing hardware preloaded with educational materials.

Prerecorded lessons

Technology seems to be well placed to amplify the impact of effective educators by disseminating their lessons. Evidence on the impact of prerecorded lessons is encouraging, but not conclusive. Some initiatives that have used short instructional videos to complement regular instruction, in conjunction with other learning materials, have raised student learning on independent assessments. For example, Beg et al. (2020) evaluated an initiative in Punjab, Pakistan in which grade 8 classrooms received an intervention that included short videos to substitute live instruction, quizzes for learners to practice the material from every lesson, tablets for educators to learn the material and follow the lesson, and LED screens to project the videos onto a classroom screen. After six months, the intervention improved the performance of learners on independent tests of math and science by 0.19 and 0.24 SDs, respectively but had no discernible effect on the math and science section of Punjab’s high-stakes exams.

One study suggests that approaches that are far less technologically sophisticated can also improve learning outcomes—especially, if the business-as-usual instruction is of low quality. For example, Naslund-Hadley, Parker, and Hernandez-Agramonte (2014) evaluated a preschool math program in Cordillera, Paraguay that used audio segments and written materials four days per week for an hour per day during the school day. After five months, the intervention improved math scores by 0.16 SDs, narrowing gaps between low- and high-achieving learners, and between those with and without educators with formal training in early childhood education.

Yet, the integration of prerecorded material into regular instruction has not always been successful. For example, de Barros (2020) evaluated an intervention that combined instructional videos for math and science with infrastructure upgrades (e.g., two “smart” classrooms, two TVs, and two tablets), printed workbooks for students, and in-service training for educators of learners in grades 9 and 10 in Haryana, India (all materials were mapped onto the official curriculum). After 11 months, the intervention negatively impacted math achievement (by 0.08 SDs) and had no effect on science (with respect to business as usual classes). It reduced the share of lesson time that educators devoted to instruction and negatively impacted an index of instructional quality. Likewise, Seo (2017) evaluated several combinations of infrastructure (solar lights and TVs) and prerecorded videos (in English and/or bilingual) for grade 11 students in northern Tanzania and found that none of the variants improved student learning, even when the videos were used. The study reports effects from the infrastructure component across variants, but as others have noted (Muralidharan, Romero, & Wüthrich, 2019), this approach to estimating impact is problematic.

A very similar intervention delivered after school hours, however, had sizeable effects on learners’ basic skills. Chiplunkar, Dhar, and Nagesh (2020) evaluated an initiative in Chennai (the capital city of the state of Tamil Nadu, India) delivered by the same organization as above that combined short videos that explained key concepts in math and science with worksheets, facilitator-led instruction, small groups for peer-to-peer learning, and occasional career counseling and guidance for grade 9 students. These lessons took place after school for one hour, five times a week. After 10 months, it had large effects on learners’ achievement as measured by tests of basic skills in math and reading, but no effect on a standardized high-stakes test in grade 10 or socio-emotional skills (e.g., teamwork, decisionmaking, and communication).

Drawing general lessons from this body of research is challenging for at least two reasons. First, all of the studies above have evaluated the impact of prerecorded lessons combined with several other components (e.g., hardware, print materials, or other activities). Therefore, it is possible that the effects found are due to these additional components, rather than to the recordings themselves, or to the interaction between the two (see Muralidharan, 2017 for a discussion of the challenges of interpreting “bundled” interventions). Second, while these studies evaluate some type of prerecorded lessons, none examines the content of such lessons. Thus, it seems entirely plausible that the direction and magnitude of the effects depends largely on the quality of the recordings (e.g., the expertise of the educator recording it, the amount of preparation that went into planning the recording, and its alignment with best teaching practices).

These studies also raise three important questions worth exploring in future research. One of them is why none of the interventions discussed above had effects on high-stakes exams, even if their materials are typically mapped onto the official curriculum. It is possible that the official curricula are simply too challenging for learners in these settings, who are several grade levels behind expectations and who often need to reinforce basic skills (see Pritchett & Beatty, 2015). Another question is whether these interventions have long-term effects on teaching practices. It seems plausible that, if these interventions are deployed in contexts with low teaching quality, educators may learn something from watching the videos or listening to the recordings with learners. Yet another question is whether these interventions make it easier for schools to deliver instruction to learners whose native language is other than the official medium of instruction.

Distance education

Technology can also allow learners living in remote areas to access education. The evidence on these initiatives is encouraging. For example, Johnston and Ksoll (2017) evaluated a program that broadcasted live instruction via satellite to rural primary school students in the Volta and Greater Accra regions of Ghana. For this purpose, the program also equipped classrooms with the technology needed to connect to a studio in Accra, including solar panels, a satellite modem, a projector, a webcam, microphones, and a computer with interactive software. After two years, the intervention improved the numeracy scores of students in grades 2 through 4, and some foundational literacy tasks, but it had no effect on attendance or classroom time devoted to instruction, as captured by school visits. The authors interpreted these results as suggesting that the gains in achievement may be due to improving the quality of instruction that children received (as opposed to increased instructional time). Naik, Chitre, Bhalla, and Rajan (2019) evaluated a similar program in the Indian state of Karnataka and also found positive effects on learning outcomes, but it is not clear whether those effects are due to the program or due to differences in the groups of students they compared to estimate the impact of the initiative.

In one context (Mexico), this type of distance education had positive long-term effects. Navarro-Sola (2019) took advantage of the staggered rollout of the telesecundarias (i.e., middle schools with lessons broadcasted through satellite TV) in 1968 to estimate its impact. The policy had short-term effects on students’ enrollment in school: For every telesecundaria per 50 children, 10 students enrolled in middle school and two pursued further education. It also had a long-term influence on the educational and employment trajectory of its graduates. Each additional year of education induced by the policy increased average income by nearly 18 percent. This effect was attributable to more graduates entering the labor force and shifting from agriculture and the informal sector. Similarly, Fabregas (2019) leveraged a later expansion of this policy in 1993 and found that each additional telesecundaria per 1,000 adolescents led to an average increase of 0.2 years of education, and a decline in fertility for women, but no conclusive evidence of long-term effects on labor market outcomes.

It is crucial to interpret these results keeping in mind the settings where the interventions were implemented. As we mention above, part of the reason why they have proven effective is that the “counterfactual” conditions for learning (i.e., what would have happened to learners in the absence of such programs) was either to not have access to schooling or to be exposed to low-quality instruction. School systems interested in taking up similar interventions should assess the extent to which their learners (or parts of their learner population) find themselves in similar conditions to the subjects of the studies above. This illustrates the importance of assessing the needs of a system before reviewing the evidence.

Preloaded hardware

Technology also seems well positioned to disseminate educational materials. Specifically, hardware (e.g., desktop computers, laptops, or tablets) could also help deliver educational software (e.g., word processing, reference texts, and/or games). In theory, these materials could not only undergo a quality assurance review (e.g., by curriculum specialists and educators), but also draw on the interactions with learners for adjustments (e.g., identifying areas needing reinforcement) and enable interactions between learners and educators.

In practice, however, most initiatives that have provided learners with free computers, laptops, and netbooks do not leverage any of the opportunities mentioned above. Instead, they install a standard set of educational materials and hope that learners find them helpful enough to take them up on their own. Students rarely do so, and instead use the laptops for recreational purposes—often, to the detriment of their learning (see, e.g., Malamud & Pop-Eleches, 2011). In fact, free netbook initiatives have not only consistently failed to improve academic achievement in math or language (e.g., Cristia et al., 2017), but they have had no impact on learners’ general computer skills (e.g., Beuermann et al., 2015). Some of these initiatives have had small impacts on cognitive skills, but the mechanisms through which those effects occurred remains unclear.

To our knowledge, the only successful deployment of a free laptop initiative was one in which a team of researchers equipped the computers with remedial software. Mo et al. (2013) evaluated a version of the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) program for grade 3 students in migrant schools in Beijing, China in which the laptops were loaded with a remedial software mapped onto the national curriculum for math (similar to the software products that we discuss under “practice exercises” below). After nine months, the program improved math achievement by 0.17 SDs and computer skills by 0.33 SDs. If a school system decides to invest in free laptops, this study suggests that the quality of the software on the laptops is crucial.

To date, however, the evidence suggests that children do not learn more from interacting with laptops than they do from textbooks. For example, Bando, Gallego, Gertler, and Romero (2016) compared the effect of free laptop and textbook provision in 271 elementary schools in disadvantaged areas of Honduras. After seven months, students in grades 3 and 6 who had received the laptops performed on par with those who had received the textbooks in math and language. Further, even if textbooks essentially become obsolete at the end of each school year, whereas laptops can be reloaded with new materials for each year, the costs of laptop provision (not just the hardware, but also the technical assistance, Internet, and training associated with it) are not yet low enough to make them a more cost-effective way of delivering content to learners.

Evidence on the provision of tablets equipped with software is encouraging but limited. For example, de Hoop et al. (2020) evaluated a composite intervention for first grade students in Zambia’s Eastern Province that combined infrastructure (electricity via solar power), hardware (projectors and tablets), and educational materials (lesson plans for educators and interactive lessons for learners, both loaded onto the tablets and mapped onto the official Zambian curriculum). After 14 months, the intervention had improved student early-grade reading by 0.4 SDs, oral vocabulary scores by 0.25 SDs, and early-grade math by 0.22 SDs. It also improved students’ achievement by 0.16 on a locally developed assessment. The multifaceted nature of the program, however, makes it challenging to identify the components that are driving the positive effects. Pitchford (2015) evaluated an intervention that provided tablets equipped with educational “apps,” to be used for 30 minutes per day for two months to develop early math skills among students in grades 1 through 3 in Lilongwe, Malawi. The evaluation found positive impacts in math achievement, but the main study limitation is that it was conducted in a single school.

Facilitating differentiated instruction

Another way in which technology may improve educational outcomes is by facilitating the delivery of differentiated or individualized instruction. Most developing countries massively expanded access to schooling in recent decades by building new schools and making education more affordable, both by defraying direct costs, as well as compensating for opportunity costs (Duflo, 2001; World Bank, 2018). These initiatives have not only rapidly increased the number of learners enrolled in school, but have also increased the variability in learner’ preparation for schooling. Consequently, a large number of learners perform well below grade-based curricular expectations (see, e.g., Duflo, Dupas, & Kremer, 2011; Pritchett & Beatty, 2015). These learners are unlikely to get much from “one-size-fits-all” instruction, in which a single educator delivers instruction deemed appropriate for the middle (or top) of the achievement distribution (Banerjee & Duflo, 2011). Technology could potentially help these learners by providing them with: (a) instruction and opportunities for practice that adjust to the level and pace of preparation of each individual (known as “computer-adaptive learning” (CAL)); or (b) live, one-on-one tutoring.

Computer-adaptive learning

One of the main comparative advantages of technology is its ability to diagnose students’ initial learning levels and assign students to instruction and exercises of appropriate difficulty. No individual educator—no matter how talented—can be expected to provide individualized instruction to all learners in his/her class simultaneously . In this respect, technology is uniquely positioned to complement traditional teaching. This use of technology could help learners master basic skills and help them get more out of schooling.

Although many software products evaluated in recent years have been categorized as CAL, many rely on a relatively coarse level of differentiation at an initial stage (e.g., a diagnostic test) without further differentiation. We discuss these initiatives under the category of “increasing opportunities for practice” below. CAL initiatives complement an initial diagnostic with dynamic adaptation (i.e., at each response or set of responses from learners) to adjust both the initial level of difficulty and rate at which it increases or decreases, depending on whether learners’ responses are correct or incorrect.

Existing evidence on this specific type of programs is highly promising. Most famously, Banerjee et al. (2007) evaluated CAL software in Vadodara, in the Indian state of Gujarat, in which grade 4 students were offered two hours of shared computer time per week before and after school, during which they played games that involved solving math problems. The level of difficulty of such problems adjusted based on students’ answers. This program improved math achievement by 0.35 and 0.47 SDs after one and two years of implementation, respectively. Consistent with the promise of personalized learning, the software improved achievement for all students. In fact, one year after the end of the program, students assigned to the program still performed 0.1 SDs better than those assigned to a business as usual condition. More recently, Muralidharan, et al. (2019) evaluated a “blended learning” initiative in which students in grades 4 through 9 in Delhi, India received 45 minutes of interaction with CAL software for math and language, and 45 minutes of small group instruction before or after going to school. After only 4.5 months, the program improved achievement by 0.37 SDs in math and 0.23 SDs in Hindi. While all learners benefited from the program in absolute terms, the lowest performing learners benefited the most in relative terms, since they were learning very little in school.

We see two important limitations from this body of research. First, to our knowledge, none of these initiatives has been evaluated when implemented during the school day. Therefore, it is not possible to distinguish the effect of the adaptive software from that of additional instructional time. Second, given that most of these programs were facilitated by local instructors, attempts to distinguish the effect of the software from that of the instructors has been mostly based on noncausal evidence. A frontier challenge in this body of research is to understand whether CAL software can increase the effectiveness of school-based instruction by substituting part of the regularly scheduled time for math and language instruction.

Live one-on-one tutoring

Recent improvements in the speed and quality of videoconferencing, as well as in the connectivity of remote areas, have enabled yet another way in which technology can help personalization: live (i.e., real-time) one-on-one tutoring. While the evidence on in-person tutoring is scarce in developing countries, existing studies suggest that this approach works best when it is used to personalize instruction (see, e.g., Banerjee et al., 2007; Banerji, Berry, & Shotland, 2015; Cabezas, Cuesta, & Gallego, 2011).

There are almost no studies on the impact of online tutoring—possibly, due to the lack of hardware and Internet connectivity in low- and middle-income countries. One exception is Chemin and Oledan (2020)’s recent evaluation of an online tutoring program for grade 6 students in Kianyaga, Kenya to learn English from volunteers from a Canadian university via Skype ( videoconferencing software) for one hour per week after school. After 10 months, program beneficiaries performed 0.22 SDs better in a test of oral comprehension, improved their comfort using technology for learning, and became more willing to engage in cross-cultural communication. Importantly, while the tutoring sessions used the official English textbooks and sought in part to help learners with their homework, tutors were trained on several strategies to teach to each learner’s individual level of preparation, focusing on basic skills if necessary. To our knowledge, similar initiatives within a country have not yet been rigorously evaluated.

Expanding opportunities for practice

A third way in which technology may improve the quality of education is by providing learners with additional opportunities for practice. In many developing countries, lesson time is primarily devoted to lectures, in which the educator explains the topic and the learners passively copy explanations from the blackboard. This setup leaves little time for in-class practice. Consequently, learners who did not understand the explanation of the material during lecture struggle when they have to solve homework assignments on their own. Technology could potentially address this problem by allowing learners to review topics at their own pace.

Practice exercises

Technology can help learners get more out of traditional instruction by providing them with opportunities to implement what they learn in class. This approach could, in theory, allow some learners to anchor their understanding of the material through trial and error (i.e., by realizing what they may not have understood correctly during lecture and by getting better acquainted with special cases not covered in-depth in class).

Existing evidence on practice exercises reflects both the promise and the limitations of this use of technology in developing countries. For example, Lai et al. (2013) evaluated a program in Shaanxi, China where students in grades 3 and 5 were required to attend two 40-minute remedial sessions per week in which they first watched videos that reviewed the material that had been introduced in their math lessons that week and then played games to practice the skills introduced in the video. After four months, the intervention improved math achievement by 0.12 SDs. Many other evaluations of comparable interventions have found similar small-to-moderate results (see, e.g., Lai, Luo, Zhang, Huang, & Rozelle, 2015; Lai et al., 2012; Mo et al., 2015; Pitchford, 2015). These effects, however, have been consistently smaller than those of initiatives that adjust the difficulty of the material based on students’ performance (e.g., Banerjee et al., 2007; Muralidharan, et al., 2019). We hypothesize that these programs do little for learners who perform several grade levels behind curricular expectations, and who would benefit more from a review of foundational concepts from earlier grades.

We see two important limitations from this research. First, most initiatives that have been evaluated thus far combine instructional videos with practice exercises, so it is hard to know whether their effects are driven by the former or the latter. In fact, the program in China described above allowed learners to ask their peers whenever they did not understand a difficult concept, so it potentially also captured the effect of peer-to-peer collaboration. To our knowledge, no studies have addressed this gap in the evidence.

Second, most of these programs are implemented before or after school, so we cannot distinguish the effect of additional instructional time from that of the actual opportunity for practice. The importance of this question was first highlighted by Linden (2008), who compared two delivery mechanisms for game-based remedial math software for students in grades 2 and 3 in a network of schools run by a nonprofit organization in Gujarat, India: one in which students interacted with the software during the school day and another one in which students interacted with the software before or after school (in both cases, for three hours per day). After a year, the first version of the program had negatively impacted students’ math achievement by 0.57 SDs and the second one had a null effect. This study suggested that computer-assisted learning is a poor substitute for regular instruction when it is of high quality, as was the case in this well-functioning private network of schools.

In recent years, several studies have sought to remedy this shortcoming. Mo et al. (2014) were among the first to evaluate practice exercises delivered during the school day. They evaluated an initiative in Shaanxi, China in which students in grades 3 and 5 were required to interact with the software similar to the one in Lai et al. (2013) for two 40-minute sessions per week. The main limitation of this study, however, is that the program was delivered during regularly scheduled computer lessons, so it could not determine the impact of substituting regular math instruction. Similarly, Mo et al. (2020) evaluated a self-paced and a teacher-directed version of a similar program for English for grade 5 students in Qinghai, China. Yet, the key shortcoming of this study is that the teacher-directed version added several components that may also influence achievement, such as increased opportunities for teachers to provide students with personalized assistance when they struggled with the material. Ma, Fairlie, Loyalka, and Rozelle (2020) compared the effectiveness of additional time-delivered remedial instruction for students in grades 4 to 6 in Shaanxi, China through either computer-assisted software or using workbooks. This study indicates whether additional instructional time is more effective when using technology, but it does not address the question of whether school systems may improve the productivity of instructional time during the school day by substituting educator-led with computer-assisted instruction.

Increasing learner engagement

Another way in which technology may improve education is by increasing learners’ engagement with the material. In many school systems, regular “chalk and talk” instruction prioritizes time for educators’ exposition over opportunities for learners to ask clarifying questions and/or contribute to class discussions. This, combined with the fact that many developing-country classrooms include a very large number of learners (see, e.g., Angrist & Lavy, 1999; Duflo, Dupas, & Kremer, 2015), may partially explain why the majority of those students are several grade levels behind curricular expectations (e.g., Muralidharan, et al., 2019; Muralidharan & Zieleniak, 2014; Pritchett & Beatty, 2015). Technology could potentially address these challenges by: (a) using video tutorials for self-paced learning and (b) presenting exercises as games and/or gamifying practice.

Video tutorials

Technology can potentially increase learner effort and understanding of the material by finding new and more engaging ways to deliver it. Video tutorials designed for self-paced learning—as opposed to videos for whole class instruction, which we discuss under the category of “prerecorded lessons” above—can increase learner effort in multiple ways, including: allowing learners to focus on topics with which they need more help, letting them correct errors and misconceptions on their own, and making the material appealing through visual aids. They can increase understanding by breaking the material into smaller units and tackling common misconceptions.

In spite of the popularity of instructional videos, there is relatively little evidence on their effectiveness. Yet, two recent evaluations of different versions of the Khan Academy portal, which mainly relies on instructional videos, offer some insight into their impact. First, Ferman, Finamor, and Lima (2019) evaluated an initiative in 157 public primary and middle schools in five cities in Brazil in which the teachers of students in grades 5 and 9 were taken to the computer lab to learn math from the platform for 50 minutes per week. The authors found that, while the intervention slightly improved learners’ attitudes toward math, these changes did not translate into better performance in this subject. The authors hypothesized that this could be due to the reduction of teacher-led math instruction.

More recently, Büchel, Jakob, Kühnhanss, Steffen, and Brunetti (2020) evaluated an after-school, offline delivery of the Khan Academy portal in grades 3 through 6 in 302 primary schools in Morazán, El Salvador. Students in this study received 90 minutes per week of additional math instruction (effectively nearly doubling total math instruction per week) through teacher-led regular lessons, teacher-assisted Khan Academy lessons, or similar lessons assisted by technical supervisors with no content expertise. (Importantly, the first group provided differentiated instruction, which is not the norm in Salvadorian schools). All three groups outperformed both schools without any additional lessons and classrooms without additional lessons in the same schools as the program. The teacher-assisted Khan Academy lessons performed 0.24 SDs better, the supervisor-led lessons 0.22 SDs better, and the teacher-led regular lessons 0.15 SDs better, but the authors could not determine whether the effects across versions were different.

Together, these studies suggest that instructional videos work best when provided as a complement to, rather than as a substitute for, regular instruction. Yet, the main limitation of these studies is the multifaceted nature of the Khan Academy portal, which also includes other components found to positively improve learner achievement, such as differentiated instruction by students’ learning levels. While the software does not provide the type of personalization discussed above, learners are asked to take a placement test and, based on their score, educators assign them different work. Therefore, it is not clear from these studies whether the effects from Khan Academy are driven by its instructional videos or to the software’s ability to provide differentiated activities when combined with placement tests.

Games and gamification

Technology can also increase learner engagement by presenting exercises as games and/or by encouraging learner to play and compete with others (e.g., using leaderboards and rewards)—an approach known as “gamification.” Both approaches can increase learner motivation and effort by presenting learners with entertaining opportunities for practice and by leveraging peers as commitment devices.

There are very few studies on the effects of games and gamification in low- and middle-income countries. Recently, Araya, Arias Ortiz, Bottan, and Cristia (2019) evaluated an initiative in which grade 4 students in Santiago, Chile were required to participate in two 90-minute sessions per week during the school day with instructional math software featuring individual and group competitions (e.g., tracking each learner’s standing in his/her class and tournaments between sections). After nine months, the program led to improvements of 0.27 SDs in the national student assessment in math (it had no spillover effects on reading). However, it had mixed effects on non-academic outcomes. Specifically, the program increased learners’ willingness to use computers to learn math, but, at the same time, increased their anxiety toward math and negatively impacted learners’ willingness to collaborate with peers. Finally, given that one of the weekly sessions replaced regular math instruction and the other one represented additional math instructional time, it is not clear whether the academic effects of the program are driven by the software or the additional time devoted to learning math.

The prognosis:

How can school systems adopt interventions that match their needs.

Here are five specific and sequential guidelines for decisionmakers to realize the potential of education technology to accelerate student learning.

1. Take stock of how your current schools, educators, and learners are engaging with technology .

Carry out a short in-school survey to understand the current practices and potential barriers to adoption of technology (we have included suggested survey instruments in the Appendices); use this information in your decisionmaking process. For example, we learned from conversations with current and former ministers of education from various developing regions that a common limitation to technology use is regulations that hold school leaders accountable for damages to or losses of devices. Another common barrier is lack of access to electricity and Internet, or even the availability of sufficient outlets for charging devices in classrooms. Understanding basic infrastructure and regulatory limitations to the use of education technology is a first necessary step. But addressing these limitations will not guarantee that introducing or expanding technology use will accelerate learning. The next steps are thus necessary.

