Technology has become the driving force of innovation. It affects almost every aspect of our lives. We use it at home, at work, even on the bus and in our favorite cafes. We are engulfed by technology and we like it.

We like using technology because it helps us save time, and time is of the essence nowadays. We want to be able to enjoy our lives to the fullest, or at least as much as possible. We want to be able to spend quality time with our kids, take walks in nature, or just occupy our minds with a cool new app.

A Society Surrounded by Technology

Technology helps us with allocating more time for the important things in life. That means that it helps with increasing productivity. Business owners have been aware of this for a long time now, because they need a productive workforce. But there is another area in which technology thrives and that is education.

Teachers have always tried to use various technological aids to assist them during lectures. Today, teachers from all around the world use tablets, iPads, various new pieces of software, and gadgets. For example, some educational facilities even use supercomputers such as IBM Watson. Let's move ahead and take a closer look at the teachers' tech world.

Technology in the Classrooms

Online communication and social media have started to heavily affect the ways in which teachers communicate with their students and among themselves. Bridget Draxler, a professor at Monmouth college uses Twitter and Skype to communicate to her students. She posts proposals for paper assignments on Twitter and then reviews them via Skype. Other than these two apps, Draxler also uses Google Drive for collaborative writing assignments along with YouTube, where she posts valuable insights and feedback.

The great thing about technology is that everyone can use it differently. For example, Perry Callas, an instructor at Clatsop Community College in Astoria, prefers the written word to speaking, so to say. He states that if something is written, it is less likely for it to be ambiguous. That is why Callas uses email and blog posts for giving feedback to his students. Blog posts serve the instructor as a forum for open discussion about class topics.

Interaction Enhancement

There are hundreds of examples as such mentioned above, where teachers get creative with various pieces of technology and achieve unprecedented amounts of innovation in the field of education on a daily basis. Some use iPads to monitor student progress, others use the school’s cloud-based software to provide feedback for students. Practices such as these enable progress and enhance student-teacher interactions.

Students do not have to wait for office visits. They can get in touch with instructors instantaneously, via the Facebook messenger, Skype, Tumblr, etc. This improvement is so great that it saves up to 24 hours for getting feedback from a teacher, and it makes scheduling visits completely obsolete. This, in turn, enhances the overall productivity of both teachers and students.

Communication Among the Teachers

Students are not the only ones to benefit from these technological improvements. Technology that teachers use to communicate with each other is similar to those used in classrooms. And it all has to do with productivity. Teachers can interact through their local intranet and get the important information regarding their students in no time. Some teachers communicate via their phones, others use messengers and email. Swift file sharing is also made possible with the emergence of various free cloud storage apps.

Hop on the Cyber Bandwagon

The question remains: Are the new methods of student-teacher interaction better than the traditional ones? I am optimistic and would give this answer a ONE BIG YES. Students are heavily dependent on technology in almost every aspect of their lives. Teachers who use modern technology to interact with their students are more approachable (in the student’s eyes) than those that resort to the traditional methods.

The only important thing to realize is that even technology cannot yet automatize every single process, and that the human element still has a strong presence. That is why both teachers and students need to be prompt in replying to email, blog post publications, Skype messages, and so on. Both students and teachers have to make an effort to utilize the technology to its fullest extent. By opening up the channels of communication, both parties will see an increase in productivity and this is one of the things that will lead them to success.