So what are your thoughts, does technology in the classroom enhances learning?

Last week came and went so quickly. It’s hard to believe that the long weekend just blew by us. I managed to enjoys some me time and finish up some projects around the house like baby’s room. However, I am sooo guilty of putting my blog on the back burner. My husband had surgery last week and I even had to care for him. Anyhow, here I am now, in the moment.

Last week  Jeremy, Erin, and Kyle D. had a chance sway the class into believing that technology in the classroom does enhance learning in the mean time Kayla, Steve and myself had a very tough job in attempting to present our side of the debate that technology in the classroom does not enhance learning. From the start i understood that attempting to argue that technology in the classroom is a bad thing to a group of Grad students taking a class about online technology was going to be a tough sell.

I started out with a quick survey of my staff, I asked what were some of the challenges that they faced using technology in the classroom. I thought a Wordle  would be a fun touch.  If you have never used Wordle, I don’t suggest you do it on a RBE Laptop, you need to update Java and to do so you need a secret username and password.  So I had to use another generator called Worditout, which I managed to create this collage.

 

 

 

 

 

I then thought maybe a Prezi would be a cooler visual.  I had never have used a Prezi before, I also found this to be a challenge.  I had difficulty getting the images to go where I wanted to go.  I did not finish the Prezi, just had a little fun playing with it. Watch my attempt at a Prezi.

 

There is many sides to this debate coin, I was able to find many articles such as Don’t give students more tools of mass distraction to support our argument that technology in the classroom does not enhance learning. Many educators believe that technology is becoming more and more intrusive.   The main point of my article was that technology in the classroom is a tool of mass distraction, much of what students do during class time on their devices has nothing to do with learning.  This can become very frustrating to educators as we can not often compete with cell phones and student devices.

Students find it very hard to concentrate during class if they are constantly receiving notifications or texts.  I know that in some schools students are even receiving text from parents.  Shouldn’t parents know that their child is busy in the classroom.  Now that technology is in our hands for most of the day it is easy to think of something and fore off a quick text.  Gone our the days of writing a to-do list, now we are so into multitasking that if we don’t do it right this moment we will forget.  Perhaps, this is where some of student impatience in my classroom comes from, their minds are wired to do things right now.  It doesn’t matter if I am talking, they will interrupt or get up and go get what they need at that moment.  Okay, may be that’s a pet peeve of mine, haha.

Not every student has access to technology at home, so when they receive a cell phone or get on a computer they can’t always handle it.  Many are constantly over stimulated. Some of my students can not manage to stay on task with their cell phones so accessible, this digital age is much tougher to regulate than the old note passing. It is not just students who are distracted by technology it is people everywhere are paying more attention to their devices than what’s going on around them. 

Another point that I made during our debate was that technology becomes nearly impossible to monitor in the classroom. It is easy to walk into a room and see that every student is using a computer or a device, but how do you really assess if and what type of learning is taking place?  

It is even more scary that school firewalls are far from foolproof when it comes to what students can access at school. In my first year teaching I had a student who was on a website called stranger chat.  I couldn’t believe that a child would want to chat with strangers and further how the school computer offered that wide open freedom.  I spoke to tech services and asked about banning Facebook and stranger chat, I was told this was something that my Admin would have to tackle as it was a school issue.  I spoke to admin who thought it was just a one time incident and did not need any more attention.  The whole stranger chat saga just allowed me to educate my students to become better digital citizens.

It becomes easier to do what you want on the internet when you are using your own device in the classroom, most students do not have the data plans so they will sign into the school WIFI. At times I even believe that our WIFI password should be changed to deter students abusing it.  As an educator I find it difficult to supervise my behavioral class as I constantly have to keep walking back and forth to make sure they aren’t clicking tabs.  Much time is wasted as I could be helping another student instead of policing technology in the classroom, as soon as I turn my back to write on the board, out come the phones.

A final thought is that students are using cameras to record teachers, videos are ending up on Youtube or Snapchat.  With students having so much access to technology the privacy is becoming more of an issue.  My debate partner Steve also made note of the fact that much student info and their work product is given away when using school computers.  Often, we don’t realize what we are giving away when we create an online identity.

I defiantly enjoyed the debate that my group was a part of, but deep down I appreciate technology in the classroom and I try very hard to incorporate it into my lessons and have students use it responsibly.  It was super cool to see both sides of the issues and I can’t wait for other groups to share their findings.