“In Africa, the biggest limit is connectivity. Fiber is expensive, and we don’t have it everywhere. The continent is creating a digital divide between cities, where there is fiber, and the rural areas.  The [Ghanaian] administration put in schools offline/online technologies with books, assessment tools, and open source materials. In deploying this, we are finding that again, teachers are unfamiliar with it. And existing policies prohibit students to bring their own tablets or cell phones. The easiest way to do it would have been to let everyone bring their own device. But policies are against it.” H.E. Matthew Prempeh, Minister of Education of Ghana, on the need to understand the local context.

2. Consider how the introduction of technology may affect the interactions among learners, educators, and content .

Our review of the evidence indicates that technology may accelerate student learning when it is used to scale up access to quality content, facilitate differentiated instruction, increase opportunities for practice, or when it increases learner engagement. For example, will adding electronic whiteboards to classrooms facilitate access to more quality content or differentiated instruction? Or will these expensive boards be used in the same way as the old chalkboards? Will providing one device (laptop or tablet) to each learner facilitate access to more and better content, or offer students more opportunities to practice and learn? Solely introducing technology in classrooms without additional changes is unlikely to lead to improved learning and may be quite costly. If you cannot clearly identify how the interactions among the three key components of the instructional core (educators, learners, and content) may change after the introduction of technology, then it is probably not a good idea to make the investment. See Appendix A for guidance on the types of questions to ask.

3. Once decisionmakers have a clear idea of how education technology can help accelerate student learning in a specific context, it is important to define clear objectives and goals and establish ways to regularly assess progress and make course corrections in a timely manner .

For instance, is the education technology expected to ensure that learners in early grades excel in foundational skills—basic literacy and numeracy—by age 10? If so, will the technology provide quality reading and math materials, ample opportunities to practice, and engaging materials such as videos or games? Will educators be empowered to use these materials in new ways? And how will progress be measured and adjusted?

4. How this kind of reform is approached can matter immensely for its success.

It is easy to nod to issues of “implementation,” but that needs to be more than rhetorical. Keep in mind that good use of education technology requires thinking about how it will affect learners, educators, and parents. After all, giving learners digital devices will make no difference if they get broken, are stolen, or go unused. Classroom technologies only matter if educators feel comfortable putting them to work. Since good technology is generally about complementing or amplifying what educators and learners already do, it is almost always a mistake to mandate programs from on high. It is vital that technology be adopted with the input of educators and families and with attention to how it will be used. If technology goes unused or if educators use it ineffectually, the results will disappoint—no matter the virtuosity of the technology. Indeed, unused education technology can be an unnecessary expenditure for cash-strapped education systems. This is why surveying context, listening to voices in the field, examining how technology is used, and planning for course correction is essential.

5. It is essential to communicate with a range of stakeholders, including educators, school leaders, parents, and learners .

Technology can feel alien in schools, confuse parents and (especially) older educators, or become an alluring distraction. Good communication can help address all of these risks. Taking care to listen to educators and families can help ensure that programs are informed by their needs and concerns. At the same time, deliberately and consistently explaining what technology is and is not supposed to do, how it can be most effectively used, and the ways in which it can make it more likely that programs work as intended. For instance, if teachers fear that technology is intended to reduce the need for educators, they will tend to be hostile; if they believe that it is intended to assist them in their work, they will be more receptive. Absent effective communication, it is easy for programs to “fail” not because of the technology but because of how it was used. In short, past experience in rolling out education programs indicates that it is as important to have a strong intervention design as it is to have a solid plan to socialize it among stakeholders.

Beyond reopening: A leapfrog moment to transform education?

On September 14, the Center for Universal Education (CUE) will host a webinar to discuss strategies, including around the effective use of education technology, for ensuring resilient schools in the long term and to launch a new education technology playbook “Realizing the promise: How can education technology improve learning for all?”

file-pdf Full Playbook – Realizing the promise: How can education technology improve learning for all? file-pdf References file-pdf Appendix A – Instruments to assess availability and use of technology file-pdf Appendix B – List of reviewed studies file-pdf Appendix C – How may technology affect interactions among students, teachers, and content?

About the Authors

Alejandro j. ganimian, emiliana vegas, frederick m. hess.

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How advanced technologies are transforming education

Mit leaders and professors eric grimson, cynthia breazeal, and christopher capozzola discuss challenges and opportunities of ai in education.

By Duyen Nguyen

Spurred on by the rapid advancement of generative AI like ChatGPT, much of the current conversation on artificial intelligence has emphasized its threat to humanity. Yet, this technology and other recent innovations also hold promise for the future.

“Today’s technologies in education — generative AI, responsible design, and the future of learning,” was a recent event hosted on MIT campus by MIT Open Learning. As part of the MIT Tech Reunions, this session welcomed over 60 alumni and friends. Vice President for Open Learning Eric Grimson, Dean for Digital Learning Cynthia Breazeal, and Senior Associate Dean for Open Learning Christopher Capozzola discussed both the challenges and opportunities that AI presents in education. Here are some of the most important takeaways from their conversation.

Technology is reshaping residential education

With MIT faculty dedicated to innovating in the classroom, digital tools have been a mainstay of on-campus teaching. Technologies like automated grading in computer science courses enable more time for teaching staff to interact with students, while students are able to correct their learning with immediate feedback on their problem sets. Prof. Grimson pointed to some of these technologies in improving residential education even before the Covid-19 pandemic necessitated a temporary shift to remote learning.

But remote learning pivots have expanded approaches to residential education. For example, using the Zoom chat feature to ask and answer questions during lectures allows more timely opportunities for students to clarify their understanding and engage more deeply in the subject matter and with their classmates. Faculty also gain a better sense of where students need bolstering in mastering concepts. The adoption of blended learning (a mix of in-person and online learning) would make it easier for students to pursue internships and experiences abroad while still receiving an MIT education, said Breazeal, Capozzola, and Grimson.

MIT can expand its role in education globally by leveraging today’s technologies

Several of MIT Open Learning ’s initiatives bring MIT’s resources to learners worldwide. In addition to popular programs like OpenCourseWare and MITx that open up MIT’s curriculum to the globe, efforts to serve under-resourced and vulnerable communities, such as refugee and migrant populations, pave the way for more equitable access to learning and employment opportunities. The MIT Refugee Action Hub (ReACT), which was incubated within Open Learning and is now part of the MIT Abdul Latif Jameel World Education Lab (J-WEL), offers a successful example of how to combine online courses, a virtual learning community, and remote apprenticeship and independent project opportunities with on-site support hubs to address the needs of learners facing challenging circumstances.

There’s an opportunity to strengthen the education pipeline

Grimson noted that, while nearly 75% of jobs in the U.S. paying $35,000 or more require a bachelor’s degree, only one-third of Americans have completed a four-year college education. Digital learning innovations, like flexible learning modalities, can help close this gap. MIT Open Learning is exploring an agile, continuous education (ACE) model that, Prof. Breazeal explained, will give learners more pathways to advance their education at their own pace. The ACE model, which MIT ReACT adopted for its Computer and Data Science certificate program, combines online, in-person, and at-work learning modalities that provide learners with flexible, cost- and time-efficient options for advancing their education. Innovating new ways to meet different learners’ needs, like experimenting with short-form content, is part of this effort, said Prof. Capozzola.

“We know there’s a lot more talent in the world” whom innovative educational approaches could reach, Capozzola added. MIT Open Learning is exploring digital learning innovations in the space between the end of high school and the start of college or university — “pre-matriculation” — as well as collaborations with community colleges and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to support more learners, particularly those whom the traditional higher education model has overlooked or shut out.

Education is inherently human

While a future where AI can create code is on the horizon, the goal of courses like 6.0001 Introduction to Computer Science and Programming in Python is to teach students to think like computer scientists. “It’s not just about code, it’s about computational thinking,” said Grimson. ChatGPT is currently causing society to rethink what’s possible, but Breazeal noted that the promise of AI has been around for decades. Breazeal, who founded the Personal Robots Group at MIT’s Media Lab, has been researching and building socially intelligent personal robots for over a decade. Her work has led to the development of personalized AI tutors that help young learners improve their linguistic skills, improve literacy instruction, and nurture children’s curiosity and learning. “We don’t want an oracle, we want something that will help us learn,” she said, allaying fears that generative AI will displace the motivation and need to learn certain skills.

MIT is playing an important role in creating guidelines for the use of AI and other emerging technologies

Faculty from every school at the Institute are working in AI. At MIT Open Learning, the Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education (RAISE) initiative is advancing AI literacy for K-12 students, higher education, and the workforce through programs like Day of AI . The hands-on, team-based approach that RAISE uses to teach young learners about AI has the potential to be adapted to educational programs for learners of all ages. Breazeal explained that the recent program developed by MIT researchers to prepare U.S. Air and Space Forces personnel to understand and utilize AI technologies draws on the same teaching and learning philosophy as Day of AI curricula.

“We need humans interacting with humans,” Breazeal said, in response to an audience question about the likelihood of a future AI-only university. While the session emphasized that the challenges of AI and advanced technologies to education — and humanity — should be taken seriously, the prevailing sentiment was one of hope, not fear.

Learn more about MIT RAISE , Day of AI , and other Open Learning efforts to explore the impact of today’s technologies in education.

How advanced technologies are transforming education was originally published in MIT Open Learning on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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The Benefits of Speech-to-Text Technology in All Classrooms

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During in-person instruction, Vikram Nahal would correct console grips in his role as a Resource Specialist Program (RSP) teacher in Northern California. Learning console grips helps students develop the hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills necessary to correctly form shapes on a page. He could provide grip tools for pencils or guide students’ hands with his own, familiarizing them with the strokes. 

During virtual education, he relied on reference materials and parent assistance when available. An adult in the room could help demonstrate grips, steer hands and inform Nahal when additional resources were needed.

Despite the difficulties of offering support remotely, Nahal found that virtual learning allowed him to experiment with new technologies that supported his students with learning disabilities. Speech-to-text technology allowed them to more easily transfer their ideas onto the page. This especially helped his students with ADHD and processing-related disabilities, such as auditory processing disorder or working memory deficits.

Speech-to-text tools also saved time, which is helpful for students who might forget their ideas once they try to write or students who struggle with getting any words on the page at all, feeling unable to transfer their thoughts. For some, this was because of the intimidation of writing academically, with spelling and grammar anxieties prohibiting them from starting. For others, the time taken to write out initial thoughts caused them to forget later conclusions and analyses, given the lack of immediacy in writing.

“Coming into the distance learning, I was really worried about these kids. But what I found was through using the speech-to-text feature, they were able to get their ideas on paper. They didn’t have that physical transfer where they had to go and write it out and lose what they were thinking about in the process. And they really evolved as writers,” said Nahal.

The process of vocalizing their ideas and watching their words simultaneously appear on the screen relieved much of the stress around writing. Students could watch their thoughts fill a page, proving for some that they were capable of doing so. They could then go through and revise their grammar and ideas, correcting anywhere the technology misheard them and getting practice editing their own writing.

The initial skill required of students wasn’t spelling or grammar, but the ability to transfer their ideas to the page. Natalie Conway is a teacher who works with students with disabilities in grades Kindergarten through 3rd at a statewide online charter school in Oregon. She has been teaching online for seven years. She said that specifically identifying which standard is being assessed, and providing accommodations for the standards not presently up to bat, can help make school more accessible for all students.

“Those accommodations are going to benefit kids who are unidentified (in disability) and who just would enjoy learning that way,” said Conway. “So if you make it available to everyone, it’s not stigmatizing to anyone. And students are going to self-select what’s going to work for them. They know themselves, too, especially the older they get.”

Writing is Rewriting

Nahal eventually transitioned his students off speech-to-text, encouraging them to write phonetically in a subsequent phase but with the same initial indifference to spelling and grammar encouraged by a first draft from speech-to-text. Then, once the ideas were on the page, Nahal and his students could comb through their work, updating spelling and modifying their language to meet academic conventions. 

“Through the process of correcting their work and typing, they’ve become better writers,” he said.

He spotlighted spell check as a simple way students could see that they misspelled words, with the automatic underline quickly notifying students of a mistake. That helped make editing for spelling and grammar less difficult online. Speech-to-text technology accelerated his students’ writing skills during virtual learning. 

“These gains would have not happened had we been in person. I mean, it would have happened, but not so rapidly in my estimation,” Nahal said.

Voice Practice 

Conway spotlighted speech-to-text technology as liberating for kids with writing disabilities and fine motor needs. Beyond writing homework assignments, the technology can also be used for quick in-class responses. If a teacher asks all students to put an answer in the virtual class’ chatbox, for instance, a student who might not feel confident in their ability to write their thoughts can use transcription software to still participate. And for chat boxes with microphone transcription enabled, they can participate even more quickly. 

“It’s giving students independence, instead of having to have a scribe all the time or having to have someone read to them all the time,” said Kathleen Kane Parkinson, a diverse learner teacher in Chicago. 

In the past, many students would only be able to practice their pronunciations in a classroom setting. Now, this technology and related technologies allow for pronunciation practice to be incorporated into at-home work. Some teachers, like Parkinson, may choose to continue using some form of voice-recognition software for out-of-class assignments moving forward. 

Parkinson mentioned, however, that the technology does not yet fully accommodate students with speech and language impairments. The transcription of their speech may not accurately reflect what students said into their microphones, which can cause confusion and frustration. 

Repeated Read Alouds

The related but inverse technology of text-to-speech, also known as read-aloud technology, helped Nahal’s students improve their reading skills. The process of hearing text read aloud ensured that words or lines weren’t skipped, improving comprehension. Students could also highlight new words to hear pronunciations or learn definitions, strengthening vocabularies.

For students who might not feel confident reading grade-level material, or who process information better when listening, read-along features for books and articles can be pivotal. Students with attention deficits might benefit from the ability to pause a story to process or take notes, and then press play to resume reading without losing their place.

“[For] kids who might have working memory deficits or trouble recalling information, the ability to listen to something over and over or listen to it as they read it, following along — that can be really powerful,” Conway said. 

Jodi Dezale, a speech language pathologist at Jefferson Community School in Minneapolis pointed to online books as a key resource brought about during virtual learning. The read-along audio feature provided students the autonomy to read books on their own. Tie-in videos from publishers like Scholastic gave students an additional level of engagement for books, encouraging new modes of interaction with familiar images and stories.  

“One of the tools that we use to build comprehension is repeated readings of the same thing. So getting comfortable with seeing something in different ways and using it multiple times was very helpful,” said Dezale.

Accessibility Opportunities

Engagement with both audible and visual modes of learning can also be achieved through closed captioning in class video software. Offered on both Google Meet and Zoom, closed captioning can have benefits for all students. It can make virtual classrooms that don’t have sign language translators more accessible for students who are deaf and hard of hearing. Students with unimpaired hearing can also utilize captions as a secondary cue for their minds, allowing for another way to perceive the material. 

“You’re pairing verbal input with visual input and it’s just more likely to stick in your brain and make sense to you,” Conway said. 

Access to technology is an equity issue. Students gained technological skills during virtual learning that they might not have otherwise gleaned. Many schools engaged with new learning and accessibility tools they didn’t have the bandwidth or funding to try during in-person learning.

Increased familiarity with online platforms and technologies may lessen the digital divide between the schools that had embedded technology before the pandemic and those that newly engaged with modes of digital education over the past year. This offered more students digital skills that may be needed after graduation. 

“They’ve got to be computer literate,” Nahal said. “It’s a literacy issue for me.” 

Teachers who work with students with disabilities specifically can supply their students with tools and methods of enabling accessibility technologies that they can take with them into general education classes.

“When they’re in, say, a humanities class or a science class, that’s where those tools are going to come in handy. And it’s a matter of teaching them how to use the tools,” Parkinson said. 

This not only makes education more accessible, it encourages students to take agency in their learning, spurring greater independence.

For teachers who work with students with disabilities, the instantaneous nature of online assignments’ feedback saves time. Sandra Zickrick works with middle schoolers with disabilities. She shared that before virtual education, she would take each student aside to assess their skills and determine where additional support was needed. Now, she can have all of her students complete simultaneous virtual assessments and immediately receive the results, allowing her to spend more class time providing specific support or doing activities with the entire class.

Beyond the new technologies learned, a number of students with disabilities preferred learning online. For some, doing school from home induced less social anxiety, which led to increased academic confidence.

Attending school from home was less optimal for many students, with many facing challenges of family distractions, Wi-Fi connection issues or an inability to find a quiet place to work. Yet some students were better able to concentrate on schoolwork at home, whether from reduced distractions in virtual school compared to social classroom settings, or from decreased social stress. Online education can allow for greater control over a student’s environment, which can limit external distractors or overbearing external stimuli, benefiting some students with autism, ADD and ADHD. 

“A lot of the physical distractors that happened in a building, that happened in a physical classroom, aren’t the same at home,” Conway said. 

Conway also pointed to the ability for students to revisit lectures, to rewind, rewatch and take their time, as another accessibility tool. The more methods teachers offer for students to access the material and demonstrate that they’ve learned it, the more accessible school becomes for all students.

When students can select how to best prove their knowledge — be it in an essay, video, PowerPoint, Google Doc or other tool — they not only take agency in their learning, but can unlock new creativity. This creativity will be an asset in higher education and in the workforce, Conway said. 

“They now have skills to communicate in a variety of ways, collaborate with other kids and be creative and think critically about what they’re doing and how they’re doing it,” she said.

The specific tools and technologies a school may take on during virtual education may depend on the school’s location, technology team and budget. Yet the fact that more students received technological devices and more schools explored assistive technologies during virtual education helped in the movement to make education more accessible.

“I think the biggest takeaway of this online experience is just that there are things out there for free that we can use,” Conway said. “The sky’s the limit and you just need to Google whatever it is you want.”

MindShift is part of KQED, a non-profit NPR and PBS member station in San Francisco, CA. The text of this specific article is available to republish for noncommercial purposes under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license, thanks to support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

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Effects of using educational technology tools to enhance EFL students’ speaking performance

• Published: 19 January 2023
• Volume 28 , pages 10031–10051, ( 2023 )

Cite this article

• Mekuriaw Genanew Asratie   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-9143-0484 1 ,
• Bantalem Derseh Wale 1 &
• Yibeltal Tadele Aylet 1  

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Educational speaking technology is a digital expertise used to enhance speaking performance. This research examined the effects of using educational speaking technology tools: FORVO, YouGlish, and OALD 8th ed. to enhance students’ speaking performance. A quasi-experimental pretest-posttest two groups design was used. Test, questionnaire, interview, and teacher-log were used to gather the data from 82 first-year Information communication and Technology (IT) students selected through comprehensive sampling. The experimental group students had learned speaking skills through educational speaking technology tools while the control group students learned using the conventional method. When the quantitative data were analyzed through independent samples T-test, the qualitative data were analyzed through thematic analysis. The findings of the study uncovered that there was a statistical difference between the experimental and control group students in their speaking performance. Accordingly, the learners who had learned through educational speaking technology have enhanced their speaking performance compared to the students that learned conventionally. Predominantly, students who learned through educational speaking technology were fluent, coherent, and accurate in their speech, rich in lexical resources, used a variety of grammatical ranges, and better in pronunciation. Besides, the students’ have positive perceptions towards using educational speaking technology tools. Consequently, this study recommends researchers, teachers, and students to make the use of educational technology and to go in line with the state of the art.

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1 Introduction

Technology plays a great role to deliver education to students outside of school. Commendably, teachers were able to deploy remote learning technologies using a combination of TV, Radio, Online, and Mobile Platforms WBG (The World Bank Group, 2021 ). WBG suggested that using technologies in education can play a crucial role in supporting teachers, students, and the learning process more broadly in order to become effective in their subject matter. In this research, emphasis is given on what effects would be occurred in students’ English language learning in general and speaking performance in particular through using educational technologies.

The technologies have provided us with the use of a number of technology-based tools to enhance students’ speaking skills. Aly et al., ( 2013 ) stated it has become increasingly important in EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learning due to the large number of learners who want to use English freely for communicative purposes. It is supported by (Lezaraton, 1996 ) that speaking in a second or foreign language has often been viewed as the most demanding of the four skills. It is known that this skill is one of the main English language skills that students improve. Hence, it should be accompanied by performance consists of fluency and coherence, lexical resource, grammatical range and accuracy, and pronunciation which students must learn (Sosas, 2021 ).

The main point in this study is assessing effects of integrating speaking technologies to enhance students’ speaking performance. This implies that there are tremendous technologies to enhance learners’ speaking performance. Educational technologies are occurred and get increased in the world. In Ethiopia also, technology has been increasing to support the education, for utilizing technology is a fundamental practise in EFL. As a result, the use of technology in learning speaking skills is put forward to improve students’ oral performance (Hong, 2006 ). However, English language, which is the medium of instruction in Ethiopia, becomes difficult for teachers and learners as it is not their mother tongue. To overcome such challenge, using educational technology is consulted because it has the power to ease speaking performance obstacles. In line with speaking performance, many scholars such as (Vecchio & Guerrrero, 1995 ) conceptualized it as the ability to use oral language appropriately and effectively in learning activities in different contexts in and outside the classroom. (Richards & Schmidt, 2002 ) also argued that it is speaking rapidly, smoothly, and accurately. Moreover, speaking performance is the feature which gives speech the qualities of being natural and normal.

Therefore, students’ speaking performance can be enhanced when using educational speaking technologies such as YouGlish, Zoom, FORVO, Oxford Advanced Dictionary (8th ed.), Amharic-English Dictionary, the Color Vowel Chart, WhatsApp, Skype, BBC Learning English, and VOA learning English. These technologies are helpful to listen to the pronunciations of unknown words and phrases OPEN (Online Professional English Network, 2020 ). However, in this research, YouGlish, FORVO, and Oxford Advanced Dictionary (8th ed.) were employed to enhance EFL students’ speaking performance at Injibara University.

2 Statement of the problem

Utilizing educational speaking technology in speaking lessons is needed to fill current gaps faced by the conventional methods of teaching speaking skills. Speaking is a challenging practise that requires fluency and coherence, lexical resources, grammatical range and accuracy, and pronunciation (H. Dougles, 2018 ). Previous studies like: (Fajariyah, 2009 ; Hong, 2006 ; Luoma, 2004 , and Nur & et al., 2021) showed that most EFL learners were ineffective in their speaking performance. Students often fear in speaking due to their incapability of fluency and coherence, lexical resources, grammatical range and accuracy, and pronunciation skills.

Besides, the current researchers’ teaching experience also confirmed that EFL students at Injibara University face speaking problems on fluency and coherence, lexical resources, grammatical range and accuracy, and pronunciation. Hence, the students are unable to speak fluently due to repetition and hesitation. Most of them are also unable to speak coherently with appropriate cohesive features. They do not also use a wide vocabulary resource readily and flexibly to convey precise meaning. Moreover, they do not use a full range of structures and even a range of pronunciation features with precision and subtlety in their speech. This is because the students often do not substantiate their learning through educational speaking technologies that would enhance their fluency and coherence, lexical resources, grammatical range and accuracy, and pronunciation. Thus, the conventional teaching speaking methods are still in use though the methods do not seem to alleviate the existing speaking problems faced the students. Consequently, this problem motivates the current researchers to seek for better learning methods (like educational speaking technology) that can enhance students’ speaking performance. This is because, as previous research findings unconcealed, using educational speaking technology is essential to fill the gaps of the conventional teaching methods since it combined practical speaking tools that involve students with various audio-video input and let them practise with their own pace. In using educational speaking technologies, the teacher is not a source of knowledge rather the students learn speaking skills using educational speaking technologies. Hence, the teacher is mainly a facilitator of the learning process.

