Authors:
Fuat Fındıkoğlu
Dilek İlhan
INTRODUCTION
Innovation in education, as the name
suggests and unlike the traditional educational settings, will transform the
students from ‘knowledge consumers’ into ‘knowledge manufacturers’ by placing
them at the center of innovative educational settings. Therefore, what will
take the global society today to the future is knowledge and innovation. That
puts a heavy load on educational systems to raise individuals with high
innovative skills and knowledge production capacity. As knowledge is not the
result of scientific studies any longer; rather, it is a way of raising skilled
problem solvers and individuals who will maintain their learning all their
lives. Innovation in education is needed to incorporate old and new
technologies and educational environments that already exist may be adapted and
upgraded through the use of technology.
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF INNOVATION IN
EDUCATION
The role of the use of technology
in education and how it relates to the content that needs to be conveyed to the
students and the role of the knowledge that is part of that content need to be
handled carefully while designing the curricula and the instructional
environments and handling the outcomes of the instructional processes in terms
of how to evaluate the value of workforce that will enter the market and
consecutively their use for the economy and the services they will offer. This
takes the nature of this relationship back to the objectives of the education
that will shape the nature of the instructional processes. No matter how
difficult it may be to acknowledge the fact that technology isn’t sufficient
alone in education or any student who attended to a technologically-enhanced
classroom would be an expert on the topic or learn anything, the curricular
circumstances of what has already been perceived about technology will be in
question sooner or later.
Here, it becomes more and more
important to take an innovative stance on education. This being the case,
innovation isn’t merely adopting the latest technology; it must be accepted as
a process where the content to be communicated to the students is being coded
in a more attractive and meaningful way through the use of technology. Therefore,
instruction shouldn’t solely be confined to conveying standard content to
students no matter what advanced technological tools are being deployed in the
process. Innovation should be taken into account in the ways that goals,
content knowledge and learning outcomes are treated with an efficient
perspective and approach.
INNOVATION IN EDUCATION
Under the light of literature provided until now, innovation in education can roughly be defined as the ways of coming up with alternative ways of ensuring behavioral change in individuals if/when the current way (learning theory/learning task/teaching method/learning approach, etc.) is not working effectively. Curriculum is the broadest concept in educational innovation. Again, in curricular aspect of educational innovation, teachers’ understanding and background determines the extent to which conveying of the innovative curricular content is going to be achieved.
The figure suggests that the
highest activity regarding innovation occurs among the teacher, curriculum and
classroom trio. Teachers’ interaction with the curriculum is significant in
that he can control and monitor other variables within the educational system. In
general, using ICTs can only help teachers to code a core message (a goal and
content) in an unconventional form that is targeted for students with different
learning styles. Innovation basically means providing alternatives or novel
ways to already existing methods or approaches.
When a need for a change or an
urge for alternatives calls for attention, it can be said that innovative
educational practices are taking place. That is to say, innovation in education
can mean ameliorating the problems existing in practice at the moment. Taking
education to an innovative level of practice requires teachers stopping the old
routines and changing their old or traditional beliefs for the untraditional
students and learning environments and social life at hand today. An
encouraging way of innovation in education would be the teachers searching for
creative and innovative solutions to existing problems and carrying out
research into instruction and education.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
Individuals must be equipped with
skills to compete in the knowledge era. The outcomes of the education system
must be targeted to ensure that the outcomes are newly produced knowledge. Langworthy,
Shear and Means suggest that governments, systems and schools must develop
techniques to measure to what degree innovative education is happening and what
its implications of it on student learning and academic progress are and they
also suggest that the goals of the educational systems must be synchronized
with the demands of the 21st century economies and societies.
The educational systems change
the people and their societies and vice versa, the societies always transform
and with themselves, they transform the inner dynamics of the country they
belong to. Generally speaking, using ICTs is only a way of supporting the content
of the curriculum. Teaching professionals must discriminate between innovation
and using technology in education, both of which have attributions to different
concepts. In conclusion, it can be said that using technology in education can
be a part of using innovative practices and innovation in education. Innovation
itself fits better to the practices where curriculum-related levels of
instruction are enhanced through technology or technologically enhanced
materials, techniques and equipment. In other words, technology facilitates the
conveying of the content to the students.
REASON
I chose this article because
there are still many people or educators who don't care about the development
of the education system in this country. They are still not aware that the
education system in this country is still poor. That is why if we want a good
education system, then we need to look for new innovations so that our education
system is better than before.
IDEAS AND INSPIRATION
The role of government in developing educational innovation is very important. Not only that, technology and students have played a big role in achieving new educational innovations. Therefore, in my opinion, the government should put limits on the use of technology for underage students. Because the problem that occurs in Indonesia today is the excessive use of gadgets for underage students. Indeed, problems like this the role of parents are the main factor. But the role of the government should be much more important because they have more power to control this Indonesian system. If we want to create new innovations, the characteristics of students must be improved first.
