The informatization of education, a resource for modernizing the society.
Negrut, Vasilica ; Costache, Mirela Paula ; Negrut, Alexandra 等
1. INTRODUCTION
Gone through a long history, education is today the pillar of
resistance of the new Europe. The new society is devoted to the truth
that education is the main factor of success of the competitivity of a
nation (Radoi, 2004, p.118). The educational component is not an
exception from the necessity of quality as the preparation of the future
generations in order to successfully face the multiple requests of the
present society depends to a great extent on the quality of the
educative offer and performance. Accordingly, the quality of education
and training is an essential process, of maximum importance for the
progress of a society in permanent evolution. (Oprean, & Kifor,
2002, p. 44) This paper discusses the role of information technologies
in modernizing education and underlines the possibilities of improvement
in the quality of education through them.
2. THE PRESENT DIMENSION OF MODERNIZING EDUCATION
The rapid implementation of scientific discoveries and technical
inventions made out of science a force of production, generating rapid
changes in all domains of activity to which humans have to adapt through
education. Modernizing education includes the educational system as well
as the learning process. The system offers the institutional frame of
the educational process and the latter ensures the conditions necessary
for materializing the objectives of educational action. (Istrate, 2000,
p. 29) Modernization is a logical process, constituted by a series of
actions, aiming at accomplishing a fundamental concordance, actions that
take place in social life, economy, science, technology and especially
culture. Modernization aims at reducing the gap between education and
the development of society. This represents an indispensable condition
for the educational progress in its entire range and has become a
fundamental side of state policy in education, a fundamental concern of
the central decision making organs, a problem that concentrates the
efforts of many categories of specialists: teachers, economists,
psychologists, sociologists etc. Education and modernization merge in a
unitary whole so that only a modernized educational system can become a
factor in accelerating social progress. The finality of modernization,
the adaptation of education to society's requests, does not exhaust
and cannot explain its internal mechanisms, articulations and psycho-
pedagogical reasons that are the basis of this finality. Regarding the
content of modernization, we can mention the fact that it consists of
establishing optimal relations between the structural elements of
education, as a unitary whole, so that education can ensure an adequate
frame and stimulate the application of the educational ideal at the same
time. Thus, two fundamental coordinates of education come as a
conclusion: one coordinate stipulates that fact that modernization
extends over education in its assembly so it does not refer to isolated
or particular aspects of it; another coordinate underlines the fact that
the efficiency of modernization can be evaluated only through the
perspective of its contributions to the materialization of the
educational ideal.
3. DETERMINANT FACTORS OF MODERNIZING EDUCATION
Modernization is determined by two categories of factors: internal
and external. The internal factors include all the factors constituted
in the dialectic process of educational development, through the
accumulation and generalization of positive elements, whose utility was
demonstrated in the educational-training practice by assuming and
adapting to solid conditions of the different general principles of
organization and development of education. The next focus is on the
relation between tradition and modernization between which there has to
be a dynamic balance as they are two moments of a unique process-
continuous development of education. Tradition is the real basis for
innovations; they are never implanted in an empty space and
modernization is called to value the positive elements and impose
principles, modalities and techniques for new organization and
development of education. These factors could be explained using the
paradigm "educational logic". The external factors refer to
the present and future social conditions that impose certain
modifications and restructure education in its whole. Because these
factors are in a strong interdependency, we can mention in this case the
paradigm "social logic". The latter is manifested through the
intensification and acceleration of the rhythm of change and evolution
not only of its diverse components but also of the society as a whole.
As a component of social logic, the scientific revolution triggers the
continuous growth of stored information while education selects and
processes the information. Modernizing education means discovering and
applying solutions that counterbalance the negative effects of the
phenomenon of "accelerated wear of knowledge". Between the two
categories of factors there is a strong interdependency. "The
optimization between the social logic and the educational logic
represents the propellant of development and perfection" (Nicola,
2003, p. 554).
