[LINK] Washington Post: The problem with technology in schools

[Bernard Robertson-Dunn]

The problem with technology in schools
By Alfonzo Porter
Washington Post
Posted at 11:10 AM ET, 01/28/2013
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/therootdc/post/the-problem-with-technology-in-schools/2013/01/28/cf13dc6c-6963-11e2-ada3-d86a4806d5ee_blog.html

Instant access to information has revolutionized how students learn 
today. From an instructional perspective, education technology sounded 
great, but with its growing prevalence in America’s public schools, its 
true impact is gradually being revealed. And the news is not all good.

A Pew Research Center survey 
<http://www.pewresearch.org/daily-number/teachers-say-that-for-students-today-research-googling/> 
found that nearly 90 percent of teachers believe that digital 
technologies were creating an easily distracted generation with short 
attention spans. About 60 percent said it hindered students’ ability to 
write and communicate face to face, and almost half said it hurt 
critical thinking and their ability to do homework. Also, 76 percent of 
teachers believed students are being conditioned by the internet to find 
quick answers, leading to a loss of concentration.

Between class periods, the halls of American high schools resemble a 
traffic jam on the interstate as they glare hypnotically into a screen. 
Some scroll their fingers up, down and across a tablet, others text 
faster than professional typists, while still others bop their heads to 
music.

Yet, this behavior does not always stop at the classroom door — and that 
has also become another major issue.

Teachers are now forced to perform the “put that away, unplug that, 
please log off” dance every class period, resulting in a waste of 
valuable instructional time.

African American students, though lagging behind academically, tend to 
have more of these gizmos than others, according to the Pew data. For 
our kids, any further distraction in school should be particularly 
unwelcomed. Saturated by entertainment media, they are experiencing 
stimulation that teachers cannot keep pace with.

To remedy this, all technology should be left in lockers and not allowed 
in the classroom. Failure to comply should be met with confiscation of 
the device, which would only be returned to the parent. If parents 
believe that it is acceptable for their child to violate established 
school policies, then the schools are left with no other option other 
than to seize them.

For many, technology has become a catalyst for distraction and off task 
behavior with students, tweeting, or prowling through YouTube when 
they’re supposed to be listening to the teacher or doing classwork 
promotes a lack of focus.

Quick access to information can lead to a lack of critical thinking 
about sources and quality of information, as well as an inability to 
“mine for data.” Many students will likely click one or two pages into a 
Web site, but no further. This means that in addition to creating 
concentration problems, students who multitask too much develop a 
tendency toward skimming rather than in-depth reading and analysis. 
This, more than anything, will hurt grades and the development of the 
intellect.

Commonly referred to by educators as the “Wikipedia problem” technology 
can create an expectation of easy access to information and 
instantaneous answers. Today students’ idea of learning about a topic is 
to believe what they read in online. Alas, Wikipedia has become the 
modern day concept of research and is considered acceptable by too many 
educators.

Teachers reported that students are distracted constantly. Their memory 
is highly disorganized. Recent assignments suggest a worsening at 
analytic reasoning. Further, they wonder if we are creating people who 
are unable to think well and clearly.

Schools across the country are struggling to deal with the growing 
prevalence of the technology. Most have created policies that are 
intended to guide the use of gadgets in the classroom; enforcement is 
proving to be difficult.

Other teachers, however, say that technology is not just a problem but 
can be a solution.

They agreed that technology could be a useful educational tool. Roughly 
75 percent of the teachers surveyed said that the Internet and search 
engines had a “mostly positive” impact on student research skills. And 
they said such tools had made students more self-sufficient researchers.

Many education reformers tend to look to technology to solve some of the 
challenges that face our public schools. From online education to 
interactive games, the emphasis on exploring technological forms of 
pedagogy to raise student scores has generated a number of interesting 
projects and studies.

While everyone agrees that there’s no stopping the development of 
multiple educational and technological formats, including social media 
and that there would be a number of negatives should that happens, 
schools will be challenged to endure that students can use new online 
educational forms and social media and still continue to develop the 
intellectual skills they need to succeed in and interact with the world.

The issues engendered by the reality of education technology demand that 
schools leap ahead in developing a “Digital Citizenship” 
<http://www.digitalcitizenship.net/> curriculum to appropriately guide 
students beginning from kindergarten on technology’ usage.

-- 

Regards
brd

Bernard Robertson-Dunn
Sydney Australia
email: brd at iimetro.com.au
web:   www.drbrd.com
web:   www.problemsfirst.com
Blog:  www.problemsfirst.com/blog