Educational technology is now being carried out to overcome educational problems happening in Ethiopian universities (Assefa, 2017 ). It assists EFL learners to be independent from offline classroom learning. It allows them the choices to work on their learning material at any time of the day (Jonassen, 1996 ; Salaberry, 1999 ; and Rost 2002 ). Particularly, learning speaking skills requires educational technologies including internet, podcasts, video conferencing, videos and speech recognition software, and apps which are paramount ways to assist students’ speaking skills (Omidvar & Bahadorfar, 2014 ). In addition, Alghaber ( 2019 ) remarks technologies are inseparable elements of students’ speaking performance achievement methods.

Nonetheless, EFL students and teachers are not seen in applying technology, which makes learning easy and everlasting. Teachers often give the students with printed handouts consist of full of language skills without integrating authentic educational speaking technologies mentioned above. Today, these conventional materials should be supported by technology. When teachers and learners commit to use only the conventional tools, teaching and learning speaking involves a variety of challenges to them (Sherine et al., 2020 ). As Sherine et al., pointed out the major challenge the EFL learners face is limited number of classes allotted for speaking and lack of resources.

In relation to challenges, many researchers for example, (Atali & Bergil, 2012 ) explored that students were unhappy with their pronunciation, accuracy, fluency, grammar and diction, and they are neither aware of the sound structure of English nor able to articulate the sound due to their inability to use educational speaking technology tools. Therefore, using smartphones or computer products of technology has a positive effect on students’ speaking skills (Sherine et al., 2020 ). However, aside from these materials, integrating appropriate educational technology-based speaking tools to improve students’ speaking performance is necessary. Furthermore, Sosas ( 2021 ) recommends that technology can be aligned in learning speaking skills with communicative way of teaching and learning which allows students to convey themselves in a skillful and competent. Nonetheless, students are hardly incorporating it into education especially in learning speaking skills at Injibara University.

Besides, saying the words, the students and teachers are in threatening due to they use conventional materials (Marilyn & Harcourt, 2019 ). When the students commit mispronunciation, influent, grammar inaccuracy, and memorized utterances of the target language, misunderstanding of message will be happened because of deficiency practise with appropriate speaking tools. However, using educational technology speaking tools enhance the students’ speaking performance since it allows them to practise speaking via the varieties of tools.

As a result, students should be assisted with the combination of today’s educational speaking technologies to enhance their speaking skills. To fill these gaps, this study examined the effects of using educational technology speaking tools: YouGlish, FORVO, and Oxford Dictionary 8th edition on EFL students’ speaking performance.

However, even though there have been national and international previous studies conducted on using educational speaking technology, there are inadequate studies conducted on the effects of using educational speaking technologies on students’ speaking performance. Specifically, using educational speaking technology seems to have been a missing feature of teaching speaking skills, in the study area. Hence, the current study was conducted to fill this research gap in exploring the effects of using educational speaking technology on EFL students’ speaking performance. More precisely, the study has been intended to improve EFL students’ speaking performance in consideration with grammar, vocabulary, fluency, and accuracy. It can also show benefits of using educational tools for teachers, and even ministry of education. Moreover, it is highly important for educational bodies to know integrating technology in education is highly necessary so as to facilitate the teaching learning process easily and attractively since today is requiring people to perform their tasks especially academic events with the support of technology. Accordingly, the following research questions have been constructed: (1) what are the effects of using educational technology speaking tools on EFL learners’ Speaking performance? (2) What are students’ perceptions towards using educational speaking technologies in speaking classrooms?

3 Review of related literature

3.1 speaking performance.

Speaking performance, in this study, is students’ ability or/and proficiency in speaking. Researchers including (Derakhshan et al., 2016 ) stated that speaking is part of learners’ academic life that they should enhance. EFL learners’ speech is needed to be fluent, coherent, accurate in grammar and pronunciation, and enrich in lexical resource. Accordingly, speaking performance, in this study, incorporates fluency and coherence, lexical resource, grammatical range, accuracy, and pronunciation.

Fluency and coherence

Speaking with fluency means the individual’s speech flows well without many interruptions (Marilyn & Harcourt, 2019 ; Mairi, 2016 ) also describes that fluency is one’s English language proficiency much better and sounds slicker, more natural, and more impressive for the listeners. Likewise, Luoma ( 2004 ) explains fluency as smoothness, rate of speech, length of utterances, connectedness of ideas, and also absence of excessive pausing. Furthermore, Stockdale ( 2009 ) states that it occurs when somebody speaks a foreign language like a native speaker with the least number of silent pauses, filled pauses, self-corrections, false starts, and hesitations.

However, in EFL, fluency is one of the most difficult aspects to develop within the speaking skills (Briesmaster & Molina, 2017 ). Most students are unable to express their thought fluently. As per the current researchers’ teaching experiences, mostly for those who are learning English language skills, fluency is still a problem since grammar correctness is being given more attention other than fluency. Speaking and coherence are inseparable in speaking performance. In this study, coherence is considered as being smooth, logical and signpost the organization of one’s speech. This is also reinforced by (H. Douglas 2018 ) that one speaks coherently with fully appropriate cohesive features and develops topics fully and appropriately.

Lexical resource

Lexical resources according to Shikhar K. & et al. ( 2012 ) are a language resource consisting of data regarding the lexemes of the lexicon of one or more languages. Students were in danger of having word power of English language even if they have learnt English language from kindergarten to university. Learners were not able to know English words well; they encountered tricky in having presentation and making speech to the audience. However, (H. Douglas 2018 ) argued that students should use vocabulary with full flexibility and precision in all topics and use idiomatic language naturally. Therefore, overcoming such a threatening, learners should be assisted by using educational speaking technology tools.

Grammatical range and accuracy

Nunan ( 2015 ) stated that accuracy is the extent to which the learners’ speech is grammatically acceptable with clear, intelligible pronunciation and appropriate choice of diction. H. Douglas,  ( 2018 ) defined accuracy that the speaker makes his/her speech clear and grammatical. It can be achieved by allowing students to focus on phonology, grammar and discourse while speaking.

In relation to grammar, a research by (Masyithah, 2019 ) concluded that non-native speakers of English language speak with more incorrect grammar than a native speaker would. Students should use full range of structures appropriately while speaking. In learning speaking skills, these conventional materials lack activities supported by sound, transcriptions of words, videos, and colored images. Learning with such materials, the only intervener was instructor, who is non-native speaker of English language skills to teach students about words, accuracy, fluency, grammar and pronunciation.

Pronunciation

pronunciation, which is the component of speaking, is a key to produce acceptable and remarkable speech (Khanh, 2021 ). Hence, learners are expected to perform the elements of pronunciation such as sounds, rhythm, and intonation. In addition, (Wardhani, 2018 ) stated that it is important to make learners’ language intelligible and understandable.

4 Educational speaking technology tools

A study by West ( 2013 ) revealed that EFL teaching and learning has not changed yet in terms of giving equal attention for all language skills. Majority of the English language courses in universities are being learnt through conventional methods excluding speaking skills. Hence, EFL learners still cannot properly speak English to the expected level though they are university students. However, nowadays various technologies are being introduced to learn speaking skills in the classrooms.

Alsuhaim ( 2017 ) investigated learning pronunciation, words, fluency and coherence, grammar and accuracy, which are the components of speaking performance, has moved a drive to integrate educational speaking technology tools as new resources educational speaking technology tools provide students with ample opportunities to practise the elements of speaking and receive feedback. Among these tools, this study combined YouGlish, FORVO, and Oxford Advanced Learners’ Dictionary (8th ed) to explore their effects on EFL students’ speaking performance. These technological tools have a number of uses either in sound or video that help learners to get more practical topics which enhance speaking performance. Asides from this, they are user friendly to be used in learning speaking skills as supportive materials.

4.1 YouGlish

YouGlish is a technological tool used to learn pronunciation online. According to Fu & Yang ( 2019 ), YouGlish is a lexical supplementary material to bring an effect on learners’ speaking skills, including pronunciation, intonation, word usage, accuracy, fluency, and grammar. Regarding this, Green ( 2005 ) remarks technology can play an integral part in providing English language students with valuable language experiences as they learn a new language using verbal interaction and a variety of language functions. However, university students do not have the opportunity to use YouGlish to learn EFL for the inaccessibility of technology (Sevy-Biloon & Chroman, 2019 ). This can be a cause in decreasing students’ performance to speak and communicate effectively. Therefore, it is suggested that using technology like YouGlish perhaps enhance students’ speaking performance. In this research, EFL students used this technology in the place where the internet is accessible with desktop or easy handheld mobile phones, and they practised through searching for English words and phrases by listening to the native speakers to enhance their speaking performance at Injibara University.

4.1.1 FORVO

FORVO, which is an online pronunciation dictionary, hosts over 2.2 million sound files that represent utterances of native speakers of many international languages (Bajorek, 2017 ). For instance, languages such as English, French, German, and etc. are found in this educational technology tool. Accordingly, it enables EFL students to improve their speaking performance through listening online to the right pronunciation of English words and phrases. Bajorek ( 2017 ) also remarks that FORVO is the contemporary tool for language learners, instructors, and researchers, and exposes novel pronunciation development chances.

4.2 Oxford advanced learners’ dictionary (8th ed)

Oxford Advanced Learners’ Dictionary (8th ed) is a comprehensive digital dictionary for advanced learners. One of the most important resources when learning English is a dictionary, and the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary is a great digital dictionary specifically geared for learners. The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (8th ed) is used to search for words in an easier way. It contains over 180,000 words and phrases. Besides, it helps learners to listen to the pronunciation of words having thousands of audio files with real voices. So, using the dictionary, students can read the meanings of the unknown words with transcription and pronunciation. This helps learners to become rich in word power and enables them to become good at speaking performance (Miller, 2006 ).

5 Effects of educational speaking technology on students’ speaking performance

Educational speaking technology plays an integral part in providing students with valuable language experiences as they learn a new language (Green, 2005 ). These can be used to help providing additional language learning opportunities for EFL students (Green, 2005 ). Furthermore, an exploration on technology in teaching speaking and its effects to students learning English portrayed that integrating technology in teaching methods is a fundamental practise in learning EFL (Sosas, 2021 ). She suggested that using educational speaking technology tools in learning speaking has influences towards EFL students speaking performance.

Similarly, a study conducted by (Fajariyah, 2009 ) on improving grade eight students’ speaking proficiency using games showed that students’ speaking performance improved in answering the teacher’s questions orally, identifying the words and grammar used in the expression, making sentences using appropriate grammar and vocabulary and expressing their idea. Khanh ( 2021 ) reviewed the effects of Communication Technology on learners’ Speaking Skills development, and he found that using communication technology boosts the students’ speaking skills. Likewise, a study conducted on technological tools such as Internet, podcasts, video conferencing, videos and speech recognition software indicated that these have been regarded as ways of helping students to improve speaking performance (Omidvar, & Bahadorfar,  2014 ).

Khanh ( 2021 ) concluded that even though speaking is not a skill that students can learn at home alone, learners can be assisted to study by themselves outside the classroom due to the growth of technology. Besides, (Gunada, 2017 ) investigate a research on “Using YouTube Video; An IT-based Media to Improve Students’ Speaking Skill.” The result showed that using such technologies is promising to improve EFL students’ speaking performance. Educational speaking technology gives students better exposure toward the aspects of speaking performance.

Miller ( 2006 ) investigated the effect of English learners’ dictionaries on international students’ acquisition of the English article system. The results showed that dictionaries can help students to improve their English language skills. Besides, students who use dictionary were good at grammar from those who do not use, and it is used to increase learners’ vocabularies.

6 Students’ perceptions towards using educational technologies in speaking classrooms

Perception towards educational speaking technologies affects students to use educational speaking technology tools in their speaking classes. In this regard, different scholars tried to assess students’ perceptions towards using educational technologies in speaking classrooms in a more generalized way rather than studying it specifically. From these, (Yousif & Abeer, 2021 ) is one of them who has done research focusing on students’ perception on virtual classrooms and its impact on their communications in Saudi Arabian university students. The result showed that even though the students showed positive attitudes towards virtual classrooms, the majority of them disagreed on their effectiveness in helping students recognize their oral mistakes. Consequently, students perceived that recognizing mistakes and getting feedbacks and also lack of face-to-face communication had a negative impact on their communication in virtual classrooms.

Another research was also done by Alhaisoni ( 2016 ) on Saudi EFL preparatory students’ perception of using dictionary. The results revealed that students showed positive attitude towards using bilingual dictionary, online dictionaries and Google translators than print versions. Hence, the researcher finally recommended that teachers should learn about educational technologies.

Moreover, Daniel J. et al., ( 2017 ) conducted a study on students’ use and perception of technology enhanced learning in a mass lecture knowledge-rich domain first year undergraduate classes in England at Northumbria University. The finding showed that students perceived that using Twitter as a technological learning tool has a greater impact in their education. However, such studies are scanty in Ethiopian context. Hence, studying the effect of using educational technologies speaking tools in Ethiopia has become very timely and crucial.

7 Methodology

7.1 research design.

This study aimed at assessing the effects of using educational speaking technology tools on EFL students’ speaking performance. To achieve this objective, the researchers used a quasi-experimental design that consists of pretest and post-test with two group participants accompanied by mixed research approach. In quasi experiential research design, two groups of participants (the control and experimental groups) were often used, and pretests and post tests were given to both groups of students.

8 Participants

The participants of the study were 82 first year Information communication and Technology (IT) students who were taking “Communicative English Language Skills II” course in sections ‘A’ and ‘B’ at Injibara University. The students were chosen using comprehensive sampling technique.

9 Data collection instruments

The data were gathered through test, questionnaire, semi-structured interview, and teacher log. While the test comprised both pre-test and post-test, it was used to collect quantitative data on students’ speaking performance especially on their fluency and coherence, grammar range and accuracy, lexical source and pronunciation. The pre-test consists three parts of speaking tasks that the students provided a guided talk about their experiences. The post-test also comprised three parts that the students spoke on the given topics. Each test has a total weight of 36% based on the IELTS Speaking Band Descriptors. The second data gathering tool was questionnaire which measured students’ perceptions towards utilizing educational speaking technology tools to improve their speaking performance. It was designed with 15 closed-ended items with likert scale measurements labelling from Strongly Disagree (1) to Strongly Agree (5). Semi-structured interview was also used to collect data from twelve students on their perception towards using educational speaking technology tools. The last one was teacher log which the teacher took notes during the intervention on students’ engagement using the educational speaking technologies.

10 Data collection procedures

To collect the essential data, the data gathering tools including tests and questionnaire were equipped. First, the IT students assigned in section ‘A’ were taken as control group, and those who were enrolled in section ‘B’ were identified as experimental group. Then, the pre-test consisted of three presentations was given to both control and experimental groups to know their speaking performance: fluency and coherence, lexical resources, grammatical range and accuracy, and pronunciation. Both groups were given a chance to speak about three different topics within five minutes for each three presentations.

After the completion of the guided talk in the pre-tests took fifteen minutes and marked from 100%, the intervention was carried out. In the teaching learning process, the control group students assigned in section ‘A’ learned speaking skills with the conventional material i.e. module. The handout “Communicative English Language Skills II ” that IT students must take during their stay at university was used for control group students. Using this material, the teacher taught the control groups speaking skills with different tasks. For example, the students were given oral activities sharing problem-solving experiences to classmates based on scenarios, describing things in comparing and contrasting technique, having debates, place descriptions, and etc. to improve students’ fluency and coherence, lexical resource, grammar range and accuracy, and pronunciation. With such materials, teaching and learning process took place over two months in which students learned speaking skills for three hours per week.

For the experimental group students assigned in section ‘B’, educational speaking technology tools: YouGlish, FORVO, and Oxford Advanced Learning Dictionary 8th edition (OALD 8th ed) were installed on the desktop computers in English Language Improvement Centre (ELIC) and on their easy hand held phones. Next, the teacher oriented the students on how they can use these tools to enhance their speaking performance. And, the teacher assisted students in opening YouGlish and searched for English words such as village, Bilharzia, confront, interested, interesting, favorite, and etc. to listen to an exact pronunciation. Second, with FORVO, the students practised in listening to the pronunciations and meanings of unfamiliar words like build, building, where, why, struggle, and etc. on the desktop computer. Besides, (OALD 8th ed) was used to listen to the exact pronunciations, meanings of the words in different parts of speeches with examples in a sentence form. Students also learned about IPA transcriptions words to say correctly using this dictionary. Aside from this, students were practising through recording their pronunciation with the help of recorder, and later listening what they recorded. With the same teacher, the intervention was lasted for two months likewise in conventional materials for three hours per week. During the intervention, teacher log was held in both control and experimental group students. The teacher wrote down his experiences such as weaknesses, strengths, impacts, and etc. of conventional material, and YouGlish, FORVO, and (OALD 8th ed) during his intervention.

After the two months of intervention, both groups of students were evaluated in the post-test which was identical with the pre-test. In this test, the control and experimental groups were tested with guided speeches that include overall description of their schools, favorite field of study, and a persuasive speech on the best measurements that the people should take to overcome COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, the questionnaire was administered both groups to measure their perceptions towards using educational speaking technology tools for enhancement of speaking performance.

11 Data analysis methods

The collected data were analyzed through quantitative and qualitative methods. First, the quantitative data gathered through tests were analyzed through independent samples T-test using the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 26 software program. The independent samples T-test was used to determine if there were differences on control and experimental groups’ improvements on speaking performance including fluency and coherence, lexical resource, grammar and accuracy, and pronunciation using conventional materials and educational speaking technology tools before and after the intervention. Similarly, the data from questionnaire were analyzed in descriptive statistics such as mean, standard deviation to indicate EFL students’ perception towards using educational speaking technology tools to improve their speaking performance. In addition to this, the semi-structured interview and the teacher’s log were analyzed using qualitative data analysis techniques.

In this part, the results the study on the students speaking performance and their perception towards using speaking technology tools are presented. The results of this study are based on the data gained through tests, teacher log, interview, and questionnaire.

13 Students’ speaking performance enhancement

The students’ speaking performance enhancement was assessed through tests, and the data was analyzed using descriptive statistics and independent samples t-test. Besides, a qualitative data gathered through teacher log was also used to supplement the quantitative data on students’ speaking performance enhancement.

The descriptive statistics result in Table  1 shows that the experimental and control groups had akin speaking performance in the pre-test. Hence, while the experimental group had a (M = 36.45 SD = 1.783), and the control group had (M = 35.20 SD = 1.572). Though it looks as if the means and standard deviations of both the experimental and control group students had some variances, the differences were not significant. Thus, it implies that both groups had similar speaking performance in the pre-test. Nevertheless, the students’ mean score and standard deviation result in the post test were statistically different. Table  1 indicates that the experimental group had (M = 46.29 SD = 2.452), while the control group had (M = 36.92 SD = 2.141) in the posttest.

Most importantly, the independent samples t test result in Table  2 also depicted that Levene’s test for equality of variances exhibited no violations, P  = .216. The output gained from the independent t-test indicates that there was a statistically significant difference between the control group and the experimental group t (80) = 1.553, P < .05, d = 0.509). It divulges that the EFL learners who had learned speaking skills through speaking technology tools have surpassed in their speaking performance.

It is the first day that I am beginning to teach students speaking skills with speaking technology tools. The students seem new to the technology tools while I introduced them the names of the technologies. The students do not know what YouGlish and FORVO are. Almost all of the students know that Oxford dictionary is used to know the meanings of new words, but they were not aware of its use to listen one’s own sound of pronouncing words. When I tried to show them how the technologies can be used, most of the students were in difficulty to even to operate the speaking technology tools.

The teacher log, reported in the mid of the intervention, indicated that the students were familiar with the speaking technology tools, and students were using them though they were not that much effective. For example, the teacher reported:

Nevertheless, today, the students used educational speaking technologies while learning speaking skills. They have practised speaking skills through YouGlish, FORVO, and Oxford Advanced Learners’ Dictionary (8th ed).

Moreover, the teacher log written towards the end of the intervention showed:

… now, the students have practiced pronouncing various words using the OALD dictionary. Most of the students had pronounced the words in a better way compared to their pronunciation performance shown while I introduced the speaking technologies to them. They also learnt vocabularies through the Words in the news.

14 Students’ perceptions in educational speaking technology

This study examined EFL students’ perception towards using educational speaking technology to enhance speaking performance. Accordingly, the experimental group students’ perceptions were examined through questionnaire and semi-structured interview. The findings showed that the students had positive perceptions towards using educational speaking technology to develop their speaking performance. Particularly, the students were interested to use educational speaking technologies as it is shown in Table  3 .

As the descriptive statistics result in Table  3 depicted, the students had (M = 4.38 SD = 0.669) on whether they enjoy using educational speaking technology in their speaking classes. It implies that the students had positive perceptions in using educational speaking technology since the mean value was greater than 3, the mean value. Similarly, the table also showed that the students had (M = 4.29 SD = 0.463) to using educational speaking technology enhances speaking performance which indicates that they had positive perception to it. The students’ response to whether they would like to use educational speaking technologies to do speaking activities (M = 4.19 SD = 0.602) showed that they had positive views to educational technologies. The students also replied that they became better English speakers when they use speaking educational technologies (M = 4.38 SD = 0.669). As it can be seen in the table, the students’ responses (M = 4.57 SD = 0.598) implied that using educational technologies helps them to make their speech clearer. Finally, the students confirmed (M = 4.43 SD = 0.598) that they look forward to educational speaking technologies in speaking classes. “

Table  4 showed that the students had (M = 4.62 SD = 0.590) on whether using educational speaking technology improves fluency. The result implies that the students had positive views towards using educational speaking technologies to develop their lexical resources. In the same manner, they also viewed (M = 4.57 SD = 0.598) that using educational speaking technology improves coherence. They believed that educational speaking technologies develop students’ lexical resource, (M = 4.33 SD = 0.577). Likewise, the students had (M = 4.48 SD = 0.602) which indicates that they viewed educational technology increases grammatical range. Similarly, the students perceived (M = 4.33 SD = 0.658) that educational technology increases speaking performance in terms of accuracy. Lastly, the students viewed (M = 4.33 SD = 0.658) that using educational speaking technology enhances pronunciation skills. Thus, the results exhibited that the students had viewed using educational speaking technologies was effective to enhance speaking performance.

The students also understood that the specific educational speaking technologies including FORVO, YouGlish, and OALD had significant roles to enhance their speaking performance.

Hence, Table  5 depicted that using FORVO helps (M = 4.38 SD = 0.669) them to develop their speaking performance in general and pronunciation skills in particular through listening online to the native speakers’ pronunciation. In the same manner, the students confirmed (M = 4.33 SD = 0.577) that using YouGlish in speaking lessons serves them to enhance their speaking performance including pronunciation, intonation, word usage, accuracy, fluency, and grammar. To end, the students’ response (M = 4.43 SD = 0.598) indicated that using Oxford Advanced Learners’ Dictionary helps them to develop speaking skills. The results, therefore, implied that the students viewed using FORVO, YouGlish, and OALD had significant roles to develop speaking performance.

