Tech in the Classroom

 There is an editorial in the New York Times today by Jessica Grose entitled "Get Tech Out of the Classroom Before It's Too Late".  As a classroom teacher, I totally agree with her.  She paints an even worse picture than I imagined.  As I pointed out in a previous blog, the addiction to screens seems to be getting worse.  I am not free of this addiction.  I spend a great deal of time on a computer.  I could not be writing this blog if I was not.  

I have a suspicion, but I cannot confirm it because I do not have the data, that there has been a serious reduction in attention span.  I do not know if it is cause or effect.  I will start with Sesame Street.  Each segment is short because the attention span of younger children is short.  If a child lost focus on one scene, it did not matter, because the next scene did not build on it.  My concern is that the inability to focus for longer periods did not develop as strongly as it should have after Sesame Street,

I do not like music videos.  I seldom watch them.  To me, even though the videos are meant for a mature audience, they follow the format of Sesame Street.  There is no sustained focus.  Every few seconds, there is a change in scene and in costume.  Again, I don't know if it is people's lack of an attention span that created the format, or the format alleviated the need to sustain concentration.  Tweets and text messages, with their limited amount of characters and their abbreviations are symptomatic of this.

I have had a very negative experience with technology in the classroom.  For example, a grant was given to my school to give all the students an iPad.  The following year, they were given to the faculty.  I had never used an iPad and we were given no training on how to implement it in the classroom.  I taught the Hebrew Bible.  The text could be found on their iPads, which alleviated the need to have a text.  It was both cost effective for the school, and meant less weight in their heavily overburdened backpacks.

Since an internet connection was necessary for the text, the students were basically free to roam on the internet.  If they were studious enough to focus on the material on their iPad or computer, they still had their phones for texting their friends, buying their prom dresses, keeping up with the latest sports information, and immediately letting their parents know a grade they received.  I was amazed at how quickly we could hear from parents complaining about the A- their child received.

This is not to say that there were no benefits for technology in the classroom,  The ability to quickly access information was invaluable.  The images that could be projected added to their learning.  However, the drawbacks negated any benefit.  Without controls on the internet, as Ms. Grose pointed out in her editorial, the temptations were too great for too many students.  Even if in their minds that were only browsing for a moment, it detracted from their learning.  

Psychologists tell us that there is a greater benefit to taking notes by hand.  With a computer, it appears that only one person in the class had to be designated as the note taker for that day, and then the notes could easily be shared.  Giving students permission to take tests on their computers is also a recipe for disaster.   For me, learning takes motivation and focus.  It should be challenging.  The internet makes it too easy. Why try to think through a problem when you google the answer in seconds.  

To alleviate the problem, we tried collecting phones at the beginning of class.  It did not work. Students would just turn in an old phone that they no longer used.  I found it amazing that no student ever went to the bathroom by themselves. There were coordinated breaks for groups of people.  I only let one person leave my classroom at a time, so they had to have students from other classes meet them.  

Technology in the classroom changed the dynamic for teaching.  I prided myself on the personal contact that I made with students.  I liked to look into their eyes and see their facial expressions as a gauge of how the class was going.  Was there a look of confusion, or enlightenment.  With their faces focused on their screens, I lost the personal contact that I cherished as a teacher.  It was exacerbated by Covid.  Trying to teach to students on zoom when they were home was frustrating.  Our entire education system suffered, as recent testing has pointed out.   

As long as there are computers in the schools for each student, I doubt if we will ever achieve the ratings that we desire.  For me, the eye of the teacher must be on the students and the eyes of the students must be on the teacher, not a screen,