Issue of Hindering Technology in the Classroom

A major problem to students learning abilities has been technology. Computers, phones, and tablets are already a second nature to the students. Problems that leads to the learning environment is distraction, different social benefits, and the pace of forever changing technology. In this society today, 72 percent of 8-year old’s or under has a computer at home, according to Dr. Brent Conrad, a psychologist for TechAddiction. 

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Technology has negatively affected the society of the school in ways that hurts the learning environment. According to Brianna Wuensch, technology has led to cyberbullying, kids being able to cheat, and attitudes has been changing by becoming impatient and rude. Bullying in school is already bad for the child at school, however cyberbullying leads to the child to be bullied at home. This affects the student mentally and emotionally. Learning is distracted by phones or the computers being there to be able to cheat on a test or any work the student works on. Lastly, students attitude changes toward the teacher. They become impatient and rude when working on the computers or being on their phones. For example, a classmate was sitting on her phone, while the teacher was teaching. The teacher told her to put it away or she was going to hold it until the end of class. My classmate said rude things to the teacher, just because she could not be on her phone. The society in a school has completely changed since technology has been around.

The history before technology was more enjoyable to children than it is now.  Learning from books and learning from computers has different aspects to a different learning environment. Learning from a book is more informational than it is learning over the internet. A study shows 92 percent of college students prefer reading the old fashion way, with pages than pixels, according to Michael Schaub. Books help educate while reading, however, computers distract the reader, majority of the time. 

Distraction is the most absolute problem children have that hinders them from learning. It could be someone walking in front of the door or just a student in the classroom talking with the teacher. A study showed; 25 percent of elementary student’s time is spent distracted, according to Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences. For example, students on the computers get off task because they would rather play some games than do school work. Another distraction is pop ups on the computer while the student is working. Having workbooks and textbooks could put an end to some of the distraction, that goes on in the classroom. In conclusion, not only is students distracted by technology, teachers play a big role in it too. Cell phones leads the teacher to be distracted while teaching a class. In my own perspective, I have seen teachers get on their phones, while we sit there on computers. The teacher will not teach until she is done answering a phone call. Anyways, computers help distract the teachers from our learning too. Emails, pop ups, videos, and different other distractions leads to less learning in the school. More teaching in the classroom can lead to a better learning and a less distracted environment.

Social benefits changes as the technology progresses inside of the class. Teaching is hardly ever done inside the classroom and students do not interact with others. Without any face to face connection with the teacher, the student begins to take the class less seriously. They become bored sitting on the computer during the day. Also, without having the students interact with one another, it takes the fun out of learning. Grouping up students on the computer has better capabilities than having them work alone. Students improve more working together than working by themselves, according to Dave Mattson. Between the two students, creativity is created, which all students need to have. A relationship or friendship is made between the students, which will help promote a healthy learning environment for the two.

The rapid change of technology here in schools, have increased the school budget intentionally. In the United States, soon to be 56 billion dollars is spent on education, 36 percent is grades K-12, according to the article wrote by Doug Johnson. Knowing how much money is spent yearly on technology is just amounts of money going to waste. In classrooms, everything is revolved around the computers, that the kids work on. Test, classwork, homework, and many other assignments the teacher gives them to do, is mostly done on the computer. Teaching is not done well, when being taught like this. Students skip over the notes, when coming to the lesson. When teaching is not done for the student, he or she will not understand what to do when it comes to solving the problem.

A possible solution to solve in schools is the way the students turn to the computers to help them answer a question. According to Michelle Harven, since technology is being used in schools, then the students use Google to look up their answers to all their questions. Doing this will lead to copying and pasting into an answer blank with the best to their knowledge. Replacing their knowledge for online copying and pasting, will not help the students to learn to the best of their abilities. Once the kid looks at it one time, he or she will not remember what they just covered. Therefore, the teacher should review over any questions the student has because this will make learning more efficient in the classroom.

A recommendation to have throughout the classroom is to block the children from getting on internet sources, they should not be on. While doing this, this will help the student to stay on task and do their work. For example, Atkinson County High School has a program the teachers use to see what the students get on. This helps monitoring the class more efficiently, without going around the class to make sure everyone is on the correct site. Most children will click off of it and then go back once the teacher stops checking around the room, however this will help prevent the students from doing this.

To summarize, technology is being over used by people. Using these devices all the time, effects our social behaviors and reduces the smartness of people. Children in school have lower reading and math scores, according to an organization called, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. As a student begins to use a computer all day, the test scores were generally low, according to Andreas Schleicher. As more research was put into comparing and contrasting the differences of student ability with and without the computer, study showed working without the computer increased the educational preferences, or gains. Integrating education into a school, is not a well invested deed for the school. Financially, it is not worth spending billions of dollars on technology when it hinders the students learning abilities. Overusing technology to help educate the students is going to have a negative effect on them in the long term because he or she will not have the accountable skills to use in life.

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