Among twelve of the interviewees, most of them, ten students reported that the AOLD helped them to practice pronunciation, learn grammar and accuracy, lexical resource while YouGLish and FORVO supported them to develop their fluency and coherence. When one of the interviewees illustrated this point, she said:

I have not ever been experienced in using YouGlish, FORVO and other educational technologies to improve my speaking skills. Of course, I have used English dictionaries, but they were hard copies and not prepared for advanced learners which are helpful for college students. For example, my previous dictionary had no CD to be installed on desktops. Now, I have experienced on how to use the speaking technologies. Even, I feel that I pass time with native speakers when I use YouGlish and FPRVO.

Another participant also replied:

I wish to go to English speaking countries to learn the language through immersion though I cannot get the chance. But now I can learn English here in my country via the technologies and improve my language to be native like. I want to pronounce English [words] like the native speakers because I want to seek for scholarship and learn my second degree abroad.

However, some of the interviewees, two of all had some concerns on the relevance of the technologies for they cannot understand the native speakers’ speech due to lack of adequate background knowledge of speaking skills. When one of these two students forwarded:

We should study African and Ethiopian English to communicate with our local community, and serve it effectively. Why do we bother to be like native speakers using the pronunciation tools? Even the people in our village may not understand my speeches if I can pronounce words like what native speakers perform.

Nevertheless, most of the interviewees underlined that the educational technologies were helpful to learn speaking skills better, and they reported that the technologies will have significant roles in their future jobs since English is the language of the world. All in all, the findings inferred that the students had positive perceptions on using educational speaking technology because they were interested to use the technologies, the effectiveness of using the technologies, and viewed that the technologies had significant roles to enhance their speaking performance.

15 Discussions

This article examined effects of utilizing educational technologies to improve students’ speaking performances, and it assessed what the students perceive about the technologies used in our article such as FORVO, YouGlish, and OALD (8th ed). The outcomes of this study are able to insight applying technology in education is ideal since it assists the learners but also the teachers to make education easy, clear, suitable, and interesting. Besides, the users of this technology have to build a positive view.

With regard to the firs research question, which is focusing on effects of using educational technology speaking tools on EFL learners’ Speaking performance, it has been found that the experimental group students have outperformed over the control group students in speaking performance it is because the descriptive statistics shows that experimental group (M = 46.29 SD = 2.452), while the control group had (M = 36.92 SD = 2.141 in the posttest. So, it can be understood that using speaking educational technology enhanced the students’ speaking performance than delivering the conventional method of teaching speaking skills. This is supported by Khanh ( 2021 ), Omidvar & Bahadorfar ( 2014 ), and Sosas ( 2021 ). They argued that when the language learners are assisted with technology, they will have the new learning opportunities. The authors on their side, it is believed that specifically, for non-native speakers of English language, utilizing technology that includes videos, images, and pictures as well as the audios can help them get improved on their speaking performances. In addition, the Independent Samples T test of control and experimental group and the teacher log have showed that the students are able to surpass their speaking performances with the support of educational technology tools including what are noted above. The teacher log assured the students in the experimental group have enhanced their speaking performance in terms of fluency and coherence, lexical resource, grammatical range and accuracy, and pronunciation. For instance, as the teacher’s log showed the students were not able to speak out fluently, accurately, and coherently before using the speaking technology tools. However, the teacher log confirmed that the students’ speaking performance have been enhanced after the technology based speaking lessons given in the intervention. Similarly, the teacher log reported that the students’ pronunciation skills had been improved while they practised the speaking technology tools that were given in the intervention.

On the whole, the findings gained through the tests and teacher log indicated that using educational speaking technologies enhanced the experimental group students’ speaking performance in terms of fluency and coherence, lexical resource, grammatical range and accuracy, and pronunciation. In other terms, the educational speaking technology students used a variety vocabulary; they were fluent and coherent in their speech; they were grammatical and accurate while speaking, and their pronunciation was also by far better compared to their own prior experiences and the control group students.

Conversely, the control group students, in their post-intervention speaking tests, were not effective in vocabulary choice, not fluent and coherent, poor in lexical resource, ungrammatical and inaccurate, with wrong pronunciation of words. The control group students were ineffective because they did not use educational speaking technologies in their speaking lessons. They were mainly dependent on the teacher and the printed handouts to develop their speaking performance. They did not get the chance to practise speaking skills using speaking educational technologies.

These infers that the enhancements in the experimental group were attained as a result of using educational speaking technology tools that focused on fluency and coherence, lexical resource, grammatical range and accuracy, and pronunciation. Hence, in order to enhance their speaking performance, the experimental group students used the education speaking technology tools. For instance, they used “YouGlish” to practise pronunciation, intonation, word usage, accuracy, fluency, and grammar. In addition, they also used “FORVO” to listen and learn how native speakers pronounce words and phrases.

Besides, the students also used Oxford Advanced Learners’ Dictionary (8th ed) to learn pronunciation skills, fluency and coherence, lexical resource, grammatical range and accuracy. Particularly, the dictionary helped students, first, to listen the native speakers’ pronunciation of words and phrases and, then, to listen one’s own pronunciation of words and phrases. This practise enabled the students to learn pronunciation and coherence. The dictionary also provides alternative dictions for a certain word or phrase with lots of synonyms and antonyms that enabled the students to develop their lexical resource. Apart from this, since the dictionary has various sentence structures constructed in a certain word or phrase, the students were benefited to increase their grammar and accuracy skills. This study, therefore, revealed that educational speaking technologies could be used to enhance students’ speaking performance since using the educational speaking technology tools enables them to practise fluency and coherence, lexical resource, grammatical range and accuracy, and pronunciation.

The second research question is intended to know that the student’s perception towards utilizing educational technology tools so as to improve their speaking performance as mentioned in the above. In relation with this, the result showed that the students have a positive perception about technology tools this is because each items under students’ perceptions in educational speaking technology section, as shown Tables  1 and 2 , and 3 , the mean values show that greater than 3. In sum, the results revealed that the students were interested on using educational speaking technology in their speaking lessons. Besides, the students had also positive views on the effectiveness of using educational speaking technology. In support of the questionnaire data, the results gained through the students’ semi-structured interview also confirmed that they had positive perceptions in utilizing educational speaking technologies like YouGlish, FORVO, and AOLD (8th edition). However, the current findings were not alike to the research findings discovered by Yousif & Abeer ( 2021 ). The study conducted by Yousif & Abeer ( 2021 ) showed that even though the students showed positive attitudes towards virtual classrooms, the majority of them disagreed on the effectiveness of the virtual classrooms in helping students recognize their oral mistakes. The students perceived that recognizing mistakes and getting feedbacks and also lack of face-to-face communication had a negative impact on their communication in virtual classrooms. These findings were comparable with most research findings conducted by previous researchers though they also disagree with some previous research findings.

16 Conclusions and implications

The present research has investigated the effects of using educational speaking technology tools on EFL students’ speaking performance. The study shows that using educational speaking technology in speaking lessons enhanced students’ speaking performance since the tools including FORVO, YouGlish, and OALD (8th ed) enabled students to practise fluency and coherence, lexical resource, grammatical range and accuracy, and pronunciation which are the core features of speaking abilities.

The result shows that the experimental group students’ speeches were fluent and coherent, rich in lexical resources, grammatical and accurate, and smooth in terms of pronunciation when they have used educational speaking technologies as mentioned above in EFL speaking classes. In terms of these feature, the control group students, on the other hand, were ineffective to produce speeches. This was because the control group students have learnt speaking skills through teacher prepared printed handouts without using educational speaking technologies like YouGlish, FORVO, and Oxford Advanced Learners’ Dictionary. Therefore, when students used the educational speaking technologies and sufficiently practised pronunciation, diction, sentence structure, and flow of ideas with the technologies they would enhance their speaking performance. Hence, using educational speaking technology is recommended as resources to enhance students’ speaking performance.

The findings also show that the students had positive perceptions towards using educational speaking technology to develop their speaking performance. The students have perceived positively on using educational speaking technology because they were interested to use the technologies, and they viewed that the technologies have significant roles to enhance their speaking performance. Thus, it infers that it is a need to encourage using educational speaking technology to enables students in practicing the speaking skills based on the native speakers’ speeches. Subsequently, EFL teachers need to use educational speaking technology in their speaking classes to enhance their students’ speaking performance. Similarly, speaking course material designers should reconsider educational speaking technologies while designing speaking course teaching materials. In addition, EFL learners have to use educational speaking technologies to make effective speech which is understandable by both the native and non-native speakers. Finally, the number of educational speaking technologies (YouGlish, FORVO, and Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary– 8th ed) addressed in this study were relatively small. In addition, the time taken for the intervention was also not adequate to incorporate and use more educational speaking technologies.

Nevertheless, it is not to mean that the findings of the current research are not comprehensive since at least three educational speaking technologies were being applied during the intervention. Similarly, it is not to mean that the intervention period was inadequate because the students have practised speaking skills with the aforementioned technologies for eight weeks. It is, therefore to mean that the findings of the study would have been more comprehensive if a greater number of educational technologies were integrated in the intervention, and more amount of time had been given to the intervention so that the students practised with the technologies. Consequently, future studies should be conducted on the effects of using some other educational speaking technologies on students’ speaking ability.

Data Availability

the authors declared that the data supporting the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to containing information that could compromise research participant privacy/consent.

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Asratie, M.G., Wale, B.D. & Aylet, Y.T. Effects of using educational technology tools to enhance EFL students’ speaking performance. Educ Inf Technol 28 , 10031–10051 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-022-11562-y

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A resource for voice technology trends, why students need technology in the classroom.

Technology is everywhere–entwined in almost every part of our culture. It affects how we live, work, play, and most importantly, it has also changed how we learn.

A systematic approach to the processes and resources of teaching, educational technology, or EdTech, utilizes technology to improve the academic performance of students. It identifies the needs of individuals to support learning and aids in the tracking of student development. [ 1 ]

With mobile devices becoming an increasing requirement in the professional world today, it only makes sense that our schools are also effectively deploying mobile technology in the classroom. Although many people like to rely on traditional methods of teaching, the possibilities that open when technology is brought into the classroom are endless. It can not only help education professionals in the monitoring of individual development and innovative lesson planning, but the students who learn through technology can create a set of skills that will help them throughout their own future careers.

Here are a few reasons why EdTech is so important:

1. it’s familiar.

Because students already rely on technology in their everyday lives, why not integrate it into the classroom? Children frequently use their smartphones and tablets outside of school hours and many believe that it helps students stay engaged during class by using a familiar tool for academic learning.

2. It fosters creativity

By incorporating modern technology like voice technology, for instance, teachers can develop more creative and innovative lesson plans to hold the attention of their classes. Technology infuses classrooms with digital learning tools that allow for creativity in accomplishing tasks and can expand course offerings and learning materials.

3. It allows students to learn at their own pace

Many believe that technology can enhance individual learning, removing educational boundaries that teachers may face. It enables online education, distance learning, and access to up-to-date information. Because each student interprets information differently, technology can enable students to understand subjects that are more difficult to learn.

4.  It simplifies access to educational resources

Technology allows for easy access to resources, right at your fingertips. As distance learning technologies develop further, high-quality education will become increasingly affordable and superior education will become more accessible to people of all backgrounds. If EdTech is used correctly, it can be a powerful weapon for social equality.

5. It promotes learning beyond the classroom

Besides the access to information, new technology can excite and empower students. Teachers who use these tools may see enhanced engagement and participation in their classrooms. Educational technology can also help educators and institutions to gain valuable insights into how learning materials are used and how to enhance learning experiences. Data-driven insights identify where students need more support, so teachers are better equipped  to inspire students and follow a more personalized approach.

Voice technology is one of the many tools that teachers and students can use in a classroom, whether in-person or virtually, in order to accelerate learning. Voice recorders, like the Philips Digital VoiceTracers , are great tools that can be used in many ways and can be especially helpful when trying to teach and learn from a distance. Whether you are recording lectures, studying, or learning a new language, a voice recorder can help to improve understanding and retention. They can also be excellent tools in assisting students with a disability. To learn more about the use of Philips Digital VoiceTracers in education, visit this blog post: Back to the Future of Education .

[1] https://www.uopeople.edu/blog/the-growing-importance-of-technology-in-education/

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Speech On Technology - 10 Lines, Short and Long Speech

• Speech on Technology -

This generation has grown up with technology all around them. Whether it is an alarm clock or a table light, technology is a part of our daily lives. Our daily lives now include various kinds of technology which makes our life much easier than before. The students and the youngsters must understand what the term "technology" means.

10 Line Speech on Technology

Short speech on technology, long speech on technology.

Utilising scientific knowledge for practical uses is known as technology.

Technology has significantly altered how we live and the world works.

Things that were unthinkable a few years ago are now possible thanks to technology.

The use of scientific information and ideas for the benefit of humanity is referred to as technology.

Technology has become a part of our daily lives, from Simple Watches to Computers.

The most common form of communication is video conferencing, a gift from technology.

The word "technology" is derived from the ancient Greek words "techne" and "logos," where "techne" means "art, craft," and "logos" means "speed".

Technology is only sometimes a benefit, and it has frequently proven to be risky as well.

Both positive and harmful effects on humans are possible from creating nuclear weapons.

For the nation to advance and develop as it should, technology must be embraced.

Technology is the study and use of the technical properties of materials, science, and nature to develop mechanical, electrical, biological, and information systems that are more effective and facilitate daily life. Technology has existed since the Neolithic Age or before. The optimum use of pre-Neolithic people's abilities, resources, and established technology. Since then, technological advancements have dramatically improved people's lives.

Historical Era

The Industrial Revolution, which replaced manual labour with machine tools, marked the beginning of the first precise application of large-scale technology. Other scientists, engineers, and researchers worked to make technology more accessible to people. Our lives have become more dependent on technology because of this connection between humans and technology.

Technology has advanced from the atomic to the gross level of our daily lives. The idea of a world without technology is incomprehensible. Technology has made it feasible for us to see distant planets several light-years away. Our economy has been made more active by technology. People can get together with friends and family, whether they are nearby or not. The existence of technology in areas like commerce, automation, IT, healthcare, space exploration, education, and communication is apparent. As a result, technology has improved the efficiency and ease of human life.

Technology is the application of science to the production of goods. We are all drawn to new tools and methods as technology develops. Children start watching their parents and other family members use technology at a young age. They start to adjust in this way as well. Young children spend a lot of time playing video games, surfing the Internet, and avoiding reality. Technology use also promotes unemployment and deters pupils from learning. Dependence on technology also increases cybercrime and privacy issues, which opens the door for hackers.

The New Technological Era

Consumer electronics, computers, laptops, mobile phones, gadgets, and applications are among the technologies we use daily. Most importantly, it enhances human development and quality of life. Technology is obviously employed in many other disciplines, including science, medicine, agriculture, space exploration, education, and research.

Education and Technology

Children benefit from a better learning environment because of expanding educational technology. They can absorb and learn complex ideas. Children can share and discuss their questions with their teachers using technology. Additionally, they can connect with individuals globally to learn more and get resources for exams and project work.

Over time, technology has continued to advance the education sector. Technology makes a wide range of educational resources available to parents and students. Online collaboration between educators and classrooms all over the world is possible. On the Internet, students have immediate access to excellent knowledge. Teachers and students can use the many resources on the Internet for project work, research, and other purposes. The educational system has transformed due to online learning.

COVID-19 and Technology

Through the use of technology, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused a paradigm change. School-age children continue to receive their education at home, and schools are facilitating instructors' use of online learning from home. The student learned and used his 21st-century abilities through robots, augmented reality, and virtual classrooms. Each of these has significantly enhanced cooperation and communication.

Medicine and Technology

The quality of life and longevity of people as well as that of many medical professionals and students pursuing careers in medicine have all been enhanced by technological breakthroughs. The medical records of each patient are easily accessible. The doctor-patient relationship has undergone a significant transformation because of the Internet.

Everyone may keep up with the most recent medical advancements, share information on treatments, and assist one another in managing health difficulties. Thanks to contemporary technologies, you can now contact a doctor from the comfort of your home. Several websites and apps are available for getting doctors and obtaining medical assistance.

Examples | Examples of ground-breaking advancements in the healthcare sector include artificial organs, brain implants, networked sensors, and surgery. In addition to using several tools and software for administrative work, hospitals also employ digital marketing to advertise their services.

People are becoming increasingly dependent on various devices and technology, resulting in a lack of exercise and a sedentary lifestyle. The social isolation caused by smartphones and computers is growing. We acknowledge that technology is thriving in today's world and that this is advancing humanity. We are all dependent on technology and its uses. Everyone utilises technology to make things easier.

Explore Career Options (By Industry)

• Construction
• Entertainment
• Manufacturing
• Information Technology

Data Administrator

Database professionals use software to store and organise data such as financial information, and customer shipping records. Individuals who opt for a career as data administrators ensure that data is available for users and secured from unauthorised sales. DB administrators may work in various types of industries. It may involve computer systems design, service firms, insurance companies, banks and hospitals.

Bio Medical Engineer

The field of biomedical engineering opens up a universe of expert chances. An Individual in the biomedical engineering career path work in the field of engineering as well as medicine, in order to find out solutions to common problems of the two fields. The biomedical engineering job opportunities are to collaborate with doctors and researchers to develop medical systems, equipment, or devices that can solve clinical problems. Here we will be discussing jobs after biomedical engineering, how to get a job in biomedical engineering, biomedical engineering scope, and salary. 

Ethical Hacker

A career as ethical hacker involves various challenges and provides lucrative opportunities in the digital era where every giant business and startup owns its cyberspace on the world wide web. Individuals in the ethical hacker career path try to find the vulnerabilities in the cyber system to get its authority. If he or she succeeds in it then he or she gets its illegal authority. Individuals in the ethical hacker career path then steal information or delete the file that could affect the business, functioning, or services of the organization.

GIS officer work on various GIS software to conduct a study and gather spatial and non-spatial information. GIS experts update the GIS data and maintain it. The databases include aerial or satellite imagery, latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates, and manually digitized images of maps. In a career as GIS expert, one is responsible for creating online and mobile maps.

Data Analyst

The invention of the database has given fresh breath to the people involved in the data analytics career path. Analysis refers to splitting up a whole into its individual components for individual analysis. Data analysis is a method through which raw data are processed and transformed into information that would be beneficial for user strategic thinking.

Data are collected and examined to respond to questions, evaluate hypotheses or contradict theories. It is a tool for analyzing, transforming, modeling, and arranging data with useful knowledge, to assist in decision-making and methods, encompassing various strategies, and is used in different fields of business, research, and social science.

Geothermal Engineer

Individuals who opt for a career as geothermal engineers are the professionals involved in the processing of geothermal energy. The responsibilities of geothermal engineers may vary depending on the workplace location. Those who work in fields design facilities to process and distribute geothermal energy. They oversee the functioning of machinery used in the field.

Database Architect

If you are intrigued by the programming world and are interested in developing communications networks then a career as database architect may be a good option for you. Data architect roles and responsibilities include building design models for data communication networks. Wide Area Networks (WANs), local area networks (LANs), and intranets are included in the database networks. It is expected that database architects will have in-depth knowledge of a company's business to develop a network to fulfil the requirements of the organisation. Stay tuned as we look at the larger picture and give you more information on what is db architecture, why you should pursue database architecture, what to expect from such a degree and what your job opportunities will be after graduation. Here, we will be discussing how to become a data architect. Students can visit NIT Trichy , IIT Kharagpur , JMI New Delhi . 

Remote Sensing Technician

Individuals who opt for a career as a remote sensing technician possess unique personalities. Remote sensing analysts seem to be rational human beings, they are strong, independent, persistent, sincere, realistic and resourceful. Some of them are analytical as well, which means they are intelligent, introspective and inquisitive. 

Remote sensing scientists use remote sensing technology to support scientists in fields such as community planning, flight planning or the management of natural resources. Analysing data collected from aircraft, satellites or ground-based platforms using statistical analysis software, image analysis software or Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is a significant part of their work. Do you want to learn how to become remote sensing technician? There's no need to be concerned; we've devised a simple remote sensing technician career path for you. Scroll through the pages and read.

Budget Analyst

Budget analysis, in a nutshell, entails thoroughly analyzing the details of a financial budget. The budget analysis aims to better understand and manage revenue. Budget analysts assist in the achievement of financial targets, the preservation of profitability, and the pursuit of long-term growth for a business. Budget analysts generally have a bachelor's degree in accounting, finance, economics, or a closely related field. Knowledge of Financial Management is of prime importance in this career.

Underwriter

An underwriter is a person who assesses and evaluates the risk of insurance in his or her field like mortgage, loan, health policy, investment, and so on and so forth. The underwriter career path does involve risks as analysing the risks means finding out if there is a way for the insurance underwriter jobs to recover the money from its clients. If the risk turns out to be too much for the company then in the future it is an underwriter who will be held accountable for it. Therefore, one must carry out his or her job with a lot of attention and diligence.

Finance Executive

Product manager.

A Product Manager is a professional responsible for product planning and marketing. He or she manages the product throughout the Product Life Cycle, gathering and prioritising the product. A product manager job description includes defining the product vision and working closely with team members of other departments to deliver winning products.  

Operations Manager

Individuals in the operations manager jobs are responsible for ensuring the efficiency of each department to acquire its optimal goal. They plan the use of resources and distribution of materials. The operations manager's job description includes managing budgets, negotiating contracts, and performing administrative tasks.

Stock Analyst

Individuals who opt for a career as a stock analyst examine the company's investments makes decisions and keep track of financial securities. The nature of such investments will differ from one business to the next. Individuals in the stock analyst career use data mining to forecast a company's profits and revenues, advise clients on whether to buy or sell, participate in seminars, and discussing financial matters with executives and evaluate annual reports.

A Researcher is a professional who is responsible for collecting data and information by reviewing the literature and conducting experiments and surveys. He or she uses various methodological processes to provide accurate data and information that is utilised by academicians and other industry professionals. Here, we will discuss what is a researcher, the researcher's salary, types of researchers.

Welding Engineer

Welding Engineer Job Description: A Welding Engineer work involves managing welding projects and supervising welding teams. He or she is responsible for reviewing welding procedures, processes and documentation. A career as Welding Engineer involves conducting failure analyses and causes on welding issues. 

Transportation Planner

A career as Transportation Planner requires technical application of science and technology in engineering, particularly the concepts, equipment and technologies involved in the production of products and services. In fields like land use, infrastructure review, ecological standards and street design, he or she considers issues of health, environment and performance. A Transportation Planner assigns resources for implementing and designing programmes. He or she is responsible for assessing needs, preparing plans and forecasts and compliance with regulations.

Environmental Engineer

Individuals who opt for a career as an environmental engineer are construction professionals who utilise the skills and knowledge of biology, soil science, chemistry and the concept of engineering to design and develop projects that serve as solutions to various environmental problems. 

Safety Manager

A Safety Manager is a professional responsible for employee’s safety at work. He or she plans, implements and oversees the company’s employee safety. A Safety Manager ensures compliance and adherence to Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) guidelines.

