Article

Introduction
The changeling state of education is in exigent need of solutions to age-old questions about teaching and learning by reason of this century's boundless technology and its societal impact. More than any period in recorded history, today's profuse heterogeneity of emerging technology has transformed daily life, particularly the lives of the many fascinated by it. The American educational system is included in that list; its sense of direction has not been spared from the chaos and distress that accompanies this unprecedented era. Many educators await the promise of technology's power to guide them and to lead improvements in the educational system. Any reasonable success, however, should bring forth change.
Today, learners have the choice to attend a traditional classroom or the virtual classroom. Toppling market prices in technology, coupled with increasing power potential and popularity, facilitated an invasion of technology into mainstream education (Morrisett, 1996; Westbrook & Kerr, 1996; Means, 1994). For example, in 1981, only 18 percent of U. S. public schools had one computer for instructional use. By 1991, the estimate increased to 98 percent (QED, 1992; Means, 1994; Mageau, 1991). In 1983, the ratio of students to computers in American schools was 125:1. By 1990, the ratio decreased to 20:1 and, by 1995, it reached 9:1. Conversely, other technologies were adopted almost at the same rate. For example, between the 1991-92 school year, only seven percent of schools had CD-ROM drives. That number increased to 37 percent by the 1994-95 school year. In 1991, only one percent of the nation's classrooms had satellite connections, while 17 percent had them three years later in 1994. The number of computers connected to networks in schools climbed from only five percent in 1991 to 28 percent by 1994. About 53 percent of all school districts surveyed reported at least one school connected to the Internet in the 1993-1994 academic year, and 37 states provided network accounts to some 509,000 users in 1995 (Westbrook & Kerr 1996; QED, 1995). Access via computer modem, and telephone connection accelerated rapidly in the past few years, featuring e-mail connections to the Internet. According to a recent survey of Internet host computers (Morrisett, 1996), the survey recorded 6.6 million Internet hosts in 106 countries worldwide. In November 1992, about 279 million messages were transmitted over the Internet and, by November 1994, the number of transported messages reached just over one billion messages, an astounding annual growth of 90 percent. Based on these figures, the world's inhabitants should witness an upsurge to 101 million computer hosts by the year 2000. Profound investments in technology in this decade gave rise to a worldwide explosion of information; many institutions of higher education were mystified by the information chaos that accompanied it. The perturbation caused by this newcomer brought about many struggles to more clearly understand this alien science. Embroiled in obscurity and uncertainty, many lost focus of the educational mission.


Education and the Information Chaos: Current Technology Issues
Rigid, inherited beliefs, societal traditions, and economic-centered objectives are the primary fortress of an aged, declining American educational system. According to we, as educators, continue to mold a neo-twentieth century image of the school-as-factory similarly to the ways in which workers produce railway cars or motors. For example, the academic-corporate consortium, recently instituted Learning Infrastructure Initiatives. These Initiatives include an explicit study of what professors do by dissecting and categorizing the work of faculty into distinct chores, a classic, Tayloristic approach used in determining what parts should be automated or outsourced. Noble (1998) refers to such educational intervention as a highly personal human-mediated environment.
According to Morrisett (1996), society has can be credited for creating technology, but technology is simultaneously creating society. These observations would also suggest that technologies are beginning to exercise a benevolent tyranny over humankind. People have become "compulsive information consumers," who favor the passive reception of information as a form of entertainment over the more challenging act of thinking. These powerful influences also exert direction over learning and learning environments. Morrisett added that institutions of higher education have adapted to these conditions but, as a result, they have also compromised the habits of the mind (study, analysis, reflection, contemplation, and deliberation) that are associated with logic. For these reasons, many blame the American educational system for the decline in quality education. As a result, many academic institutions seem to "hang on" to any thread of success by imitating, copying, and competing with each other to survive the exponential growth of emerging technologies and changing global market. Overwhelmingly, it appears that when these constituents are confronted with the intimidating prospect of change, they refrain from seeking innovative, alternative ways to improve higher education and quality of instruction. Overwhelmingly, they retreat to traditional methods that fall within the more familiar comfort zones.
Technological Advancements: Approach vs. Avoidance
While still in its dawning, the information explosion influenced the rise of two extremes. To one extreme, some traditional, bureaucratic institutions seem to avoid technological advance, doubting its potential to assist in improving teaching and learning outcomes. These institutions tend to dispute change and embrace obsolete beliefs, cultural constraints, and boundaries. To the other extreme many institutions confidently market themselves as "electronic universities," "Internet schools," "virtual universities," and other labels that indicate their position in the race of information technology. Many clamor for universal access and search for ways to attract students to the virtual classroom, promising the earning of degrees of choice via distance education. There has been much talk among educators that these acts begin to modify the student's worth to the academic world, as the student begins to assume both the tangible and intangible characteristics associated with those of a "customer" as opposed to the characteristics of a student.
Conclusion
Technology in all forms, young and old or simple and complex, can be potent tools that engage learners in meta-cognitive reflection. These tools engage learners to rethink their old beliefs, knowledge, and understandings. These tools might allow learners to compare new ideas with other individuals to assess whether new concepts and ideas are plausible and fruitful. Technologies can be educators' tools in finding creative ways that encourage students to self-test, self-question, and self-regulate learning in helping them to create solutions to complex problems. Educators need to help students realize that understanding about knowledge and beliefs are essential to human growth and development. Technologies should not estrange us from our humanity or the noble profession of educating competent citizens. We should not become "high-tech, self-driven slaves to technology." What will happen if education continues to steadfastly bend to higher enrollments over the quality of teaching and learning? What will happen if education immortalizes the student in education with an attitude of "the customer is always right"? Could the curtailment of the educational process and the collapse of the educational system be closer than we fear?
Changes in instructional design might integrate perspective theories, applications, and research related to learning, thinking, teaching, educating, integrating, mastering, and leading powerful technological advances upon the world's society. These changes may be used constructively to creatively lead the educational system to a brighter future and a more realistic information millennium.
Protecting the embodiment of quality education encompasses learning to think, learning to teach, and learning to lead creatively, not only within the classroom (virtual and traditional) but also throughout all institutions of higher education.
Technologies are the driving force of the world's communication. Indeed, the building of a reliable support system and the commitment to support promotional development rights is an investment worth pursuing. The rejuvenation of an unhealthy educational system is the product of intensive investment in human capital through the training of all trainers and the helping of all teachers, administrators, and staff members.


Submitted by :
Leah Odango
BEEd-4A
(Lopsidedtech)