Technology is the making, modification, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems, methods of organization, in order to solve a problem, improve a preexisting solution to a problem, achieve a goal or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, modifications, arrangements and procedures. Technologies significantly affect human as well as other animal species' ability to control and adapt to their natural environment
The use of the term technology has changed significantly over the last 200 years. Before the 20th century, the term was uncommon in English, and usually referred to the description or study of the useful arts
The term was often connected to technical education, as in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (chartered in 1861)
"Technology" rose to prominence in the 20th century in connection with the Second Industrial Revolution. The meanings of technology changed in the early 20th century when American social scientists, beginning with Thorstein Veblen, translated ideas from the German concept of Technik into "technology." In German and other European languages, a distinction exists between Technik and Technologie that is absent in English, as both terms are usually translated as "technology." By the 1930s, "technology" referred not to the study of the industrial arts, but to the industrial arts themselves
In 1937, the American sociologist Read Bain wrote that "technology includes all tools, machines, utensils, weapons, instruments, housing, clothing, communicating and transporting devices and the skills by which we produce and use them."
Bain's definition remains common among scholars today, especially social scientists. But equally prominent is the definition of technology as applied science, especially among scientists and engineers, although most social scientists who study technology reject this definition.
More recently, scholars have borrowed from European philosophers of "technique" to extend the meaning of technology to various forms of instrumental reason, as in Foucault's work on technologies of the self ("techniques de soi").
Dictionaries and scholars have offered a variety of definitions. The Merriam-Webster dictionary offers a definition of the term: "the practical application of knowledge especially in a particular area" and "a capability given by the practical application of knowledge". Ursula Franklin, in her 1989 "Real World of Technology" lecture, gave another definition of the concept; it is "practice, the way we do things around here".
The term is often used to imply a specific field of technology, or to refer to high technology or just consumer electronics, rather than technology as a whole.
Bernard Stiegler, in Technics and Time, 1, defines technology in two ways: as "the pursuit of life by means other than life", and as "organized inorganic matter."
Technology can be most broadly defined as the entities, both material and immaterial, created by the application of mental and physical effort in order to achieve some value. In this usage, technology refers to tools and machines that may be used to solve real-world problems. It is a far-reaching term that may include simple tools, such as a crowbar or wooden spoon, or more complex machines, such as a space station or particle accelerator. Tools and machines need not be material; virtual technology, such as computer software and business methods, fall under this definition of technology.
The word "technology" can also be used to refer to a collection of techniques. In this context, it is the current state of humanity's knowledge of how to combine resources to produce desired products, to solve problems, fulfill needs, or satisfy wants; it includes technical methods, skills, processes, techniques, tools and raw materials. When combined with another term, such as "medical technology" or "space technology", it refers to the state of the respective field's knowledge and tools. "State-of-the-art technology" refers to the high technology available to humanity in any field.
Technology can be viewed as an activity that forms or changes culture.
Additionally, technology is the application of math, science, and the arts for the benefit of life as it is known. A modern example is the rise of communication technology, which has lessened barriers to human interaction and, as a result, has helped spawn new subcultures; the rise of cyber culture has, at its basis, the development of the Internet and the computer.
Not all technology enhances culture in a creative way; technology can also help facilitate political oppression and war via tools such as guns. As a cultural activity, technology predates both science and engineering, each of which formalize some aspects of technological endeavor.
TECHNOLOGY IN EDUCATION
Colleges and universities have generally been quick to adopt new technologies, often even before their educational value has been proven. Throughout its history, higher education has experimented with technological advances as diverse as the blackboard and the personal computer. Some technologies have become permanent parts of the higher education enterprise. Others, such as the slide rule and the 16-millimeter movie projector, have been replaced as more sophisticated or more cost-effective technologies have emerged to take their place.
At the dawn of the twenty-first century, new and rapidly improving technologies are in the process of transforming higher education. Each year since 1994, the Campus Computing Survey has shown increased use in college classrooms of technology-dependent resources such as e-mail, the Internet, course web pages, and computer simulations. Technology has the potential to revolutionise the traditional teaching and learning process. It can eliminate the barriers to education imposed by space and time and dramatically expand access to lifelong learning. Students no longer have to meet in the same place at the same time to learn together from an instructor. Fundamentally, modern technologies have the ability to change the conception of a higher education institution. No longer is a higher education institution necessarily a physical place with classrooms and residence halls where students come to pursue an advanced education. Thanks to recent developments in technology, the standard American image of a college or university as a collection of ivycovered buildings may need to be revised for the first time since the founding of Harvard in 1636.
computers and telecommunications are the principal technologies reshaping higher education. Due to advances in each of these domains, electronic mail, fax machines, the World Wide Web, CDROMs, and commercially developed simulations and courseware are altering the daily operations and expanding the missions of colleges and universities.
IMPORTANCE OF TECHNOLOGY IN EDUCATION
Technology is essentially the need of the hour. With the advancement of technology in today’s world, it is very important to keep a pace with it. It has already been witnessed previously, with every invention, a new technological pioneer appearing the human race has taken a gradual leap towards evolution. The revolutionary movement is the movement of technology, with has encompassed all the possible fields of our lives and has literary made the “impossible” well within our grabs, therefore making it “possible. The sole reason for our luxury and comfort, something we very much brag about is practically due to the technological reason. Similarly, technology is also the quintessential component which has an increasing role in modern day education. The inportance of technology in education is essential in making students deft in operating the newer devices that are cropping up everyday.Technology is something which changes regularly, and the change is mostly for the better. The change, as mentioned earlier as well is so rapid that it gets bit difficult to cope up with. However, it is expected in the sector of education, more than the teacher the student should have an improved and updated technical knowhow. Especially because the students are pros in handling technological tidbits beyond the periphery of schools and colleges due to their access to the virtual world and other technical gadgets viz. cell phones and I-pads amongst others, more often than teachers who perhaps are not that frequent gadget users due to their prior commitments towards their work.
The importance of technology in education has several reasons behind it. For instance, the access increases in a steadfast manner to a variety of learning recourses. The limits get widened up easily things which one would always thought to remain unexplored, are well within the grip now. The immediacy is also something which is the gift of technology to us. Anytime, anywhere you need to know anything under the sun- technology is there to help you out. The world in entirely, rather the theory of everything (including understanding the cosmos) is just one click away. Apart from this, for the education of a student library has a very grave role to play but not always one gets the access to all sorts for materials at one specific place. Technology, through the internet has a solution to this as well. Google is probably the answer to all the possible query appearing in one’s mind and we just know how to get rid of that query so easily.
The introduction of computer visualization and a virtual projector in the classroom has essentially raised the standards much above what it was previously. Visual memory is always better than bookish knowledge, a well-known fact by now and computers are just here to help us out with that. Distant education, which enables one to complete his /her education in correspondence to some world renowned institution, is something we really owe to technology. Also, the multiple channels of communicating with the world at large, through e-mail, blogs, forums, chats etc, is really an unmatched invention till date.
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