I attended my first conference about the impacts of technology on learning in higher education,organised by the team of APUI, at the University of Avignon.

At the beginning, Guillaume MARREL, a professor of Social Sciences at the University of Avignon, discussed the digital world as a cognitive technology. He pointed out several subjects in which the “arrays” interested me the most; Humans invented lists and arrays in order to represent their ideas. Lists are able to show how our ideas are sequenced. Hence, the representation of a list in the world of technology as a node that can introduce an information as well as a link to another node. Human- beings crossed lists to make tables ( known as arrays). However, this concept can alter meanings based on the context; In network, some links between tables are not directly related based on the meaning.

A sequence of 10 min debates started afterwards presenting other topics, followed by an interaction with the students to ask them about their opinions.

Another presentation had place by Ms.Nadia JACOBY, the CEO of “ Simone et les robots”, initiating a debate about the effect of technology on higher education.

She begins by stating the fact that technological inauguration in the educational field is not recent. It dates back to the 90s where the national plan in France was to start implementing internet in the higher education departments as well as the demand of French universities, between 2010 and 2020, to develop their online platforms.

The utility of technology was best shown during the pandemic. All of the French public universities were already using the LMS Moodle. Other platforms are also used, but they are less appreciated such as Discord. Not to mention the increase of jobs such “educational engineering ” that actually aims to assist professors to use technology and help develop new teaching techniques using technology.

I believe that this debate can pop up the following question: Will technology be able to replace the teacher?

 “Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is most important.”

– Bill Gates