Reactions have exploded over whether technology in classrooms is enhancing or hindering education both in our district and throughout the world.
Technology has given rise to an unending source of entertainment—social media, YouTube, and Netflix. The blurring of play and learning is rife in the lower grades.
Researchers at Princeton and UCLA have shown pen-and-paper notetakers recalled information better than typers. This is the progeny of an ill-conceived integration of 21st-century tools like laptops, smartphones and tablets with age-old classroom styles like lecture and debate—certainly a jarring union.
Parents have real concerns about excessive screen time—which is especially hazardous for young children in the elementary level. There are too many studies showing the dangers of long hours of screen time.
However, technology in education seems like it’s here to stay. Granted, the issues that plague education technology are major — cheating, distraction, privacy concerns, and price. But remember when a TI-84 was the most technologically advanced tool in the classroom? We don’t. Smart Boards have even moved their way into becoming a regular classroom tool of many teachers at IHS—whether as a projector or a whiteboard. Teachers demand typed copies of writing assignments all the time. Technology has always been a part of our high school reality.
But with time and through much exploration and careful experimentation with new technology by teachers—who are granted, rightfully, the freedom to do whatever the district makes available to them in whatever way that makes sense to them—there will inevitably be better, smoother, and more effective uses of new technology.
That is why the district does not—and should not—mandate teachers to use a certain device in a certain way. It’s also why Superintendent Brown once said, “I’ve moved away from calling it the one-to-one initiative. It’s more of a mobile device implementation” and why DeWitt Principal Mac Knight said, “A Chromebook is not a teacher, not an instructor, not a curriculum, but a tool … to empower teachers in the learning process.”
Teachers district-wide have been preparing for the arrival of Chromebooks for several years, some with anticipation and, clearly, others with timidness. This timidness is acceptable. Continued watchfulness for students’ well-being, emotional growth, social growth, mental health, and education is a crucial part of any educational initiative.
“I don’t know how early kids should have unmonitored access to the internet,” one ICSD teacher said. “But if we have a clear goal of what we’re using the technology for, and it’s monitored, I think they can learn to use it as a proper tool.” That goal being, as always: to engage, to educate, to empower—to facilitate collaboration and instilling creativity and intellectual passion.