What Dental Educators Need to Understand About Emerging Technologies to Incorporate Them Effectively into the Educational Process

Abstract

Many dental schools are currently struggling with the adoption of emerging technologies and the incorporation of these technologies into the educational process. Dental students exhibit an increasing degree of digital comfort when using social networking, mobile devices, search engines, or e‐textbooks. Although the majority of students might consider themselves to be very skilled at using information technology, many faculty members would claim the opposite when evaluating their own knowledge and skills in the use of technology. As the use of technology, both formally and informally, continues to increase, dental educators are faced with many questions, such as: Does students’ digital comfort disguise a lack of information literacy? What is the appropriate path of implementing technology into teaching and learning, and how can institutions support such an implementation? This article surveys a series of myths that exist about the use of technology in education and raises questions about their validity and how dental educators can avoid being misled by them.