Technology in Education
13/05/12 05:39
The impact of technology on childhood is a frequent topic of conversation. Like other toddlers, our grandson is more interested in “real” things than in toys. He has plenty of toys, selected carefully for their educational value. But his favorite play is engaging with and imitating his parents. It shouldn’t surprise them that he continually reaches for their cell phones. It shouldn’t surprise us as grandparents that his parents allow him to play with an old cell phone that no longer works. I remember that one of his father’s favorite toys when he was a toddler was a plastic play telephone. That telephone was carried around with the receiver held to his ear and sounds coming before his mouth before he knew very many words at all.
I suppose that these days, that toy telephone would be considered to be dangerous because of the cord that connected the handset with the base. It was too short to wrap around a child’s neck, but it might still be seen as dangerous. It isn’t a problem, because no on seems to use telephones with cords anymore. Like a rotary dial, this generation of children doesn’t understand the purpose of a wire connecting the headset with the base.
We are surrounded by technology. It is impossible to raise children without exposing them to its use. Still, there are dangers that come with our ultra-connected, high tech world. There is a lot on the Internet that is dangerous for children. They need to be taught to avoid Internet dangers as much as other dangers. Just as children require supervision when venturing out into traffic, they require supervision when connecting to the Internet. There is a regular stream of news stories of children who are victimized by predators who lurk on the Internet and use it to make connections. Stories of young children being exposed to pornography from friends’ cell phones and tablet devices are common.
The Washington Post recently ran a piece by Cecilia Kang comparing two Washington D.C. area private schools. Flint School is ultra wired. Students are immersed in technology. Every preschooler has a iPad. Students all have MacBook Air computers starting in the fifth grade. Classrooms are decked out with touch-screen displays and powerful high speed Wi-Fi connections designed to handle all of the children being online at once.
Less than 20 miles away the Washington Waldorf School is deliberately unplugged. The philosophy is that children are better taught by real-world experiences. The school has a vegetable garden and a woodworking shop. Students write by hand in hard-covered journals. There are chalkboards in the school. There is a ban on the use of cell phones, laptops and tablets. Students are required to hand-write all assignments until high school.
The two schools provide a stark contrast of philosophies. One believes that there is no rush to expose children to technology. They believe that children need to first relate to the physical world before being exposed to the virtual world of computers. The other believes that technology is all around us and that children need to start early to keep up in a competitive society.
There is a certain appeal to both of the schools. Neither would have been an option for our children, however. The $30,000+ per year price of such private schools is well beyond our means. The luxury of being able to pursue the purity of a specific educational philosophy is granted only to schools with generous budgets. Public schools have to contend with divers passions of a varied constituency and the limits of public funding.
The role of technology in education is receiving mixed reviews in educational research. There are studies that demonstrate that children learn well when assisted by technological devises. A 2010 study, commissioned by PBS, demonstrated that children who use a smartphone application called “Martha Speaks” increased their vocabulary by as much as 31 percent in two weeks.
There have also been studies that show that early use of technology contributes to shortened attention spans. Another study demonstrates that students who use Google searches and Wikipedia as sources of information are less original in their thinking.
It is a difficult choice for educators. Here in South Dakota we were very proud of state investment in wiring public schools. We had state-funded laptop programs in our schools while at the same time we had the lowest teacher salaries in the nation. The investment in technology had some short-term effects, but it did not turn out to be a wise long-term investment. Our state owns a lot of wire in an era of wireless communication. Like our son playing with a toy phone thirty years ago, we are left with wires that are no longer needed. The laptops were probably less than state-of-the-art when they were purchased. It only took a few years for them to become obsolete. The burst of funding purchased few long-term results.
It is always difficult to demonstrate direct relationships between funding and teaching. Despite continual studies and evaluations, teaching remains as much of an art as it is a science. The qualities that make for good teaching and learning are elusive and difficult to categorize.
All of the high-tech equipment and fancy software threatens to become the subject of education instead of its means. When computers first were introduced to education, schools set up computer labs. Students went to the labs for one of their classes to learn to use the computers. There were some elementary applications to teach reading, math, history and geography. Mostly computer lab time was the time to learn keyboarding skills and computer operation. That quickly faded. These days the students often know more about the operation of the technology than the teachers.
Any educational technology can be misused. One of my elementary school friends found that out when he took a piece of chalk and wrote an inappropriate four-letter word on the chalkboard. In a sense the debate over the role of computers in education is already over. With more than 60% of children age 9 and older having cell phones, we already live in an ultra-connected generation.
The challenge is to learn and to teach how to use the technology for good.
I suppose that these days, that toy telephone would be considered to be dangerous because of the cord that connected the handset with the base. It was too short to wrap around a child’s neck, but it might still be seen as dangerous. It isn’t a problem, because no on seems to use telephones with cords anymore. Like a rotary dial, this generation of children doesn’t understand the purpose of a wire connecting the headset with the base.
We are surrounded by technology. It is impossible to raise children without exposing them to its use. Still, there are dangers that come with our ultra-connected, high tech world. There is a lot on the Internet that is dangerous for children. They need to be taught to avoid Internet dangers as much as other dangers. Just as children require supervision when venturing out into traffic, they require supervision when connecting to the Internet. There is a regular stream of news stories of children who are victimized by predators who lurk on the Internet and use it to make connections. Stories of young children being exposed to pornography from friends’ cell phones and tablet devices are common.
Less than 20 miles away the Washington Waldorf School is deliberately unplugged. The philosophy is that children are better taught by real-world experiences. The school has a vegetable garden and a woodworking shop. Students write by hand in hard-covered journals. There are chalkboards in the school. There is a ban on the use of cell phones, laptops and tablets. Students are required to hand-write all assignments until high school.
The two schools provide a stark contrast of philosophies. One believes that there is no rush to expose children to technology. They believe that children need to first relate to the physical world before being exposed to the virtual world of computers. The other believes that technology is all around us and that children need to start early to keep up in a competitive society.
There is a certain appeal to both of the schools. Neither would have been an option for our children, however. The $30,000+ per year price of such private schools is well beyond our means. The luxury of being able to pursue the purity of a specific educational philosophy is granted only to schools with generous budgets. Public schools have to contend with divers passions of a varied constituency and the limits of public funding.
There have also been studies that show that early use of technology contributes to shortened attention spans. Another study demonstrates that students who use Google searches and Wikipedia as sources of information are less original in their thinking.
It is always difficult to demonstrate direct relationships between funding and teaching. Despite continual studies and evaluations, teaching remains as much of an art as it is a science. The qualities that make for good teaching and learning are elusive and difficult to categorize.
All of the high-tech equipment and fancy software threatens to become the subject of education instead of its means. When computers first were introduced to education, schools set up computer labs. Students went to the labs for one of their classes to learn to use the computers. There were some elementary applications to teach reading, math, history and geography. Mostly computer lab time was the time to learn keyboarding skills and computer operation. That quickly faded. These days the students often know more about the operation of the technology than the teachers.
The challenge is to learn and to teach how to use the technology for good.