and the objective of education. While the traditional function of education has been to deliver knowledge from teachers to students, it has become increasingly evident that no individual can be expected to absorb all the information that is available. Thus, the original assumptions about education and how students should be taught in order to prepare them aptly for society in the future have been undermined with the emergence of computer technology. Instead of teaching students to memorize a vast amount of knowledge, teachers must now be able to help students learn how to retrieve useful information, utilize them meaningfully, and apply them in relevant situations (Grabe & Grabe, 1998, pp. 16-18). This new educational function in turn entails changes in society's assumptions about teachers and their teaching approaches, which have led to the support for integrating educational technology into classroom instruction.
In my opinion, changes in educational technology will affect my approach to education. First and foremost, by integrating technology with the curriculum, I will be working within a constructivist teaching paradigm. Unlike the conventional paradigm, advocates of constructivist teaching and learning consider the learner to play the central role in the learning process. Constructivists believe that learning is a subjective experience that differs from individual to individual and thus learners have to be aided in their unique process of understanding new information. Therefore, educators should focus on how the learners interact with their environment and the process of learning, rather than the end-result (Hargis, 2001, p. 476). With the incorporation of computer technologies into a constructivist-oriented curriculum, students will be actively involved in meaningful learning experiences that encourage them in their autonomous pursuit of knowledge (Rodrigues, 2000, p. 1; New Jersey Department of Education, 1998, p. 6...