When will the promises of search technology in the classroom come true?
Emiliana Murgia, Monica Landoni, Maria Soledad Pera, Theo Huibers. 2019. “When will the promises of search technology in the classroom come true?”. In Proceedings of the 12th annual International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation (ICERI 2019).
Abstract
The use of technology is embedded in the classroom. The unspoken promise of technology in the classroom is that it enables students to learn better, easier and more than they did in an era without technology and it also facilitates the work of the teacher. However, if we consider, for example, the use of search technology, it is noticeable that this promise is rarely, if at all, fulfilled. In any case, it is more complex than first assumed. Technology allows both teachers and students to access the rich set of up-to-date multimedia resources that can support their knowledge acquisition process. Yet, for information retrieval technology (i.e., search tools such as Google) there is still an enormous gap between users’ information needs and access to resources that satisfy them. We argue that while the use of these tools is seamlessly integrated in the daily lives of students and teachers, when it comes to classroom use, it needs a lot of adjustment and in-depth studies.