4. COMPUTERIZING EDUCATION
Together with the increase in the need for education, the practical
offers that satisfy the request are diversifying and are becoming more
complicated. More and more roadmaps for achieving education are moving
from classical institutions towards the formula sustained by new media
and information technologies. Under the conjugated impulse of the
informational technologies, the education and training are under the
sign of fundamental transformation, both from a procedural and a
structural point of view. The practice of computerizing education
entails the exploitation of the computer in general, in order to achieve
the purpose of education. This technological perspective surpasses the
didactic vision that underlines the technical advantages of computer
assisted education. At the level of education policy, the
computerization of education involves the following confirmed
priorities, at social scale, in the context of international
cooperation: introduction and use of information and communication
technologies under the conditions of harmonious interaction between the
hard, soft and personnel training; application of information and
communication technologies in the efficient management of pedagogical
resources and in the activity of designing the curricula of the
educational framework, programs and university classes; ensuring the
development of the curricula by permanent collaboration between didactic
programming specialists and soft creators; ensuring the necessary data
base to accomplish the managerial functions and those of planning and
organization, methodological orientation- guidance, regulatingself
regulating (by actions of research and improvement) of the educational
system and process. (Ghaoui, 2004)
An essential element of modernizing education using electronic
instruments is represented by the access to e-libraries and electronic
encyclopedias. E-libraries are a collection of documents and e-books
stored in certain servers or on the enetwork. Beginning with the
Gutenberg project, the number of e-libraries has been in continuous
growth and information has been made available for free download on the
Internet. There are many institutions that have replaced the documents
existent on paper with the electronic version of them. Also the number
of magazines, journals promoting the easy dissemination of information
in education is continuously growing. At the same time, by advanced
technology, numerous data bases can be accessed and this leads to the
simplification of access to recent results of research, by their
organization according to specific domains. The diversity of available
materials in computerized form comes as a support for both the teachers
in the teaching process, widening the scope of didactic methods as well
as those who benefit from the educational process.
At European level, there are numerous projects aiming at using new
technologies in education. Universities, companies and research centers
of the European Union collaborate for increasing the quality of the
educational process, for an increased competitiveness at an
international level, for the development of competences of the teaching
personnel as well as the improvement of administrative and legislative
mechanisms in order to encourage the development of e-learning. The
experiences of evaluation using the modern technologies from different
states indicate the concern for innovation in testing and measuring
performance but especially the extent in which the degree of penetration
of the new technologies is being correlated with complementary efforts
in the assimilation of these innovations at a theoretical level and in
quality pedagogical practices. Most of the universities of the European
Union have implemented at least one e-learning system (open- source type
Moodle and personalized, acquiredsuch as Ariadne- or a platform
developed in house) which allows the possibility to evaluate the
students online.
It is noteworthy that in states such as Great Britain and Denmark
there are evaluation guides (or codes of practice in evaluation) meant
to be used at national level, including a chapter on evaluating students
using new technologies, providing even specifications on designing the
items in tests and the aspect of the tests. A very important step in
ensuring a progress in education is represented by blending learning and
computerized technologies through the use of groups working together,
elaborating learning projects, online assessment questionnaires,
including video materials etc. All these converge towards the
modernization of education through the advanced use of IT digital
competencies.
5. CONCLUSION
The informatization of education is an essential element of
modernizing education. In a world of constant change the permanent need
to adapt becomes inherent as well as ensuring their competitiveness to
be able to face the challenges imposed by globalization, manifested as
well at educational level. In order to achieve this goal, each academic
staff must gain a basic IT training, which involves the following
objectives: developing an overview on the scale and importance of
computer applications and their social and economic effects on the
individual and the community; building the capacity to identify
situations in which the use of computer is recommended for finding
appropriate solutions, focusing on curriculum strategies; knowing the
means of communication with computer equipment; establishing collective
relations of cooperation with communities from other countries of the
same category.
6. REFERENCES
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Nicola, I. (2003). Tratat de pedagogie scolara, Modernizarea
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Radoi, M. (2004). Evaluarea politicilor publice. Tritonic, ISBN:
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*** http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page, Accessed on:
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