Conservation Architect

A Conservation Architect is a professional responsible for conserving and restoring buildings or monuments having a historic value. He or she applies techniques to document and stabilise the object’s state without any further damage. A Conservation Architect restores the monuments and heritage buildings to bring them back to their original state.

Structural Engineer

A Structural Engineer designs buildings, bridges, and other related structures. He or she analyzes the structures and makes sure the structures are strong enough to be used by the people. A career as a Structural Engineer requires working in the construction process. It comes under the civil engineering discipline. A Structure Engineer creates structural models with the help of computer-aided design software. 

Highway Engineer

Highway Engineer Job Description:  A Highway Engineer is a civil engineer who specialises in planning and building thousands of miles of roads that support connectivity and allow transportation across the country. He or she ensures that traffic management schemes are effectively planned concerning economic sustainability and successful implementation.

Field Surveyor

Are you searching for a Field Surveyor Job Description? A Field Surveyor is a professional responsible for conducting field surveys for various places or geographical conditions. He or she collects the required data and information as per the instructions given by senior officials. 

Orthotist and Prosthetist

Orthotists and Prosthetists are professionals who provide aid to patients with disabilities. They fix them to artificial limbs (prosthetics) and help them to regain stability. There are times when people lose their limbs in an accident. In some other occasions, they are born without a limb or orthopaedic impairment. Orthotists and prosthetists play a crucial role in their lives with fixing them to assistive devices and provide mobility.

Pathologist

A career in pathology in India is filled with several responsibilities as it is a medical branch and affects human lives. The demand for pathologists has been increasing over the past few years as people are getting more aware of different diseases. Not only that, but an increase in population and lifestyle changes have also contributed to the increase in a pathologist’s demand. The pathology careers provide an extremely huge number of opportunities and if you want to be a part of the medical field you can consider being a pathologist. If you want to know more about a career in pathology in India then continue reading this article.

Veterinary Doctor

Speech therapist, gynaecologist.

Gynaecology can be defined as the study of the female body. The job outlook for gynaecology is excellent since there is evergreen demand for one because of their responsibility of dealing with not only women’s health but also fertility and pregnancy issues. Although most women prefer to have a women obstetrician gynaecologist as their doctor, men also explore a career as a gynaecologist and there are ample amounts of male doctors in the field who are gynaecologists and aid women during delivery and childbirth. 

Audiologist

The audiologist career involves audiology professionals who are responsible to treat hearing loss and proactively preventing the relevant damage. Individuals who opt for a career as an audiologist use various testing strategies with the aim to determine if someone has a normal sensitivity to sounds or not. After the identification of hearing loss, a hearing doctor is required to determine which sections of the hearing are affected, to what extent they are affected, and where the wound causing the hearing loss is found. As soon as the hearing loss is identified, the patients are provided with recommendations for interventions and rehabilitation such as hearing aids, cochlear implants, and appropriate medical referrals. While audiology is a branch of science that studies and researches hearing, balance, and related disorders.

An oncologist is a specialised doctor responsible for providing medical care to patients diagnosed with cancer. He or she uses several therapies to control the cancer and its effect on the human body such as chemotherapy, immunotherapy, radiation therapy and biopsy. An oncologist designs a treatment plan based on a pathology report after diagnosing the type of cancer and where it is spreading inside the body.

Are you searching for an ‘Anatomist job description’? An Anatomist is a research professional who applies the laws of biological science to determine the ability of bodies of various living organisms including animals and humans to regenerate the damaged or destroyed organs. If you want to know what does an anatomist do, then read the entire article, where we will answer all your questions.

For an individual who opts for a career as an actor, the primary responsibility is to completely speak to the character he or she is playing and to persuade the crowd that the character is genuine by connecting with them and bringing them into the story. This applies to significant roles and littler parts, as all roles join to make an effective creation. Here in this article, we will discuss how to become an actor in India, actor exams, actor salary in India, and actor jobs. 

Individuals who opt for a career as acrobats create and direct original routines for themselves, in addition to developing interpretations of existing routines. The work of circus acrobats can be seen in a variety of performance settings, including circus, reality shows, sports events like the Olympics, movies and commercials. Individuals who opt for a career as acrobats must be prepared to face rejections and intermittent periods of work. The creativity of acrobats may extend to other aspects of the performance. For example, acrobats in the circus may work with gym trainers, celebrities or collaborate with other professionals to enhance such performance elements as costume and or maybe at the teaching end of the career.

Video Game Designer

Career as a video game designer is filled with excitement as well as responsibilities. A video game designer is someone who is involved in the process of creating a game from day one. He or she is responsible for fulfilling duties like designing the character of the game, the several levels involved, plot, art and similar other elements. Individuals who opt for a career as a video game designer may also write the codes for the game using different programming languages.

Depending on the video game designer job description and experience they may also have to lead a team and do the early testing of the game in order to suggest changes and find loopholes.

Radio Jockey

Radio Jockey is an exciting, promising career and a great challenge for music lovers. If you are really interested in a career as radio jockey, then it is very important for an RJ to have an automatic, fun, and friendly personality. If you want to get a job done in this field, a strong command of the language and a good voice are always good things. Apart from this, in order to be a good radio jockey, you will also listen to good radio jockeys so that you can understand their style and later make your own by practicing.

A career as radio jockey has a lot to offer to deserving candidates. If you want to know more about a career as radio jockey, and how to become a radio jockey then continue reading the article.

Choreographer

The word “choreography" actually comes from Greek words that mean “dance writing." Individuals who opt for a career as a choreographer create and direct original dances, in addition to developing interpretations of existing dances. A Choreographer dances and utilises his or her creativity in other aspects of dance performance. For example, he or she may work with the music director to select music or collaborate with other famous choreographers to enhance such performance elements as lighting, costume and set design.

Social Media Manager

A career as social media manager involves implementing the company’s or brand’s marketing plan across all social media channels. Social media managers help in building or improving a brand’s or a company’s website traffic, build brand awareness, create and implement marketing and brand strategy. Social media managers are key to important social communication as well.

Photographer

Photography is considered both a science and an art, an artistic means of expression in which the camera replaces the pen. In a career as a photographer, an individual is hired to capture the moments of public and private events, such as press conferences or weddings, or may also work inside a studio, where people go to get their picture clicked. Photography is divided into many streams each generating numerous career opportunities in photography. With the boom in advertising, media, and the fashion industry, photography has emerged as a lucrative and thrilling career option for many Indian youths.

An individual who is pursuing a career as a producer is responsible for managing the business aspects of production. They are involved in each aspect of production from its inception to deception. Famous movie producers review the script, recommend changes and visualise the story. 

They are responsible for overseeing the finance involved in the project and distributing the film for broadcasting on various platforms. A career as a producer is quite fulfilling as well as exhaustive in terms of playing different roles in order for a production to be successful. Famous movie producers are responsible for hiring creative and technical personnel on contract basis.

Copy Writer

In a career as a copywriter, one has to consult with the client and understand the brief well. A career as a copywriter has a lot to offer to deserving candidates. Several new mediums of advertising are opening therefore making it a lucrative career choice. Students can pursue various copywriter courses such as Journalism , Advertising , Marketing Management . Here, we have discussed how to become a freelance copywriter, copywriter career path, how to become a copywriter in India, and copywriting career outlook. 

In a career as a vlogger, one generally works for himself or herself. However, once an individual has gained viewership there are several brands and companies that approach them for paid collaboration. It is one of those fields where an individual can earn well while following his or her passion. 

Ever since internet costs got reduced the viewership for these types of content has increased on a large scale. Therefore, a career as a vlogger has a lot to offer. If you want to know more about the Vlogger eligibility, roles and responsibilities then continue reading the article. 

For publishing books, newspapers, magazines and digital material, editorial and commercial strategies are set by publishers. Individuals in publishing career paths make choices about the markets their businesses will reach and the type of content that their audience will be served. Individuals in book publisher careers collaborate with editorial staff, designers, authors, and freelance contributors who develop and manage the creation of content.

Careers in journalism are filled with excitement as well as responsibilities. One cannot afford to miss out on the details. As it is the small details that provide insights into a story. Depending on those insights a journalist goes about writing a news article. A journalism career can be stressful at times but if you are someone who is passionate about it then it is the right choice for you. If you want to know more about the media field and journalist career then continue reading this article.

Individuals in the editor career path is an unsung hero of the news industry who polishes the language of the news stories provided by stringers, reporters, copywriters and content writers and also news agencies. Individuals who opt for a career as an editor make it more persuasive, concise and clear for readers. In this article, we will discuss the details of the editor's career path such as how to become an editor in India, editor salary in India and editor skills and qualities.

Individuals who opt for a career as a reporter may often be at work on national holidays and festivities. He or she pitches various story ideas and covers news stories in risky situations. Students can pursue a BMC (Bachelor of Mass Communication) , B.M.M. (Bachelor of Mass Media) , or  MAJMC (MA in Journalism and Mass Communication) to become a reporter. While we sit at home reporters travel to locations to collect information that carries a news value.  

Corporate Executive

Are you searching for a Corporate Executive job description? A Corporate Executive role comes with administrative duties. He or she provides support to the leadership of the organisation. A Corporate Executive fulfils the business purpose and ensures its financial stability. In this article, we are going to discuss how to become corporate executive.

Multimedia Specialist

A multimedia specialist is a media professional who creates, audio, videos, graphic image files, computer animations for multimedia applications. He or she is responsible for planning, producing, and maintaining websites and applications. 

Quality Controller

A quality controller plays a crucial role in an organisation. He or she is responsible for performing quality checks on manufactured products. He or she identifies the defects in a product and rejects the product. 

A quality controller records detailed information about products with defects and sends it to the supervisor or plant manager to take necessary actions to improve the production process.

Production Manager

A QA Lead is in charge of the QA Team. The role of QA Lead comes with the responsibility of assessing services and products in order to determine that he or she meets the quality standards. He or she develops, implements and manages test plans. 

Process Development Engineer

The Process Development Engineers design, implement, manufacture, mine, and other production systems using technical knowledge and expertise in the industry. They use computer modeling software to test technologies and machinery. An individual who is opting career as Process Development Engineer is responsible for developing cost-effective and efficient processes. They also monitor the production process and ensure it functions smoothly and efficiently.

AWS Solution Architect

An AWS Solution Architect is someone who specializes in developing and implementing cloud computing systems. He or she has a good understanding of the various aspects of cloud computing and can confidently deploy and manage their systems. He or she troubleshoots the issues and evaluates the risk from the third party. 

Azure Administrator

An Azure Administrator is a professional responsible for implementing, monitoring, and maintaining Azure Solutions. He or she manages cloud infrastructure service instances and various cloud servers as well as sets up public and private cloud systems. 

Computer Programmer

Careers in computer programming primarily refer to the systematic act of writing code and moreover include wider computer science areas. The word 'programmer' or 'coder' has entered into practice with the growing number of newly self-taught tech enthusiasts. Computer programming careers involve the use of designs created by software developers and engineers and transforming them into commands that can be implemented by computers. These commands result in regular usage of social media sites, word-processing applications and browsers.

Information Security Manager

Individuals in the information security manager career path involves in overseeing and controlling all aspects of computer security. The IT security manager job description includes planning and carrying out security measures to protect the business data and information from corruption, theft, unauthorised access, and deliberate attack 

ITSM Manager

Automation test engineer.

An Automation Test Engineer job involves executing automated test scripts. He or she identifies the project’s problems and troubleshoots them. The role involves documenting the defect using management tools. He or she works with the application team in order to resolve any issues arising during the testing process. 

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Speech on Education And Technology

Education and technology are like two peas in a pod, always making each other better. They’re changing how you learn, making it more fun and interactive.

It’s like your school bag is getting lighter, but your brain is packing in more knowledge! Isn’t it exciting to see how technology is reshaping education?

1-minute Speech on Education And Technology

Friends, today we talk about two powerful things that shape our world – education and technology.

Education is like a key. It opens doors to new ideas and opportunities. It helps us learn, grow, and succeed. Without education, we are like a ship without a compass.

Now, let’s talk about technology. You all know what it is! You see it in your phones, computers, and video games. It’s magic that helps us do things faster and better.

So, what happens when we mix education and technology? We get something amazing, like a super key! It makes learning fun and exciting. Imagine studying about dinosaurs and then seeing them come alive on your screen. That’s the power of technology in education.

But that’s not all. With technology, we can learn from anywhere. You can be at home, in the park, or even on a holiday and still attend your class. You can talk to people from different corners of the world and learn about their culture and history. It’s like having the whole world in your hands!

But remember, every good thing needs to be used wisely. Just like you don’t eat your entire week’s candy in one go, you shouldn’t misuse technology. Spend time in the real world too. Play, explore, and learn from nature.

In the end, education and technology are here to help us. They are tools to make us smarter, better, and ready for the future. So, let’s embrace them, use them wisely, and shape a brighter future for all of us.

2-minute Speech on Education And Technology

Good day! Today, we’re going to talk about two very important things – education and technology. Imagine a pencil and paper. Now, think about a computer. These two sets of tools have the same goal: to help us learn and share ideas. But they do it in very different ways. We’re going to explore how technology is changing education.

Let’s start with distance. In the old days, if you wanted to learn something, you had to find a teacher or a book. Sometimes, they were very far away. But now, with the internet, we can learn from anyone, anywhere, anytime. You can be in your room in New York and learn about pyramids from a teacher in Egypt. Technology breaks down the walls of the classroom.

Next, let’s think about speed. With books, learning can take a lot of time. If you want to find one fact, you might have to read a whole book. But with technology, you can find answers quickly. Just type a question into a search engine, and you get the answer in seconds. This means we can learn faster and more efficiently.

Now, let’s talk about creativity. In a traditional classroom, you listen, you write, and maybe you draw a little. But with technology, you can create videos, build websites, design graphics, and more. It’s not just about learning facts. It’s about using those facts to make something new. Technology gives us the tools to be more creative in our learning.

But like all powerful tools, technology can also be misused. Sometimes, we get so caught up in playing with our gadgets that we forget to learn. Or we might use the internet to find answers to our homework without really understanding the work. It’s important to use technology to help us learn, not to cheat or distract us.

So, what’s the future of education and technology? It’s hard to tell. What we know is that they’ll continue to grow together. More people will learn online. More resources will be available. And hopefully, more people across the world will have access to quality education.

In conclusion, remember this. Education is like a journey. And technology is like a car. It can take us far and fast. But we are the drivers. We decide where to go and how to get there. So, let’s use technology wisely on our journey of learning.

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Chapter 6: Understanding technology in education

6.2 A short history of educational technology

Arguments about the role of technology in education go back at least 2,500 years.  To understand better the role and influence of technology on teaching, we need a little history, because as always there are lessons to be learned from history. Paul Saettler’s ‘ The E volution of American E ducational T echnology ‘ (1990) is one of the most extensive historical accounts, but only goes up to 1989. A lot has happened since then. Teemu Leinonen also has a good blog post on the more recent history (for a more detailed account see Leitonen, 2010). See also: The Evolution of Learning Technologies .

What I’m giving you here is the postage stamp version of ed tech history, and a personal one at that.

6.2.1 Oral communication

One of the earliest means of formal teaching was oral – though human speech – although over time, technology has been increasingly used to facilitate or ‘back-up’ oral communication. In ancient times, stories, folklore, histories and news were transmitted and maintained through oral communication, making accurate memorization a critical skill, and the oral tradition is still the case in many aboriginal cultures. For the ancient Greeks, oratory and speech were the means by which people learned and passed on learning. Homer’s Iliad and the Odyssey were recitative poems, intended for public performance. To be learned, they had to be memorized by listening, not by reading, and transmitted by recitation, not by writing.

Nevertheless, by the fifth century B.C, written documents existed in considerable numbers in ancient Greece. If we believe Socrates, education has been on a downward spiral ever since. According to Plato, Socrates caught one of his students (Phaedrus) pretending to recite a speech from memory that in fact he had learned from a written version. Socrates then told Phaedrus the story of how the god Theuth offered the King of Egypt the gift of writing, which would be a ‘recipe for both memory and wisdom’. The king was not impressed. According to the king,

 it [writing] will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they will rely on what is written, creating memory not from within themselves, but by means of external symbols. What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminding. And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only its semblance, for by telling them many things without teaching them anything, you will make them seem to know much, while for the most part they will know nothing. And as men filled not with wisdom but the conceit of wisdom, they will be a burden to their fellow men.

Phaedrus, 274c-275, translation adapted from Manguel, 1996

I can just hear some of my former colleagues saying the same thing about social media.

Slate boards were in use in India in the 12th century AD, and blackboards/chalkboards became used in schools around the turn of the 18th century. At the end of World War Two the U.S. Army started using overhead projectors for training, and their use became common for lecturing, until being largely replaced by electronic projectors and presentational software such as Powerpoint around 1990. This may be the place to point out that most technologies used in education were not developed specifically for education but for other purposes (mainly for the military or business.)

Although the telephone dates from the late 1870s, the standard telephone system never became a major educational tool, not even in distance education, because of the high cost of analogue telephone calls for multiple users, although audio-conferencing has been used to supplement other media since the 1970s.  Video-conferencing using dedicated cable systems and dedicated conferencing rooms have been in use since the 1980s. The development of video compression technology and relatively low cost video servers in the early 2000s led to the introduction of lecture capture systems for recording and streaming classroom lectures in 2008. Webinars now are used largely for delivering lectures over the Internet.

None of these technologies though changes the oral basis of communication for teaching.

6.2.2 Written communication

The role of text or writing in education also has a long history. According to the Bible, Moses used chiseled stone to convey the ten commandments in a form of writing, probably around the 7th century BC. Even though Socrates is reported to have railed against the use of writing, written forms of communication make analytic, lengthy chains of reasoning and argument much more accessible, reproducible without distortion, and thus more open to analysis and critique than the transient nature of speech. The invention of the printing press in Europe in the 15th century was a truly disruptive technology, making written knowledge much more freely available, very much in the same way as the Internet has done today. As a result of the explosion of written documents resulting from the mechanization of printing, many more people in government and business were required to become literate and analytical, which led to a rapid expansion of formal education in Europe. There were many reasons for the development of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, and the triumph of reason and science over superstition and beliefs in Europe, but the technology of printing was a key agent of change.

Improvements in transport infrastructure in the 19th century, and in particular the creation of a cheap and reliable postal system in the 1840s, led to the development of the first formal correspondence education, with the University of London offering an external degree program by correspondence from 1858. This first formal distance degree program still exists today in the form of the University of London International Program. In the 1970s, the Open University transformed the use of print for teaching through specially designed, highly illustrated printed course units that integrated learning activities with the print medium, based on advanced instructional design.

With the development of web-based learning management systems in the mid-1990s, textual communication, although digitized, became, at least for a brief time, the main communication medium for Internet-based learning, although lecture capture is now changing that.

6.2.3 Broadcasting and video

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) began broadcasting educational radio programs for schools in the 1920s. The first adult education radio broadcast from the BBC in 1924 was a talk on Insects in Relation to Man, and in the same year, J.C. Stobart, the new Director of Education at the BBC, mused about ‘a broadcasting university’ in the journal Radio Times (Robinson, 1982).   Television was first used in education in the 1960s, for schools and for general adult education (one of the six purposes in the current BBC’s Royal Charter is still ‘promoting education and learning’).

In 1969, the British government established the Open University (OU), which worked in partnership with the BBC to develop university programs open to all, using a combination originally of printed materials specially designed by OU staff, and television and radio programs made by the BBC but integrated with the courses. Although the radio programs involved mainly oral communication, the television programs did not use lectures as such, but focused more on the common formats of general television, such as documentaries, demonstration of processes, and cases/case studies (see Bates, 1985). In other words, the BBC focused on the unique ‘affordances’ of television, a topic that will be discussed in much more detail later. Over time, as new technologies such as audio- and video-cassettes were introduced, live broadcasting, especially radio, was cut back for OU programs, although there are still some general educational channels broadcasting around the world (e.g. TVOntario in Canada; PBS, the History Channel, and the Discovery Channel in the USA).

The use of television for education quickly spread around the world, being seen in the 1970s by some, particularly in international agencies such as the World Bank and UNESCO, as a panacea for education in developing countries, the hopes for which quickly faded when the realities of lack of electricity, cost, security of publicly available equipment, climate, resistance from local  teachers, and local language and cultural issues became apparent (see, for instance, Jamison and Klees, 1973). Satellite broadcasting started to become available in the 1980s, and similar hopes were expressed of delivering ‘university lectures from the world’s leading universities to the world’s starving masses’, but these hopes too quickly faded for similar reasons. However, India, which had launched its own satellite, INSAT, in 1983, used it initially for delivering locally produced educational television programs throughout the country, in several indigenous languages, using Indian-designed receivers and television sets in local community centres as well as schools (Bates, 1985). India is still using satellites for tele-education into the poorest parts of the country at the time of writing (2015).

In the 1990s the cost of creating and distributing video dropped dramatically due to digital compression and high-speed Internet access.  This reduction in the costs of recording and distributing video also led to the development of lecture capture systems. The technology allows students to view or review lectures at any time and place with an Internet connection. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) started making its recorded lectures available to the public, free of charge, via its OpenCourseWare project, in 2002.  YouTube started in 2005 and was bought by Google in 2006. YouTube is increasingly being used for short educational clips that can be downloaded and integrated into online courses. The Khan Academy started using YouTube in 2006 for recorded voice-over lectures using a digital blackboard for equations and illustrations. Apple Inc. in 2007 created iTunesU to became a portal or a site where videos and other digital materials on university teaching could be collected and downloaded free of charge by end users.

Until lecture capture arrived, learning management systems had integrated basic educational design features, but this required instructors to redesign their classroom-based teaching to fit the LMS environment. Lecture capture on the other hand required no changes to the standard lecture model, and in a sense reverted back to primarily oral communication supported by Powerpoint or even writing on a chalkboard. Thus oral communication remains as strong today in education as ever, but has been incorporated into or accommodated by new technologies.

6.2.4 Computer technologies

6.2.4.1 computer-based learning.

In essence the development of programmed learning aims to computerize teaching, by structuring information, testing learners’ knowledge, and providing immediate feedback to learners, without human intervention other than in the design of the hardware and software and the selection and loading of content and assessment questions. B.F. Skinner started experimenting with teaching machines that made use of programmed learning in 1954, based on the theory of behaviourism (see Chapter 2, Section 3 ). Skinner’s teaching machines were one of the first forms of computer-based learning. There has been a recent revival of programmed learning approaches as a result of MOOCs, since machine based testing scales much more easily than human-based assessment.

PLATO was a generalized computer assisted instruction system originally developed at the University of Illinois, and, by the late 1970s, comprised several thousand terminals worldwide on nearly a dozen different networked mainframe computers. PLATO was a highly successful system, lasting almost 40 years, and incorporated key on-line concepts: forums, message boards, online testing, e-mail, chat rooms, instant messaging, remote screen sharing, and multi-player games.

