People and Technology

For the long time that I have been experiencing the change in all aspects of life even cultural, I also experience the change of technology time to time. Actually technology has been advancing to simplify activities done in the world. Do people change with the technology changes or we all somewhere observing technological changes but we never change?

More than 3 billion people around the world using social media every month. Social media has taken the large part to influence people move with the technology, since it started, it has been a essential piece of our business marketing strategy, connect people with their customers. It allows people to reach others logically, regionally, nationally and even internationally. For social media having many users, does it mean people move with technology in other areas too? Technology has been introduced in many sectors, but do people apply them too? Do they have influence as social media has to people?

Technology is an assemblage of practices and components. There is Agricultural sector and many others,but take an example from Education sector  in Tanzania, yes, there is poor technology, but for the available technologies, do we apply them. In many universities there has been SARIS, ARIS, eLearning, which are some of systems that help in conducting  academic activities in campuses. 

Consider eLearning, it is a learning system that we can obtain through the internet using an electronic device. It is allowing technology to facilitate learning anytime anywhere. Students have to open account and get access to their courses and enroll themselves to teachers of those courses, a teacher is responsible to upload notes, materials and questions and sometimes tests. In many universities, the system is not constantly used, and sometimes both students and teachers are not making uses of it. 

During this year 2020, all over the world, the pandemic was facing almost all sectors, but look, technology was the hope for other things to move as they used to. Some of schools and universities in our country and other countries were using kinda technology of “eLearning” to make their students keep on attending classes without wasting time. But for other schools and universities especially public ones (here in Tanzania), their students were not able to keep on studies, instead they now have to use very short period of time to finish their syllabus, something which can lead to some ineffectiveness and inefficiencies. 

Was it not a great help for all students to keep on attending classes from home? And to some points, it could be a great hope to decrease number of pregnancies occurred when students were at home.

I have tried to ask some of my fellow students on what can cause people to not applying some of the innovated technologies. Depending on their sides as students and youths, many answers came with the word “INFLUENCE”. So, some of the innovated technology are not applied or people are not using them to great extent because they are of less influence to a particular group of people. For instances, social medias are of great influence, it unites people and bring them together, people can get access of everything they want depending on your age and interest. 

Questions popped in my mind, Should teachers now conduct sessions on InstaLive and whatever (Social media) where youths found to be interested with. I think, this was justification over accountability.

Since our country Tanzania, is a developing one, currently announced by World Bank as a Lower Middle Income Country, It is still in process to make all aspects of life to be developed especially those lies on social services particularly education. Some people have been trying to innovate technologies to be applied in Education sector, but are they accessible to the targeted population? For instance,  There is SMART CLASS by Adam Duma with his team, SHULE DIRECT by Faraja Nyarandu, Kudos to the lady who really struggle to make it to the top. Does this reach all who really need it? (Consider those from interior areas). Who is accountable? 

 We can not stay down and waiting for a perfect technology to come for us and start applying it. For the same technology available, we can make use of them and observing where are we facing problem on specific technology, where is it inadequate so as we can think on how to develop it and surely develop it. By starting to use the one available with their imperfections will bring the wider range of innovating more from absolutely the inadequateness.

As long as it is positive, let's change as technology changes.