Attempts to replicate the teaching process through artificial intelligence (AI) began in the mid-1980s, with a focus initially on teaching arithmetic. Despite large investments of research in AI for teaching over the last 30 years, the results generally have been disappointing. It has proved difficult for machines to cope with the extraordinary variety of ways in which students learn (or fail to learn.) Recent developments in cognitive science and neuroscience are being watched closely but at the time of writing the gap is still great between the basic science, and analysing or predicting specific learning behaviours from the science.

More recently we have seen the development of adaptive learning, which analyses learners’ responses then re-directs them to the most appropriate content area, based on their performance. Learning analytics, which also collects data about learner activities and relates them to other data, such as student performance, is a related development. These developments will be discussed in further detail in Section 6.7.

6.2.4.2 Computer networking

Arpanet in the U.S.A was the first network to use the Internet protocol in 1982. In the late 1970s, Murray Turoff and Roxanne Hiltz at the New Jersey Institute of Technology were experimenting with blended learning, using NJIT’s internal computer network. They combined classroom teaching with online discussion forums, and termed this ‘computer-mediated communication’ or CMC (Hiltz and Turoff, 1978). At the University of Guelph in Canada, an off-the-shelf software system called CoSy was developed in the 1980s that allowed for online threaded group discussion forums, a predecessor to today’s forums contained in learning management systems. In 1988, the Open University in the United Kingdom offered a course, DT200, that as well as the OU’s traditional media of printed texts, television programs and audio-cassettes, also included an online discussion component using CoSy. Since this course had 1,200 registered students, it was one of the earliest ‘mass’ open online courses. We see then the emerging division between the use of computers for automated or programmed learning, and the use of computer networks to enable students and instructors to communicate with each other.

The Word Wide Web was formally launched in 1991. The World Wide Web is basically an application running on the Internet that enables ‘end-users’ to create and link documents, videos or other digital media, without the need for the end-user to transcribe everything into some form of computer code. The first web browser, Mosaic, was made available in 1993. Before the Web, it required lengthy and time-consuming methods to load text, and to find material on the Internet. Several Internet search engines have been developed since 1993, with Google, created in 1999, emerging as one of the primary search engines.

6.2.4.3 Online learning environments

In 1995, the Web enabled the development of the first learning management systems (LMSs), such as WebCT (which later became Blackboard). LMSs provide an online teaching environment, where content can be loaded and organized, as well as providing ‘spaces’ for learning objectives, student activities, assignment questions, and discussion forums. The first fully online courses (for credit) started to appear in 1995, some using LMSs, others just loading text as PDFs or slides. The materials were mainly text and graphics. LMSs became the main means by which online learning was offered until  lecture capture systems arrived  around 2008.

By 2008, George Siemens, Stephen Downes and Dave Cormier in Canada were using web technology to create the first ‘connectivist’ Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), a community of practice that linked webinar presentations and/or blog posts by experts to participants’ blogs and tweets, with just over 2,000 enrollments. The courses were open to anyone and had no formal assessment. In 2012, two Stanford University professors launched a lecture-capture based MOOC on artificial intelligence, attracting more than 100,000 students, and since then MOOCs have expanded rapidly around the world.

6.2.5 Social media

Social media are really a sub-category of computer technology, but their development deserves a section of its own in the history of educational technology. Social media cover a wide range of different technologies, including blogs, wikis, You Tube videos, mobile devices such as phones and tablets, Twitter, Skype and Facebook. Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein (2010) define social media as

a group of Internet-based applications that …allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content, based on interactions among people in which they create, share or exchange information and ideas in virtual communities and networks.

Social media are strongly associated with young people and ‘millenials’ – in other words, many of the students in post-secondary education. At the time of writing social media are only just being integrated into formal education, and to date their main educational value has been in non-formal education, such as fostering online communities of practice, or around the edges of classroom teaching, such as ‘tweets’ during lectures or rating of instructors. It will be argued though in Chapters 8, 9 and 10 that they have much greater potential for learning.

6.2.6 A paradigm shift

It can be seen that education has adopted and adapted technology over a long period of time. There are some useful lessons to be learned from past developments in the use of technology for education, in particular that many claims made for a newly emerging technology are likely to be neither true nor new. Also new technology rarely completely replaces an older technology. Usually the old technology remains, operating within a more specialised ‘niche’, such as radio, or integrated as part of a richer technology environment, such as video in the Internet.

However, what distinguishes the digital age from all previous ages is the rapid pace of technology development and our immersion in technology-based activities in our daily lives. Thus it is fair to describe the impact of the Internet on education as a paradigm shift, at least in terms of educational technology. We are still in the process of absorbing and applying the implications. The next section attempts to pin down more closely the educational significance of different media and technologies.

Activity 6.2 What does history tell us?

1. What constitutes an educational technology? How would you classify a recorded lecture from MIT that is accessed as an open educational resource? When is a technology educational and not just a technology?

2. An early version  of the Internet (Arpanet) existed long before 1990, but the combination of Internet protocols and the development of html and the World Wide Web were clearly a turning point in both telecommunications and education (at least for me). What then makes the Internet/the Web a paradigm shift? Or are they just an evolution, an orderly next step in the development of technology?

3. Is writing a technology? Is a lecture a technology? Does it matter to decide this?

4. The more sharp eyed or analytical of you may be asking questions about the categorization or definition of some of the technologies listed above (quite apart from the issue of how to deal with people as a means of communication). For instance computer-mediated communication (CMC) existed before the Internet (from 1978 in fact), but isn’t it an Internet technology? (It is now, but wasn’t then.) How do social media differ from CMC? Does it make sense to distinguish television technologies such as broadcast, cable, satellite, DVDs or video-conferencing, and is this relevant any more? If so, what distinguishes them and what do they have in common from an educational perspective?

These are some of the issues that will become clearer in the following sections.

 References

Bates, A. (1985)  Broadcasting in Education: An Evaluation  London: Constables

Hiltz, R. and Turoff, M. (1978) The Network Nation: Human Communication via Computer Reading MA: Addison-Wesley

Jamison, D. and Klees, S. (1973) The Cost of Instructional Radio and Television for Developing Countries Stanford CA: Stanford University Institute for Communication Research

Kaplan, A. and Haenlein, M. (2010), Users of the world, unite! The  challenges and opportunities of social media, Business Horizons, Vol.  53, No. 1 , pp. 59-68

Leitonen, T. (2010) Designing Learning Tools: Methodological Insights Aalto, Finland: Aalto  University School of Art and Design

Manguel, A. (1996) A History of Reading London: Harper Collins

Robinson, J. (1982) Broadcasting Over the Air London: BBC

Saettler, P. (1990) The Evolution of American Educational Technology Englewood CO: Libraries Unlimited

Selwood, D. (2014)  What does the Rosetta Stone tell us about the Bible? Did Moses read hieroglyphs? The Telegraph , July 15

Teaching in a Digital Age Copyright © 2015 by Anthony William (Tony) Bates is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Speech Recognition for Learning

Speech recognition, also referred to as speech-to-text or voice recognition, is technology that recognizes speech, allowing voice to serve as the "main interface between the human and the computer" i . This Info Brief discusses how current speech recognition technology facilitates student learning, as well as how the technology can develop to advance learning in the future.

Although speech recognition has a potential benefit for students with physical disabilities and severe learning disabilities, the technology has been inconsistently implemented in the classroom over the years. As the technology continues to improve, however, many of the issues are being addressed. If you haven't used speech recognition with your students lately, it may be time to take another look. Both Microsoft and Apple have built speech recognition capabilities into their operating systems, so you can easily try out these features with your students to find out whether speech recognition might be right for them.

Speech recognition vs. speech-to-text: what's the difference?

When researching speech recognition tools for your child or your classroom, you may variously see technologies referred to as "speech-to-text," "voice recognition," or "speech recognition," sometimes all within the same product description. Though the terms can be confusing, they all refer to technologies that can translate spoken language into digitized text or turn spoken commands into actions (i.e., "open Microsoft Word"). Voice recognition can refer to products that need to be trained to recognize a specific voice (such as Dragon Naturally Speaking), or those products used in applications like automated call centers that are capable of recognizing a limited vocabulary from any user. Quite frequently, as in this article, the terms speech recognition and voice recognition are used interchangeably.

Speech recognition technology in everyday life

Speech recognition and speech-to-text programs have a number of applications for users with and without disabilities. Speech-to-text has been used to help struggling writers boost their writing production ii and to provide alternate access to a computer for individuals with physical impairments iii . Other applications include speech recognition for foreign language learning, iv voice activated products for the blind, v and many familiar mainstream technologies.

New developments in the technology have driven innovation in many familiar customer service industry applications. We have all used voice recognition technologies in our daily lives, many times without even thinking about it: automated phone menus and directories, voice activated dialing on our cell phones, and integrated voice commands on Smartphones are just a few examples vi . Medical and law professionals use voice recognition every day to dictate notes and transcribe important information. Newer uses of the technology include military applications, navigation systems, automotive speech recognition ( Ford SYNC ), 'smart' homes designed with voice command devices, and video games such as EndWar , which allows the player to give orders to their troops using only their voice.

Benefits of speech recognition for struggling writers

Populations that may benefit from speech recognition technologies for learning include users with:

• Learning disabilities, including dyslexia and dysgraphia
• Repetitive strain injuries, such as carpal tunnel syndrome
• Poor or limited motor skills
• Vision impairments
• Physical disabilities
• Limited English Language vii

Benefits for students with disabilities may include improved access to the computer, increases in writing production, improvements in writing mechanics, increased independence, decreased anxiety around writing, and improvements in core reading and writing abilities.

Improved access

For students with motor skill limitations, physical disabilities, blindness/low vision, or other difficulties accessing a standard keyboard and mouse, hands-free computing through the use of speech recognition technologies may be beneficial. By removing the physical barriers to writing and navigation of the computer, you can increase student access to technology and classroom activities.

Writing production

For students with learning disabilities, speech recognition technology can encourage writing that is more thoughtful and deliberate viii . Studies with middle and high school students with learning disabilities have shown that input via speech is less challenging and that students frequently generate papers that are longer and better quality using speech recognition technologies ix .

Mechanics of writing

Speech recognition technologies, in conjunction with word processors' abilities, can help reduce some of the difficulties that students may face with writing mechanics. Because students can often write more quickly with speech recognition tools, it eliminates potential obstacles, such as difficulty with handwriting or the need to transcribe thoughts while brainstorming. Often, writers with learning disabilities will skip over words when they are unsure of the correct spelling, leading to pieces of writing that are short, missing key elements, or not reflective of the student's true abilities x . Speech recognition and word processors can potentially alleviate some of these concerns by allowing the student to get their thoughts out on paper without worrying about these or other technical writing components xi .

Increased independence

For students with physical disabilities, poor motor skills or learning disabilities, a human transcriber is a low-tech solution for the classroom that allows the focus to shift from the physical act of writing to expressing thoughts and knowledge. However, a transcriber makes the student dependent upon a teacher or aide for writing tasks. Students who use transcribers for writing often report "spending less time planning and organizing because they felt they were keeping the transcriber waiting, or felt embarrassment about making mistakes or asking for multiple readings of what was written." xii Using speech-to-text tools can allow the student to be more independent in their writing and other academic activities. If the speech-to-text program also includes text-to-speech features, the student may hear their text read aloud to them multiple times, and correct their errors more independently.

Decreased anxiety

In addition to allowing the student to work in a more independent manner, speech recognition can allow students to write without fear of spelling errors, helping them avoid the anxieties associated with mechanics, organization, and editing xiii ; many struggling writers feel embarrassment about "the appearance of their writing due to brevity of sentence or paragraph length, illegibility of handwriting, and/or misspelled words." xiv

For students who are English Language Learners, or are learning a second language, speech recognition programs can allow them to practice pronunciation in a safe, low-stress environment. Students can engage in multiple repetitions of an unfamiliar word without worrying about feeling embarrassed xv . Some popular foreign language software programs now include speech recognition features for just this purpose.

Improvements in core reading and writing abilities

Research has shown that speech recognition tools can also serve a remedial function for students with learning disabilities in the areas of reading and writing. In allowing students to see the words on screen as they dictate, students can gain insight into important elements of phonemic awareness, such as sound-symbol correspondence. As students speak and see their words appear on the screen, the speech-to-text tool directly demonstrates the relationship between how a word looks and sounds xvi . This bimodal presentation of text can be especially helpful for students with learning disabilities, and is thought to be why speech recognition has been found effective in remediating reading and spelling deficits.

Another key benefit of speech recognition technologies is the error correction process. Because no speech recognition product is completely accurate, "it requires users to check the accuracy of each word uttered as sentences are being dictated. When an error is made, the child must then find the correct word among a list of similar words and choose it" xvii . This process necessitates that the user examine the word list closely, compare words that look or sound alike, and make decisions about the best word for the specific situation. This can give kids with LD a boost in reading and spelling as they learn to discriminate between similar words xviii .

Despite advances over the past 20 years, speech recognition technology as it is today still presents challenges for students with disabilities. As with any new technology tool, students must initially become comfortable with using speech-to-text, including training it to recognize their voices, gaining experience with a new way of writing, understanding the differences between writing and speaking, and correcting errors within the text. For students with learning disabilities, struggling readers and writers, or very young students, this may induce additional frustrations with the writing process. Though the software has improved, speech-to-text programs are not always capable of recognizing the voices of young children, so students must adjust to speaking more slowly so that the technology can more accurately transcribe their thoughts xix .

Because speaking to write is an activity that requires different skills than speaking in conversation, students must be aware of the differences between the two. This may be challenging for early writers who have not yet made that distinction. Using speech recognition technology may make it more difficult for younger students to begin differentiating between writing and speaking. Thus, it is critical that use of speech recognition technology be paired with instruction on writing strategies, brainstorming, drafting and organization xx .

Another key element involved in using speech recognition programs is the need for error correction and monitoring of misrecognized words. Newer programs never make a spelling mistake and they improve when users correct misrecognized words, so students must be alert for errors that go unrecognized by the program (e.g., incorrect word choices, or words misunderstood by the software). While this process can be taxing for struggling readers, a program that is also capable of reading text back to the user can help them with editing and revising.

Another implementation challenge is that the software requires a good deal of memory and must be saved on a single server folder. These voice files improve in accuracy with use, so it is important that students work in their own saved file. This means that this assistive technology is not always portable. Schools have overcome this challenge by assigning students laptops with the software installed or storing files on a networked server that can be accessed from anywhere on campus.

As with any assistive technology solution, finding funding for speech recognition solutions may also present a challenge for schools. The first step in obtaining any assistive technology for your students is to conduct a thorough assessment to determine what would best meet the student's learning needs . It may be that because of the various implementation challenges listed above, speech recognition software would not be the best fit for certain students. Once a potentially beneficial solution is agreed upon, there are many options for schools looking for funding for AT , from grant programs, to used AT marketplaces, to loan programs from vendors and assistive technology centers.

Improving student success with speech recognition

Speech recognition isn't perfect and may not be the best choice for all students with disabilities, but it does have some significant benefits for certain students that make it worth the time investment. If speech recognition tools are right for your student, here are several tips for improving student success:

• Be sure that your computer has a good quality microphone and sound card, and meets the minimum memory capacity and processing speed requirements listed for the software you purchase. Many speech recognition companies will recommend specific microphones that have been shown to work well with their software.
• For students with LD using speech recognition, explicit instruction in reading skills, phonological awareness, writing strategies and organizational strategies may be helpful.
• For students who struggle with reading, picking out software that includes a read-back or text-to-speech feature can help with error correction and editing.

The future of speech recognition

More research is still needed on the efficacy of speech recognition for children with LD and other types of disabilities. However, the technology is continuing to move forward and address many of the problems encountered before. For example, many newer versions of speech recognition software now include voice profiles for children, meaning that they are becoming more accurate at distinguishing words spoken by younger users.

As industries begin to use some elements of voice recognition technology in their day-to-day work (military, medical, legal) xxi , it makes sense for students to gain some familiarity with speech recognition. Some technologies initially designed for users with disabilities have seen transitions into mainstream technology, becoming something that we all come to rely on in our daily lives. xxii Because of this, technology industry leaders are beginning to believe that all students should receive a technology education that reflects the future of human-computer interactions, which they predict will be primarily through voice and touch.

This article is reprinted with permission from the National Center for Technology Innovation , (NCTI), which produces content to help educate people with disabilities. NCTI’s material does not address traumatic brain injury specifically; however, it can be applicable and useful for people with brain injury.

i Nuance Communications. (2009). Dragon NaturallySpeaking: Helping all students reach their full potential. March 2009 White Paper, Nuance Communications.

ii Higgins, E.L., & Raskind, M.H. (2000). Speaking to read: The effects of continuous vs. discrete speech recognition systems on the reading and spelling of children with learning disabilities. Journal of Special Education Technology, 15(1), 19-30; Higgins, E.L. & Raskind, M.H. (1995). Compensatory effectiveness of speech recognition on the written composition performance of postsecondary students with learning disabilities. Learning Disability Quarterly, 18(2), 159-174; MacArthur, C.A. (2009). Reflections on research on writing and technology for struggling writers. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 24(2), 93-103.

iii Bruce, C. Edmundson, A., Coleman, M. (2003). Writing with voice: an investigation of the use of a voice recognition system as a writing aid for a man with aphasia. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 38(2), 131-148.

iv Chiu, T.L., Liou, H.C., Yeh, Y. (2007). A study of web-based oral activities enhanced by automatic speech recognition for EFL college learning. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 20(3), 209-233; Jones, G., Squires, T., Hicks, J. (2007-2008). Combining speech recognition/natural language processing with 3D online learning environments to create distributed authentic and situated spoken language learning. Journal of Educational Technology Systems, 36(4), 375-392.

v Freitas, D., Kouroupetroglou, G. (2008). Speech technologies for blind and low vision persons. Technology and Disability, 20, 135-156.

vi Jana, R. (2009). How tech for the disabled is going mainstream. BusinessWeek, 4149, 58-60. ; Lohr, S, & Markoff, J. (2010, June 24). Smarter than you think: computers learn to listen, and some talk back. New York Times, Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/25/science/25voice.html?ref=science; Monaghan, P. (2010). Design for disability will become the norm. Chronicle of Higher Education, 56(2), B6-B7.

vii Bruce, C. Edmundson, A., Coleman, M. (2003). Writing with voice: an investigation of the use of a voice recognition system as a writing aid for a man with aphasia. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 38(2), 131-148.; Chiu, T.L., Liou, H.C., Yeh, Y. (2007). A study of web-based oral activities enhanced by automatic speech recognition for EFL college learning. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 20(3), 209-233; Freitas, D., Kouroupetroglou, G. (2008). Speech technologies for blind and low vision persons. Technology and Disability, 20, 135-156; Gardner, T.J. (2008). Speech recognition for students with disabilities in writing. Physical Disabilities: Education and Related Services, 26(2), 43-53; Higgins, E.L., Raskind, M.H. (2004). Speech recognition-based and automaticity programs to help students with severe reading and spelling problems. Annals of Dyslexia, 54(2), 365-392; Honeycutt, L. (2003). Researching the use of voice recognition writing software. Computers and Composition, 20, 77-95; Jones, G., Squires, T., Hicks, J. (2007-2008). Combining speech recognition/natural language processing with 3D online learning environments to create distributed authentic and situated spoken language learning, Journal of Educational Technology Systems, 36(4), 375-392; MacArthur, C.A. (2009). Reflections on research on writing and technology for struggling writers. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 24(2), 93-103.

viii Higgins, E.L., Raskind, M.H. (2004). Speech recognition-based and automaticity programs to help students with severe reading and spelling problems. Annals of Dyslexia, 54(2), 365-392; Honeycutt, L. (2003). Researching the use of voice recognition writing software. Computers and Composition, 20, 77-95.

ix Gardner, T.J. (2008). Speech recognition for students with disabilities in writing. Physical Disabilities: Education and Related Services, 26(2), 43-53.; Higgins, E.L., Raskind, M.H. (2004). Speech recognition-based and automaticity programs to help students with severe reading and spelling problems. Annals of Dyslexia, 54(2), 365-392; Nuance Communications. (2009). Dragon NaturallySpeaking: Helping All Students Reach Their Full Potential. March 2009 White Paper,Nuance Communications.

x Gardner, T.J. (2008). Speech recognition for students with disabilities in writing. Physical Disabilities: Education and Related Services, 26(2), 43-53.

xi Higgins, E.L., Raskind, M.H. (2004). Speech recognition-based and automaticity programs to help students with severe reading and spelling problems. Annals of Dyslexia, 54(2), 365-392.; Nuance Communications. (2009). Dragon NaturallySpeaking: Helping All Students Reach Their Full Potential. March 2009 White Paper; Nuance Communications.; Peterson-Karlan, G., Hourcade, J., & Parette, P. (2008). A review of assistive technology and writing skills for students with physical and educational disabilities. Physical Disabilities: Education and Related Services, 26 (2), 13-32.

xii Caverly, D.C. (2008). Techtalk: Assistive technology for writing. Journal of Developmental Education, 31(3), 36-37.

xiii Gardner, T.J. (2008). Speech recognition for students with disabilities in writing. Physical Disabilities: Education and Related Services, 26(2), 43-53.

xiv Gardner, T.J. (2008). Speech recognition for students with disabilities in writing. Physical Disabilities: Education and Related Services, 26(2), 44.

xv Chiu, T.L., Liou, H.C., Yeh, Y. (2007). A study of web-based oral activities enhanced by automatic speech recognition for EFL college learning. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 20(3), 209-233.

xvi Nuance Communications 2009; Silver-Pacuilla, H. (2006). Access and benefits: Assistive technology in adult literacy. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy 50(2),114-25.

xvii Higgins, E.L., Raskind, M.H. (2004). Speech recognition-based and automaticity programs to help students with severe reading and spelling problems. Annals of Dyslexia, 54(2), 365-392.

xviii Nuance Communications. (2009). Dragon NaturallySpeaking: Helping all students reach their full potential. March 2009 White Paper, Nuance Communications.

xix Honeycutt, L. (2003). Researching the use of voice recognition writing software. Computers and Composition, 20, 77-95.

xx Higgins, E.L., & Raskind, M.H. (2000). Speaking to read: The effects of continuous vs. discrete speech recognition systems on the reading and spelling of children with learning disabilities. Journal of Special Education Technology, 15(1), 19-30.

xxi Lohr, S, & Markoff, J. (2010, June 24). Smarter than you think: Computers learn to listen, and some talk back. New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/25/science/25voice.html?ref=science.

xxii Jana, R. (2009). How tech for the disabled is going mainstream. BusinessWeek, 4149, 58-60; Monaghan, P. (2010). Design for disability will become the norm. Chronicle of Higher Education, 56(2), B6-B7.

An "Info Brief" from the National Center for Technology Innovation (NCTI), 2010. Used with permission.

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Review of the application of intelligent speech technology in education

Jianqing Gao received a D.Eng. degree in electronics and information from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC). He is the vice dean of IFLYTEK AI Research. His research interests include automatic speech recognition, speech and language information processing and spoken dialogue systems.

Genshun Wan received a B.Eng. degree in communication and information systems from Jiangsu University. He is the director of research of IFLYTEK AI Research. His research interests include automatic speech recognition and speech and language information processing.

Kui Wu received a master’s degree in electronics and information from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC). He is the senior researcher at IFLYTEK AI Research. His research interests include speech assessment, automatic speech recognition, speech and language information processing.

Zhonghua Fu received a PhD degree in computer science from Northwestern Polytechnical University (NPU). He is the vice dean of IFLYTEK AI Research Speech Group. His research interests include audio and speech signal processing.

Education is the main application field of intelligent speech technology, including automatic speech recognition and speech assessment. In this paper, we introduce some popular application cases of intelligent speech technology in education, such as intelligent micro-lessons, online distance learning and spoken English learning and testing. With the help of intelligent speech technology, people can acquire knowledge faster, learn languages more efficiently, and even communicate by using different languages. Moreover, we propose three kinds of challenging problems in the application of intelligent speech technology, including the recognition of domain-related terms, the recognition of code-switching and the fine-grained mispronunciation diagnosis. Viable state-of-art solutions to these problems are also discussed in detail. Meanwhile, we also discuss what language teachers and researchers can do in solving the above technical problems.

1 Basic framework of this paper

With the continuous development of deep learning and the inexorable logarithmic growth of computing power, intelligent speech technology has developed rapidly in recent years ( Arel, Rose, & Karnowski, 2010 ; Hinton, Osindero, & Teh, 2014 ). Intelligent speech technologies, including automatic speech recognition (ASR) and speech assessment, have been applied in many industries. The widespread use of intelligent speech systems improves both work efficiency and lifestyle changes.

This paper first introduces some application cases of intelligent speech technology in education, such as intelligent micro-lessons, online distance learning and spoken English learning and testing. It then gives a detailed analysis of three challenges in the application of intelligent speech technology and the viable solutions to these problems. Finally, we look ahead at the future direction of intelligent speech technology in education.

1.1 Research and application of speech recognition

ASR technology is one of the most mature and advanced techniques that transcribes speech to the corresponding text. Automatic speech recognition has been studied for nearly 70 years. A speech recognition system for isolated words was first developed at Bell Labs in the 1950s ( Davis, Biddulph, & Balashek, 1952 ). The first specified 10 numbers can be recognised by using the template matching algorithm ( Vintsyuk, 1968 ). In order to break through the limitations of speech length, dynamic time wrapping (DTW) was introduced in the 1960s. Compared with the firmly restricted application of the small vocabulary isolated words recognition system, large vocabulary continuous speech recognition (LVCSR) was considered more practical. Since the 1970s, the statistical system based on an acoustic model and a language model was regarded as the leading solution for ASR systems. The acoustic model is modelled on the Gaussian mixture model (GMM) and hidden Markov model (HMM), while the language model is modelled on the N-gram. However, the limitation of the accuracy of a GMM-HMM-based system keeps it from being widely applied ( Ferguson, 1980 ; Rabiner, 1989 ). Along with the appearance of deep belief networks (DBN) in 2006, both opportunities and challenges have emerged for automatic speech recognition systems. The relevant research based on deep neural network (DNN) not only provides a new idea to use more contextual information, but also reduces the performance loss caused by the inter-frame independence assumption of the GMM-HMM model.

With the increasing popularity of deep learning, methods based on neural networks, such as feed-forward DNNs ( Hinton et al., 2012 ; Mohamed, Dahl, & Hinton, 2009 ), recurrent neural networks (RNN) ( Hochreiter & Schmidhuber, 1997 ; Zhang et al., 2016 ) and convolutional neural networks (CNNs) ( Abdel-Hamid, Mohamed, Jiang, & Penn, 2012 ; Abdel-Hamid et al., 2014 ) have been proposed in rapid succession. These advanced model structures have significantly improved the performance of ASR systems. However, both acoustic and language models are trained independently, and the connection between the two modules is weak due to the assumption of conditional independence. Meanwhile, the pronunciation dictionary should be established independently for the different languages or dialects, which affects the popularity of the speech recognition system in different countries.

To solve the existing problems on account of the unreasonable assumption of conditional independence, a hot topic in recent years has been an end-to-end system that can directly convert speech input into the corresponding text without the pronunciation dictionary. End-to-end systems fall into three major categories: connectionist temporal classification (CTC) ( Hannun, 2017 ), recurrent neural network transducer (RNN-T) ( Graves, 2012 ; Sutskever, Vinyals, & Le, 2014 ) and encoder–decoder based on the attention mechanism ( Chan, Jaitly, Le, & Vinyals, 2015 ). CTC is a widely used and non-autoregressive method, based on strong conditional independent assumptions. It still relies on the additional language model to capture the context information. RNN-T consists of an encoder, a prediction network and a joint network. The joint network combines the other two parts to produce the posterior distribution. The encoder–decoder is the most popular framework among these end-to-end systems. It is based on the attention mechanism and can be divided into three parts: encoder, decoder and the attention module. Compared with the traditional frame-level model, the encoder–decoder system transfers the speech recognition problem into a sequence-to-sequence issue without conditional independence assumption. With the breakthrough of end-to-end systems, the barrier to rapidly building an ASR system was noticeably lowered. Speech input and voice interactive systems based on ASR provide a more convenient and fast intelligent interactive experience to users and have been applied in many fields, including education, finance and medicine. Office products with ASR ability, such as voice recorders and meeting assistant systems, vastly improve office efficiency.

1.2 Research and application of speech assessment

With regard to language learning, the computer-assisted language learning (CALL) system is playing an increasingly important role in providing a more authentic and richer language learning environment for learners. Speech assessment technology is the core module of the CALL system, which refers to using a computer to automatically evaluate the oral proficiency of learners, including pronunciation and oral expression proficiency. Since the 1990s, speech assessment technology has been widely studied and has developed rapidly. According to the chronological order of appearance, speech assessment technology can be divided into two categories: text-dependent and text-independent assessment. The former mainly refers to pronunciation proficiency evaluation and mispronunciation detection by read aloud tests, such as reading words, sentences and long texts ( Neri, Cucchiarini, & Strik, 2002 ). The latter mainly focus on spontaneous speaking proficiency evaluation by oral tests, such as oral translation, retelling, picture talk and topic expression.

The standard pronunciation acoustic model followed the development of the acoustic model in ASR and forms the basis of pronunciation proficiency evaluation and mispronunciation detection ( Li, Chen, Siniscalchi, & Lee, 2017 ). Recently, some researchers attempted to use end-to-end frameworks for mispronunciation detection ( Lo, Weng, Chang, & Chen, 2020 ). However, the results are not credible due to the small dataset size.

The text-independent speech assessment system is more complicated than the text-dependent assessment. The general approach contains two steps. First, the learners’ spontaneous speech is transformed into text by ASR. Then, content-related and pronunciation quality features based on the text are extracted. The content features include content completeness, coherence, lexical resources and grammar range ( Chen et al., 2018 ).

With the ability to automatically score and detect errors for spoken language, speech assessment technology is widely used in large-scale spoken language tests and computer-assisted pronunciation training.

2 Application cases of intelligent speech technology in education

As one of the most mature artificial intelligence technologies, intelligent speech technology has been applied commercially on a large scale. Intelligent speech systems, including the ASR and CALL systems, have been put to wide use in education, healthcare, the judiciary and finance. Especially since the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020, virtual meetings, call routing systems applied in call centres and online distance learning systems based on intelligent speech technology have been employed in the efforts to prevent the pandemic. This section focuses mainly on three application cases in education.

2.1 Intelligent micro-lesson

Intelligent micro-lessons are currently very popular due to the development of the mobile internet. Intelligent micro-lessons focus on solving one or two problems in a micro teaching mode with the aid of an app. People use gadgets or a personal computer to watch online videos to acquire knowledge or information. ASR systems can be used to improve the user experience in three aspects when people watch micro-lessons.

First, ASR systems can be used to automatically generate subtitles for these online lectures. The subtitles for videos will help users to better understand the lectures, especially for foreign language courses or lectures that are fast. Second, by transcribing online lectures to text by ASR systems, the makers of micro-lessons can divide the videos into many shorter videos according to the content of the different parts of the videos. These short videos can be distributed and studied more conveniently. Finally, people can search the interesting points of short videos according to the subtitles generated by ASR systems, which greatly improves the search efficiency of short videos.

2.2 Online distance learning

Online distance learning is the integration of multimedia, networks and databases. Compared with traditional offline learning methods, online distance learning has the characteristics of flexibility and availability, regardless of the various needs from different regions at any time. Since online distance learning has the advantages of sharing teaching resources, it is important to give it a much bigger role in education.

Language-related problems are a bottleneck that restricts the development of online distance learning. For many online distance learning resources, it is hard to achieve widespread distribution because of the language issue. Based on existing basic course information and teaching resources in different languages, a cross-language unified system for distance learning needs to be investigated. In order to satisfy more needs from different countries, excellent teaching resources should be provided to the users in an acceptable language. For example, most classes in China are taught in Chinese, and most course materials are provided in Chinese. However, for the students who have not mastered Chinese, it is going to be extremely difficult to extract the key points of the courses. In particular, when the users are expected to discuss certain topics in Chinese, the problem of communication and understanding will be magnified.

To help participants of the course perform better, regardless of the language they speak, a cross-language speech recognition and translation system should be offered to help students connect with the content. Specifically, all the teaching content should first be recognised automatically by ASR as the corresponding text to what the teachers are saying. The recognition results then need to be translated into the acceptable language for the students by a translation system. Therefore, intelligent speech technology, such as a multilingual speech recognition system and a multilingual translation system, builds this bridge of communication for students from all the world to understand the lesson. At the same time, intelligent speech technology can promote interpersonal communication in class, which will make it possible for a person to speak and write in his or her own language, while the listener will hear and read the message in his or her own language.

2.3 Spoken English test and learning

As mentioned above, speech assessment technology has the ability to automatically score and detect errors in spoken language. It is natural to replace human experts with speech assessment technology in spoken English examinations to improve scoring efficiency. Also, speech assessment technology can play the role of teacher to help learners improve their pronunciation regardless of the time and place.

The traditional spoken English test for entrance examinations has been carried out by way of manual, face-to-face grading or manual grading on the basis of a computer recording, which is not conducive to expanding the examination scale, because scoring by a person is time-consuming and the final scores tend to be affected by the subjective assessment of the scorers. Therefore, before 2011, the college entrance examinations in all provinces of China only had an additional test for spoken English, which was not included in the college entrance examination results. In order to overcome these difficulties, an intelligent speech assessment system was developed to improve scoring efficiency and quality. In 2014, the intelligent speech assessment system developed by IFLYTEK was officially applied to the spoken English test of the Guangdong province college entrance examination ( Wang, 2017 ). More than 600,000 candidates were scored within two days, which greatly reduced the difficulty of spoken English test scoring, making the large-scale spoken English test a reality. At present, with the help of a speech assessment system, an increasing number of spoken English tests are taken in colleges or senior high school entrance examinations.

Besides being used in the spoken English test, speech assessment technology has also been used in spoken English teaching. Although schools have been paying more attention to spoken English teaching, for a long time, the development of spoken English teaching faced many difficulties and could not be carried out effectively. First of all, there are many students who are taught in large classes, and it is difficult for every student to have the opportunity to speak in the classroom. Second, without a spoken teaching and test platform, the teacher cannot effectively arrange and correct the students’ oral homework and organise the spoken test to know students’ learning status in time. In the end, without the guidance of the teacher, students cannot improve themselves after class. Based on speech assessment technology, a teaching and test platform can be built to help the teacher efficiently carry out spoken English teaching. Students can improve themselves by receiving feedback from the platform. The intelligent scoring and feedback generation process is automatic, objective and accurate and does not require human participation, which greatly decreases teachers’ burden of listening, speaking, teaching and examining and provides a good English learning environment for students.

3 Challenges in the application of intelligent speech technology

As well as having an impact on the learning experience of students all over the world, the widespread adoption of intelligent speech technology has brought great changes to education. However, due to the complexity and uncertainty of application scenarios, some challenges in intelligent speech technology application need to be resolved, including the recognition of domain-related terms, the recognition of code-switching and the fine-grained mispronunciation diagnosis.

3.1 Recognition of domain-related terms

In education, every field or subject has its own vocabulary and technical terms. The recognition of domain-related terms plays an important role in building a fully rounded understanding of the subject. The error recognition of keywords, especially domain-related terms, may generate some confusion among students.

Rich resources of textual data are the foundation for improving the recognition performance of domain-related terms. However, data sparseness is a very common problem in practical application scenes. The domain-related terms are often falsely recognised as common words. More seriously, the audio files of domain-related terms are also necessary during the process of training end-to-end systems.

To improve the recognition performance of domain-related terms, one common solution is to use the interpolation method based on an N-gram language model. Specifically, a language model for the related domain is trained and then combined with the common language model. Domain-related data can be collected from users and the internet. However, due to the various domains and interdisciplinary influences on the research, a course needs to cover textual data from different fields, which will make the interpolation method time-consuming and labour-intensive. Moreover, the performance of the interpolation method, under the encoder–decoder framework, is greatly reduced. The decoder itself acts as a language model that uses attention to summarise the representations of the encoder to predict the output so that the acoustic and language models are coupled together. When an interpolation model acts on the encoder–decoder model, only a small scaling factor can be used to avoid upsetting the balance.

Fusion method

Hot words optimisation method: CLAS

Another popular method to improve the accuracy of keywords is the Contextual Listen Attend Spell (CLAS) model. CLAS jointly optimises the encoder–decoder model along with the embedding of the context ( Pundak, Sainath, Prabhavalkar, Kannan, & Zhao, 2018 ) for which domain-related textual data is not necessary. In the process of decoding, the attention mechanism is used to focus on not only the acoustic feature, but also the additional vocabulary. The fusion of this information can offer a more accurate and more targeted decoding strategy. The extra vocabulary can be determined dynamically by the users without restraint. However, false triggering will become more serious with the expansion of the scale of the extra vocabulary, which means some common words are mistakenly recognised as hot words. Common words and hot words that sound alike often lead to this problem. In order to alleviate the problem of false triggering, the pronunciation of the words can be introduced to enhance the discrimination between the words that sound alike. Similarly, decreasing the vocabulary size is also an effective method. That is to say, most of the candidate hot words can be removed by the attention coefficient, and the remaining candidates are then normalised to sharpen the distribution.

Accurate and reliable data play an important role in the recognition of domain-related terms, so automatic data cleaning is also an important step in data mining. However, confusion words could only be collected from language teachers and researchers. How to convert language skills, experience and deep understanding of different cultures into a cleaning strategy is a subject worthy of study.

3.2 Recognition of code-switching

In education, domain-related terms are often expressed in English because we habitually have trouble in finding the appropriate words and phrases to give expression to our thoughts in our native language. Therefore, code-switching increasingly appears more frequently in our lives. As an effective communicative strategy, code-switching usually refers to using two or more language varieties in one conversation. For a traditional ASR system, the different language recognition systems are mainly independently modelled. The most important question in code-switching is: How to achieve an effective merge with different languages in a single ASR system, and how to gain reasonable text data with a different language in one sentence?

Generation of Chinese–English code-switching data

Improvement of pronunciation confusion

For code-switching scenes, poor pronunciation is one of the most common problems we are faced with because of phonetic conversion. Therefore, in order to provide the decoding path with more choices, a confusion matrix with common pronunciation confusion pairs can be provided to improve error identification. Specifically, the distance of the similarity between Chinese characters and English sub-words is calculated and selected to express the degree of confusion. Chinese and English path candidates are all supported to avoid complete independence between languages. For example, when the next token is evaluated as Chinese, English candidates are also provided with a confusion matrix to preserve the possible path.

3.3 Fine-grained mispronunciation diagnosis

Generation pronunciation error data through more advanced speech synthesis technology

Usage of speech recognition pre-trained model

The speech recognition model is trained by a vast volume of training data, and its different hidden layers abstract the pronunciation content at different levels, which can be combined to provide an accurate representation of fine-grained pronunciation. With the pronunciation representation from the speech recognition pre-trained model, the amount of training data for the pronunciation diagnosis model can be reduced. During the training stage of the speech recognition pre-training model, in order to further meet the downstream mispronunciation diagnosis task, the long-context and short-context models can be combined to improve the diversity of the model’s representation. The long-context model will accurately recognise correctly pronounced phonemes by taking advantage of long-context information. In contrast, in order to increase sensitivity to mispronunciation, the short-context model only utilises short-context information to recognise mispronounced phonemes.

There is no denying that we can obtain most pronunciation error pairs and effective teaching schemes to correct mispronunciation from those on the front lines in language teaching and study. This prior information can be taken as specified memory units to optimise the speech assessment system and build the self-learning framework. To capture more regular details, we should seek the balancing point of a variety of teaching experiences.

4 Conclusion

This paper mainly focuses primarily on two typical speech technologies: automatic speech recognition and speech assessment. First, three application cases of intelligent speech technology in education are introduced. Second, three challenging problems in the education application are proposed, including the recognition of domain-related terms, the recognition of code-switching and the fine-grained mispronunciation diagnosis. State-of-the-art methods and directions for future development are also discussed.

In addition, a personalised service based on speech recognition, such as the optimisation of accent, is still one of the most important research subjects. More intelligent solutions, such as improving the recording quality of micro-lessons by a microphone array and generating customised learning methods for different students by natural language processing, need to be further researched.

About the authors

Abdel-Hamid, O., Mohamed, A. R., Jiang, H., & Penn, G. (2012). Applying convolutional neural networks concepts to hybrid NN-HMM model for speech recognition. In 2012 IEEE international conference on acoustics, speech and signal processing (ICASSP) (pp. 4277–4280). Piscataway: IEEE. 10.1109/ICASSP.2012.6288864 Search in Google Scholar

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Speech on Technology

Have you ever thought about the encroachment of technology in our lives? Can you imagine spending a day in your life without relying on technology? We live in a world where all major work is done with the assistance of technology. What are the benefits of technology, and what are its drawbacks? Read the article and develop a fine speech on technology.

Table of Contents

Top 10 quotes to use in a speech on technology, speech on the benefits of technology, speech on the disadvantages of technology, short speech on technology, frequently asked questions on technology.

• “Technology is best when it brings people together.” – Matt Mullenweg.
• “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.” – Albert Einstein.
• “It is only when they go wrong that machines remind you how powerful they are.” – Clive James.
• “The Web as I envisaged it, we have not seen it yet. The future is still so much bigger than the past.”- Tim Berners-Lee.
• “If it keeps up, man will atrophy all his limbs but the push-button finger.” – Frank Lloyd Wright.
• “If future generations are to remember us more with gratitude than sorrow, we must achieve more than just the miracles of technology. We must also leave them a glimpse of the world as it was created, not just as it looked when we got through with it.” – Lyndon B. Johnson.
• “Once a new technology rolls over you, if you’re not part of the steamroller, you’re part of the road.” – Stewart Brand.
• “It’s not a faith in technology. It’s faith in people.” – Steve Jobs, Co-founder of Apple.
• “Technology is a useful servant but a dangerous master.” – Christian Lous Lange.
• “The advance of technology is based on making it fit in so that you don’t really even notice it, so it’s part of everyday life.”- Bill Gates.

Sample Speeches on Technology

A few samples of speeches on technology are given below. Go through them and utilise the resource for your better understanding of the topic.

Just like a coin, technology also has two sides, one is its benefits, and the other is its disadvantages.

There are multiple ways by which technology is favouring the lives of human beings. In the modern world, people are making maximum use of it. Technology became a great boon for us when it marked its advancement in the field of medical science. Through continuous evolution and updation, technology has reached a level that enables us to treat and cure many health disorders, including cancer and other chronic disorders. It has helped to save the lives of many humans, and truly it can be called a ‘life saver’.

The coming of the internet, mobile phones, and computers have eased the process of communication. With the support of all these advanced technologies, communication has become a simpler, faster, and more effective process. Can you imagine spending days waiting for a reply from your beloved ones? How strange will that be, right?

Another main advantage brought by technology is increased productivity. The overall production rate has increased drastically. With the assistance of huge machines and other technologies, the quantity of products has marked a rise without compromising on the quality. Technologies are evolving every single day; new discoveries are made frequently with the help of existing technologies and types of machinery. In one way or another, we can say that technologies aid new discoveries.

Technologies are making our lives easier. Imagine a situation where there is no internet and the world wide web. How will you receive information from all around the world? How long will it take to provide you with the exact information that you need? Will that be an updated one once it reaches you? Technologies are helping us to lead a secure life. Progressive changes that have happened in banking and money management are exceptional as well. Innovations like webcams and surveillance cameras have aided visual communication and security.

The benefits of technology is a very vast topic. Every single aspect of human life has the influence of technology in it. So pointing out each and every benefit of technology is impossible. Even though technology has many advantages, keep in mind that nothing can replace human intelligence. Always try to manage the use of technology, do not let it manage your lives.

We proudly proclaim that humans are the masters of technology; by doing that, we are actually trying to cover the ultimate truth behind it. We are completely dependent on technology. Even if the term advancement is often linked with technology, there exists multiple disadvantages too. With the encroachment of technology, people have lost their social life. It’s the supremacy of Artificial Intelligence (AI) over natural intelligence that is happening in the world right now. Humans are no longer social beings; they are just living beings with digital control.

Technological updates are happening in all sectors, and each and every new technological advancement offers us advantages and disadvantages. Let’s take a look at the disadvantages brought by digital technologies. Personal technologies like smartphones and laptops are isolating people from the larger physical community around them. More than getting engaged in public activities, what excites people more is their time on their personal gadgets.

Real lives and emotions are given very less value in the modern world. Even though technology is helping humans to save enough time, people are busy in their virtual realities. The world of social media is highly influencing the lives of people irrespective of age. People are getting dragged into that cyberspace. Let’s remember the words of Allison Burnett, “Only on Internet Technology can a person be lonely and popular at the same time.” How accurate these words are, right?

We always connect technology with something that is newly happening, right? But is that so? Technology is not a 21st century term. Technology is as old as civilisation. Every little change, even the use of primitive tools that were used for hunting in ancient times, can be connected with technology. Over the course of time, technology has undergone multiple changes, and such evolutions are clearly visible in all sectors of society. Do you know what the most precious thing on earth is? Is it the yacht History Supreme? Is it Antilla? Or is it ‘The Card Players’, a famous painting by French artist Paul Cezzane?

All these things may cost a lot, but not as much as time. Time is the most precious thing on earth, nothing can replace it, and it has to be valued. The assistance of modern technology has enabled us to save it. After the introduction of technologies, things that took hours and days for completion are now getting completed in seconds and minutes. Simultaneously, it is saving our money and bettering our lives, but never forget the words, “Too much of anything is good for nothing.”

Why is technology important?

There are multiple ways by which technology is favouring the lives of human beings. Technology became a great boon for us when it marked its advancement in the field of medical science. By continuous evolution and updation, technology has reached a level that enables us to treat and cure many health disorders, including cancer and other chronic disorders. It has helped to save the lives of many humans, and truly it can be called a ‘life saver’.

What are the top quotes to use in a speech on technology?

• “Technology is best when it brings people together.” – Matt Mullenweg.
• “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.” – Albert Einstein.
• “It is only when they go wrong that machines remind you how powerful they are.” – Clive James.

How does technology affect our lives?

Even if the term advancement is linked with technology, there are multiple disadvantages. With the encroachment of technology, people have lost their social life. It’s the supremacy of Artificial Intelligence (AI) over natural intelligence that is happening in the world right now. Humans are no longer social beings; they are just living beings with digital control.

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How Has Technology Changed Education?

Technology has impacted almost every aspect of life today, and education is no exception. Or is it? In some ways, education seems much the same as it has been for many years. A 14th century illustration by Laurentius de Voltolina depicts a university lecture in medieval Italy. The scene is easily recognizable because of its parallels to the modern day. The teacher lectures from a podium at the front of the room while the students sit in rows and listen. Some of the students have books open in front of them and appear to be following along. A few look bored. Some are talking to their neighbors. One appears to be sleeping. Classrooms today do not look much different, though you might find modern students looking at their laptops, tablets, or smart phones instead of books (though probably open to Facebook). A cynic would say that technology has done nothing to change education.

However, in many ways, technology has profoundly changed education. For one, technology has greatly expanded access to education. In medieval times, books were rare and only an elite few had access to educational opportunities. Individuals had to travel to centers of learning to get an education. Today, massive amounts of information (books, audio, images, videos) are available at one’s fingertips through the Internet, and opportunities for formal learning are available online worldwide through the Khan Academy, MOOCs, podcasts, traditional online degree programs, and more. Access to learning opportunities today is unprecedented in scope thanks to technology.

Opportunities for communication and collaboration have also been expanded by technology. Traditionally, classrooms have been relatively isolated, and collaboration has been limited to other students in the same classroom or building. Today, technology enables forms of communication and collaboration undreamt of in the past. Students in a classroom in the rural U.S., for example, can learn about the Arctic by following the expedition of a team of scientists in the region, read scientists’ blog posting, view photos, e-mail questions to the scientists, and even talk live with the scientists via a videoconference. Students can share what they are learning with students in other classrooms in other states who are tracking the same expedition. Students can collaborate on group projects using technology-based tools such as wikis and Google docs. The walls of the classrooms are no longer a barrier as technology enables new ways of learning, communicating, and working collaboratively.

Technology has also begun to change the roles of teachers and learners. In the traditional classroom, such as what we see depicted in de Voltolina’s illustration, the teacher is the primary source of information, and the learners passively receive it. This model of the teacher as the “sage on the stage” has been in education for a long time, and it is still very much in evidence today. However, because of the access to information and educational opportunity that technology has enabled, in many classrooms today we see the teacher’s role shifting to the “guide on the side” as students take more responsibility for their own learning using technology to gather relevant information. Schools and universities across the country are beginning to redesign learning spaces to enable this new model of education, foster more interaction and small group work, and use technology as an enabler.

Technology is a powerful tool that can support and transform education in many ways, from making it easier for teachers to create instructional materials to enabling new ways for people to learn and work together. With the worldwide reach of the Internet and the ubiquity of smart devices that can connect to it, a new age of anytime anywhere education is dawning. It will be up to instructional designers and educational technologies to make the most of the opportunities provided by technology to change education so that effective and efficient education is available to everyone everywhere.

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Speech recognition, also known as automatic speech recognition (ASR), computer speech recognition or speech-to-text, is a capability that enables a program to process human speech into a written format.

While speech recognition is commonly confused with voice recognition, speech recognition focuses on the translation of speech from a verbal format to a text one whereas voice recognition just seeks to identify an individual user’s voice.

IBM has had a prominent role within speech recognition since its inception, releasing of “Shoebox” in 1962. This machine had the ability to recognize 16 different words, advancing the initial work from Bell Labs from the 1950s. However, IBM didn’t stop there, but continued to innovate over the years, launching VoiceType Simply Speaking application in 1996. This speech recognition software had a 42,000-word vocabulary, supported English and Spanish, and included a spelling dictionary of 100,000 words.

While speech technology had a limited vocabulary in the early days, it is utilized in a wide number of industries today, such as automotive, technology, and healthcare. Its adoption has only continued to accelerate in recent years due to advancements in deep learning and big data.  Research  (link resides outside ibm.com) shows that this market is expected to be worth USD 24.9 billion by 2025.

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Many speech recognition applications and devices are available, but the more advanced solutions use AI and machine learning . They integrate grammar, syntax, structure, and composition of audio and voice signals to understand and process human speech. Ideally, they learn as they go — evolving responses with each interaction.

The best kind of systems also allow organizations to customize and adapt the technology to their specific requirements — everything from language and nuances of speech to brand recognition. For example:

• Language weighting: Improve precision by weighting specific words that are spoken frequently (such as product names or industry jargon), beyond terms already in the base vocabulary.
• Speaker labeling: Output a transcription that cites or tags each speaker’s contributions to a multi-participant conversation.
• Acoustics training: Attend to the acoustical side of the business. Train the system to adapt to an acoustic environment (like the ambient noise in a call center) and speaker styles (like voice pitch, volume and pace).
• Profanity filtering: Use filters to identify certain words or phrases and sanitize speech output.

Meanwhile, speech recognition continues to advance. Companies, like IBM, are making inroads in several areas, the better to improve human and machine interaction.

The vagaries of human speech have made development challenging. It’s considered to be one of the most complex areas of computer science – involving linguistics, mathematics and statistics. Speech recognizers are made up of a few components, such as the speech input, feature extraction, feature vectors, a decoder, and a word output. The decoder leverages acoustic models, a pronunciation dictionary, and language models to determine the appropriate output.

Speech recognition technology is evaluated on its accuracy rate, i.e. word error rate (WER), and speed. A number of factors can impact word error rate, such as pronunciation, accent, pitch, volume, and background noise. Reaching human parity – meaning an error rate on par with that of two humans speaking – has long been the goal of speech recognition systems. Research from Lippmann (link resides outside ibm.com) estimates the word error rate to be around 4 percent, but it’s been difficult to replicate the results from this paper.

Various algorithms and computation techniques are used to recognize speech into text and improve the accuracy of transcription. Below are brief explanations of some of the most commonly used methods:

• Natural language processing (NLP): While NLP isn’t necessarily a specific algorithm used in speech recognition, it is the area of artificial intelligence which focuses on the interaction between humans and machines through language through speech and text. Many mobile devices incorporate speech recognition into their systems to conduct voice search—e.g. Siri—or provide more accessibility around texting. 
• Hidden markov models (HMM): Hidden Markov Models build on the Markov chain model, which stipulates that the probability of a given state hinges on the current state, not its prior states. While a Markov chain model is useful for observable events, such as text inputs, hidden markov models allow us to incorporate hidden events, such as part-of-speech tags, into a probabilistic model. They are utilized as sequence models within speech recognition, assigning labels to each unit—i.e. words, syllables, sentences, etc.—in the sequence. These labels create a mapping with the provided input, allowing it to determine the most appropriate label sequence.
• N-grams: This is the simplest type of language model (LM), which assigns probabilities to sentences or phrases. An N-gram is sequence of N-words. For example, “order the pizza” is a trigram or 3-gram and “please order the pizza” is a 4-gram. Grammar and the probability of certain word sequences are used to improve recognition and accuracy.
• Neural networks: Primarily leveraged for deep learning algorithms, neural networks process training data by mimicking the interconnectivity of the human brain through layers of nodes. Each node is made up of inputs, weights, a bias (or threshold) and an output. If that output value exceeds a given threshold, it “fires” or activates the node, passing data to the next layer in the network. Neural networks learn this mapping function through supervised learning, adjusting based on the loss function through the process of gradient descent.  While neural networks tend to be more accurate and can accept more data, this comes at a performance efficiency cost as they tend to be slower to train compared to traditional language models.
• Speaker Diarization (SD): Speaker diarization algorithms identify and segment speech by speaker identity. This helps programs better distinguish individuals in a conversation and is frequently applied at call centers distinguishing customers and sales agents.

A wide number of industries are utilizing different applications of speech technology today, helping businesses and consumers save time and even lives. Some examples include:

Automotive: Speech recognizers improves driver safety by enabling voice-activated navigation systems and search capabilities in car radios.

Technology: Virtual agents are increasingly becoming integrated within our daily lives, particularly on our mobile devices. We use voice commands to access them through our smartphones, such as through Google Assistant or Apple’s Siri, for tasks, such as voice search, or through our speakers, via Amazon’s Alexa or Microsoft’s Cortana, to play music. They’ll only continue to integrate into the everyday products that we use, fueling the “Internet of Things” movement.

Healthcare: Doctors and nurses leverage dictation applications to capture and log patient diagnoses and treatment notes.

Sales: Speech recognition technology has a couple of applications in sales. It can help a call center transcribe thousands of phone calls between customers and agents to identify common call patterns and issues. AI chatbots can also talk to people via a webpage, answering common queries and solving basic requests without needing to wait for a contact center agent to be available. It both instances speech recognition systems help reduce time to resolution for consumer issues.

Security: As technology integrates into our daily lives, security protocols are an increasing priority. Voice-based authentication adds a viable level of security.

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Jessica Grose

Every tech tool in the classroom should be ruthlessly evaluated.

By Jessica Grose

Opinion Writer

Educational technology in schools is sometimes described as a wicked problem — a term coined by a design and planning professor, Horst Rittel, in the 1960s , meaning a problem for which even defining the scope of the dilemma is a struggle, because it has so many interconnected parts that never stop moving.

When you have a wicked problem, solutions have to be holistic, flexible and developmentally appropriate. Which is to say that appropriate tech use for elementary schoolers in rural Oklahoma isn’t going to be the same as appropriate tech use in a Chicago high school.

I spent the past few weeks speaking with parents, teachers, public school administrators and academics who study educational technology. And while there are certainly benefits to using tech as a classroom tool, I’m convinced that when it comes to the proliferation of tech in K-12 education, we need “ a hard reset ,” as Julia Freeland Fisher of the Christensen Institute put it, concurring with Jonathan Haidt in his call for rolling back the “phone-based childhood.” When we recently spoke, Fisher stressed that when we weigh the benefits of ed tech, we’re often not asking, “What’s happening when it comes to connectedness and well-being?”

Well said. We need a complete rethink of the ways that we’re evaluating and using tech in classrooms; the overall change that I want to see is that tech use in schools — devices and apps — should be driven by educators, not tech companies.

In recent years, tech companies have provided their products to schools either free or cheap , and then schools have tried to figure out how to use those products. Wherever that dynamic exists, it should be reversed: Districts and individual schools should first figure out what tech would be most useful to their students, and their bar for “useful” should be set by available data and teacher experience. Only then should they acquire laptops, tablets and educational software.

As Mesut Duran — a professor of educational technology at the University of Michigan, Dearborn, and the author of “Learning Technologies: Research, Trends and Issues in the U.S. Education System” — told me, a lot of the technology that’s used in classrooms wasn’t developed with students in mind. “Most of the technologies are initially created for commercial purposes,” he said, “and then we decide how to use them in schools.”

In many cases, there’s little or no evidence that the products actually work, and “work” can have various meanings here: It’s not conclusive that tech, as opposed to hard-copy materials, improves educational outcomes. And sometimes devices or programs simply don’t function the way they’re supposed to. For example, artificial intelligence in education is all the rage, but then we get headlines like this one, in February, from The Wall Street Journal: “ We Tested an A.I. Tutor for Kids. It Struggled With Basic Math. ”

Alex Molnar, one of the directors of the National Educational Policy Center at the University of Colorado, Boulder, said that every school should be asking if the tech it’s using is both necessary and good. “The tech industry’s ethos is: If it’s doable, it is necessary. But for educators, that has to be an actual question: Is this necessary?” Even after you’ve cleared the bar of necessary, he said, educators should be asking, “Is doing it this way good, or could we do it another way that would be better? Better in the ethical sense and the pedagogical sense.”

With that necessary and good standard in mind, here are some specific recommendations that I’ve taken away from several discussions and a lot of reading. It’s unrealistic — and considering that we’re in a tech-saturated world, not ideal — to get rid of every last bit of educational technology. But we’re currently failing too many children by letting it run rampant.

At the State and Federal Levels: Privacy Protections and Better Evaluation

A complaint I heard from many public school parents who responded to my March 27 questionnaire and wanted a lower-tech environment for their kids is that they’re concerned about their children’s privacy. They couldn’t opt out of things like Google Classroom, they said, because in many cases, all of their children’s homework assignments were posted there. Molnar has a radical but elegant solution for this problem: “All data gathered must be destroyed after its intended purpose has been accomplished.” So if the intended purpose of a platform or application is grading, for example, the data would be destroyed at the end of the school year; it couldn’t be sold to a third party or used to further enhance the product or as a training ground for artificial intelligence.

Another recommendation — from a recent paper by the University of Edinburgh’s Ben Williamson, Molnar and the University of Colorado, Boulder’s Faith Boninger outlining the risks of A.I. in the classroom — is for the creation of an “independent government entity charged with ensuring the quality of digital educational products used in schools” that would evaluate tech before it is put into schools and “periodically thereafter.” Because the technology is always evolving, our oversight of it needs to be, as well.

At the District Level: Centralize the Tech-Vetting Process

Stephanie Sheron is the chief of strategic initiatives for the Montgomery County Public Schools, the largest district in Maryland, and all the district’s technology departments report to her. She likened the tech landscape, coming out of the Covid-19 pandemic remote school period, to the “Wild West.” School districts were flooded with different kinds of ed tech in an emergency situation in which teachers were desperately trying to engage their students, and a lot of relief money was pouring in from the federal government. When the dust settled, she said, the question was, “Now what do we do? How do we control this? How do we make sure that we’re in alignment with FERPA and COPPA and all of those other student data privacy components?”

To address this, Sheron said, her district has secured grant funding to hire a director of information security, who will function as the hub for all the educational technology vending and evaluate new tech. Part of the standardization that the district has been undergoing is a requirement that to be considered, curriculum vendors must offer both digital and hard-copy resources. She said her district tried to look at tech as a tool, adding: “A pencil is a tool for learning, but it’s not the only modality. Same thing with technology. We look at it as a tool, not as the main driver of the educational experience.”

At the Classroom Level: Ruthlessly Evaluate Every Tool

In my conversations with teachers, I’ve been struck by their descriptions of the cascade of tech use — that more tech is often offered as a solution to problems created by tech. For example, paid software like GoGuardian, which allows teachers to monitor every child’s screen, has been introduced to solve the problem of students goofing off on their laptops. But there’s a simple, free, low-tech solution to this problem that Doug Showley, a high school English teacher in Indiana I spoke to, employs: He makes all his students face their computer screens in his direction.

Every teacher who is concerned about tech use in his or her classroom should do a tech audit. There are several frameworks ; I like the worksheet created by Beth Pandolpho and Katie Cubano, the authors of “Choose Your Own Master Class: Urgent Ideas to Invigorate Your Professional Learning.” In the chapter “Balancing Technology Use in the Classroom,” they suggest that teachers list every tech tool they are using and evaluate its specific functions, asking, “Are these novel or duplicative?” They also encourage teachers to write out a defense of the tool and the frequency of use.

I like these questions because they make clear that the solutions are not going to be one size fits all.

Students Deserve Authentic Connection

As I close out this series, I want to return to what Fisher said about the importance of student connection and well-being. Of course academic outcomes matter. I want our kids to learn as much about as many different topics as they can. I care about falling test scores and think they’re an important piece of data.

But test scores are only one kind of information. A key lesson we should have learned from 2020 and ’21 is that school is about so much more than just academics. It’s about socialization, critical thinking, community and learning how to coexist with people who are different from you. I don’t know that all of these are things that can be tracked in a scientific way, which brings me back to the idea of tech in schools as a wicked problem: These aren’t easily measurable outcomes.

Jeff Frank, a professor of education at St. Lawrence University, expresses a sense that I’ve had very well in a paper , “Sounding the Call to Teach in a Social Media Age: Renewing the Importance of Philosophy in Teacher Education.” He says students are “hungry for experiences that make them feel alive and authentically connected to other people and to deeper sources of value. Though filtering and managing life through technologies offers safety, predictability and a sense of control, it also leads to life that can feel extremely small, constraining and lonely. Teaching can offer a powerful way to pierce this bubble.”

Ultimately, I believe the only way kids will be able to find that deeper meaning is through human relationships with their peers and teachers, no matter how shiny an A.I. tutor appears to be at first blush.

Jessica Grose is an Opinion writer for The Times, covering family, religion, education, culture and the way we live now.

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• Speech Writing /

Speech on The Impact of Technology on Society

• Updated on  
• Jan 12, 2024

Speech on the Impact of Technology on Society: Today we are all surrounded by technology, be it the internet, cell phones, or any electronic radiation. Technology is considered as our biggest ally to deal where future challenges like climate change, global warming, overpopulation, water scarcity, etc. But have you ever wondered what are the impacts of technology on society? How does technology affect our social relationships? 

Everything comes at a price and so does technology. With the help of technology, we can connect with a person sitting in another country, allowing us to make international friends. But making connections with strangers often turns out to be a nightmare. There have been so many cases where netizens fell prey to cyberbullying, job loss, technology addiction, etc. We will provide you with a speech on the impact of technology on society, where we will cover all the dimensions of this topic. Stay tuned!

Also Read: 5 Minutes Speech on Technology and Mental Health

Also Read: Short Speech on Technology for School Students

10 Lines on The Impact of Technology on Society

Here are 10 lines on the impact of technology on society. Feel free to use them in your academic and professional arenas.

• Technology allows us to connect and communicate with distant people.
• With the help of technology, we can bridge the gap between the digital divide.
• People with disabilities find technology very useful to communicate with others.
• Social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, X, etc. allow us to share our thoughts with like-minded people.
• Medical professionals can use technology to share medical treatment ideas, diagnostic tools, and healthcare management systems, enhancing overall health outcomes.
• We can improve our work-life balance with the advent of remote working or work from home.
• There has been a significant transformation in the film industry, where movies and TV shows are now available on online streaming platforms, like Prime, Netflix, SonyLiv, etc.
• E-commerce platforms like Amazon, Flipkart, etc. allow us to buy products online. 
• E-commerce platforms have also allowed businesses to expand their reach.
• We can share green technology ideas via online conferences, video calls, or vlogs.

Easy Speech on The Impact of Technology on Society

‘Hello and welcome to everyone present here. Today, I stand before you to present my speech on the impact of technology on society. Technological inventions like the steam engine, electricity, batteries, the internet, computers, etc. have changed the entire evolution cycle. When we talk about the social impacts of technology, there are two sides; positive and negative.

On one side, technology has improved our communication and connectivity, education and knowledge sharing, workplace productivity, social activism, etc. With tech, we can make global connections, regardless of any geographical barriers. A new concept of telemedicine has evolved, where people living in remote areas can connect with medical professionals and consult on healthcare issues. We can learn about geopolitical developments, international summits, etc.

On the other hand, there are negative impacts of technology on society. The most common ones are privacy concerns and cyberbullying. Widespread use of technology often involves the collection and storage of personal information. This is a big privacy concern for everyone, as our data in someone else’s hand makes us vulnerable to data breaches, surveillance, and unauthorized access to our details.

If you're interested in a career intersected between social innovation and responsible tech transformations then check out @AllTechIsHuman 's Responsible Tech Job Board! https://t.co/ozED8L7LS3 — The Centre for Social Impact Technology (@SocImpTecCTR) January 9, 2024

Another impact is job displacement and inequality. Studies have shown that automation and AI have the potential to certain jobs, leading to unemployment and economic instability for some individuals. Recently, a survey was conducted that showed that the most vulnerable jobs to AI were data entry, basic customer service roles, and bookkeeping.

 A lot of people have fallen prey to cyberbullying. Talking to anonymous people over the internet can raise the flag of cyberbullying and online harassment. Young girls and students often fall victim to online harassment, which leads to emotional distress and mental well-being.

The list of negative impacts of technology on society doesn’t end here. Other drawbacks include dependence and addiction to technology, loss of traditional skills, information overload, social isolation, etc. 

While using technology, we need to be aware of what information we are gaining and what is its source. Relying bluntly on technology can put us in the corner, as it will affect our cognitive skills. We should use technology but in a sustained way and it should not turn into an addiction.

Thank you.’

Ans: Technology is considered as our biggest ally to deal where future challenges like climate change, global warming, overpopulation, water scarcity, etc. Technology has improved our communication and connectivity, education and knowledge sharing, workplace productivity, social activism, etc. With tech, we can make global connections, regardless of any geographical barriers. A new concept of telemedicine has evolved, where people living in remote areas can connect with medical professionals and consult on healthcare issues. We can learn about geopolitical developments, international summits, etc.

Ans: The negative impacts of technology on society include privacy concerns, cyberbullying, online harassment, the spread of false information, overuse or addiction to technology, social isolation, etc.

Ans: Technology has improved our communication and connectivity system. With the help of technology, we can bridge the gap between the digital divide. People with disabilities find technology very useful to communicate with others. Social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, X, etc. allow us to share our thoughts with like-minded people. E-commerce platforms like Amazon, Flipkart, etc. allow us to buy products online. We can improve our work-life balance with the advent of remote working or work from home.

Related Articles

For more information on such interesting speech topics for your school, visit our speech writing page and follow Leverage Edu .

Shiva Tyagi

With an experience of over a year, I've developed a passion for writing blogs on wide range of topics. I am mostly inspired from topics related to social and environmental fields, where you come up with a positive outcome.

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Clarkson University celebrates $6.1B federal investment into Micron

POTSDAM, N.Y. (WWTI) — A win for Micron Technology and Northern New York STEM education.

In mid-April, Micron was awarded $6.1 in federal funding to support the construction of its $100 billion megafab in Central New York.

U.S. President Joe Biden visited Syracuse to celebrate the major federal investment on April 25.

Micron’s campus in Clay, New York will be built over the next 20 years. According to the company’s plans the semiconductor factory, will cover about 2.4 million square feet, which is the size of almost 40 football fields.

The new federal investment has excited local higher education institutions, like Clarkson University.

“The bottom line is that you’re bringing bringing a company like Micron into the New York sort of chip manufacturing fold is really, really good,” Devon Shipp, the director of Clarkson’s Center for Advanced Materials Processing said.

The Center for Advanced Materials Processing, otherwise known as CAMP, has been at the forefront of worldwide semiconductor research since the 1980s.

With this reputation, they are now leading projects with Micron. CAMP’s main projects include Chemical Mechanical Planarization and environmental sustainbility of chip manufacturing.

“One of the key components of a chip manufacturing process is to deposit layer upon layer of materials at a really, really small level, like atomically flat surfaces. To be able to make sure that those materials are completely flat, there’s a technology called Chemical mechanical planarization or CMP,” Shipp explained. “Sort of really understanding and pushing that technology to its limits or that can be faster or smaller and so on.”

Shipp is also a professor of  chemistry and biomolecular science at Clarkson.

He added that the entire University has worked to train its students and create the next generation of Micron workers.

“Students really get to know not just the technology, but they get sort of ingrained in the fabric of the research projects and then they getting engaged with people who work in industry,” Shipp said.

So Shipp, his students, fellow faculty and Clarkson University as a whole, are excited for Micron’s move to Central New York.

“While I have to add other fabs, I think there’s something even more exciting about this being, you know, literally just down the road,” Shipp expressed. “Clarkson has carved out it’s sort of a niche area where it can be is successful and we can collaborate with the other universities, other entities around around New York State and make sure that we’re sort of fully successful.”

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