Technology in the Classroom: What are the benefits and limitations?

When people speak of 21st Century Learning, they almost always refer to the integration of technology in the classroom. And why not? Information and communication technology have revolutionized our life and work – so why not also our youth’s education? Experience navigating the digital world prepares our children for the new century, offers information at their fingertips, and enhances their skills of collaboration. While there are clearly benefits to having technology in the classroom, are there limitations? What is the impact of technology use on the learning process, social discourse and, indeed, the brain?

Let’s take a look at what is widely believed to be the benefits of using technology in the classroom. One claim is that laptops and tablets enable differentiated learning and instruction. Students can learn at their own pace and in their own learning style. Not a strong reader? Use the audio. The language too difficult? There’s technology that will provide the same story in simpler language. For those who struggle with reading and writing, there is assistive technology. A text can be scanned and turned to voice. There’s a note taking app that will record what the speaker says and turn her speech into text. Word predictors and spell-check all help in the writing process.

An elementary school principal once told me that an ideal, differentiated classroom is one where children are on the floor, bean bag or desk, reading from a laptop, iPad, or book, often while wearing earphones. She praised this model as she felt students were allowed to choose the way they learned. Technology, she asserted, allows for differentiation, pushing the teacher away from being the odious “sage on the stage” and towards becoming the preferred “guide by the side.” Her conclusion: the student emerges to the forefront and has both a voice and choice in her own learning.

Proponents of using technology in the classroom celebrate the idea that technology also promotes collaboration, not only within the classroom but also across continents. The definition of “chat” is now “a silent conversation where everyone speaks at once.” (usingeducation.com) Work is easily shared and readily accessed, allowing for the possibility of immediate feedback.

With all of these benefits to having technology in the classroom, one would expect evidence that reflects an improvement in learning. The Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is an organization that administers the Pisa test to students in 70 countries and ranks them according to their proficiency in reading, mathematics and science. The test is given digitally. In the 2015 report, OECD Education Director, Andreas Schleicher, stated that the “impact [of technology] on student performance is mixed at best.” The report showed “no appreciable improvements” in reading, mathematics or science in the countries that had invested heavily in formation technology. In fact, Australia, New Zealand and Sweden, countries that ranked as having the highest level of Internet use in school, “experienced a significant decline” in scores. The countries and cities with the lowest use of technology in schools – South Korea, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Japan – were (and are perennially) among the top performers.

So what happened? Let’s first explore the claim of differentiation. Having access to information is not the same as knowing or understanding. Independent learning comes not with having a machine to do the most difficult of tasks; it comes with self-reliance and the ability to use language effectively in its most fundamental forms – reading and writing. As Schleicher’s analysis of the Pisa test rankings asserts, “building deep, conceptual understanding and higher-order thinking requires intensive teacher-student interactions, and technology sometimes distracts from this valuable human engagement.” We cannot expect technology to replace good teaching.

But what about the claim that technology is a boon to collaboration? True collaboration comes when students know how to question, how to discern information and how to self-advocate. A conversation in which “everyone is speaking at once” is fundamentally wrong, for who is listening? Under the guise of collaboration, technology can often limit the student’s ability to debate, to have a meaningful conversation.

Beyond academics and critical thinking, we must always remember that learning is, above all, a social interaction. It doesn’t take much to see that communing with a screen has replaced this. Take a look at a recent ad for iPad Pro that ends with the line “What’s a Computer?” The ad seems designed to counter the criticism that screen time prevents children from enjoying the outdoors. The child in the commercial rides a bike and climbs trees, all the while chatting with a friend on-line, taking photographs, and designing. But there is one crucial thing the child doesn’t do: interact with people. The child is in a shop and barely looks at the salesperson, is surrounded by people on the bus and is oblivious, and says hardly anything more than a “hi” to the mother. Instead, the iPad has replaced interacting with real people in real time. And if you think that technological devices haven’t taken a toll on human interaction, just look around at the dining table during dinner time.

At the biological level, what is the impact of technology on the brain? Neurobiologists have determined that playing video games produces dopamine levels within the brain that sometimes equal those of drug addicts. Have we studied enough the impact of the screen in the classroom? In my own experiences as a classroom teacher, it’s clear that the students’ rapid access to information and the multiple tabs while doing a task stresses attention and working memory. And in children whose prefrontal cortex has yet to be fully developed, it is no wonder that the executive function skills of our children seem to be declining.

One of my favorite images is that of Neil Armstrong taking his first step on the moon in 1969. There is much that can be done when man sees, imagines, knows and tries. The stunning truth is that the technology in a smartphone today is more advanced than the technology used in the computers that sent man to the moon. But how many of our students can harness that kind of power from their devices? Perhaps, if we mean to incorporate the use of technology in the classroom, we need to do so much more thoughtfully – with an eye towards teaching students not to be slaves to the glitz and gloss of technology, but to be masters of the latest evolution of tools that can be used to unlock new worlds and discover new possibilities. It is not the tool; it is how the tool is used.

References

• “Benefits of Technology in the Classroom,” Janelle Cox, TeachHub.com

• “10 Reasons Today’s Students Need Technology,” Danny Moreco, Secure Edge

• OECD Report http://www.oecd.org/edu/students-computers-and-learning-9789264239555-en.htm

• “In Classrooms of Future, Stagnant Scores,” Matt Richtell, NYT, Sept. 3, 2012

• “The Reality is that technology is doing more harm than good,” Eryk Bagshaw, The Sydney Morning Herald, April 1, 2016

• “School technology struggles to make an impact,” Andreas Schleicher, BBC, September 15, 2015

• “Computers do not improve pupil results, say OECD” Sean Coughlan, BBC, September 15, 2012

• “Tech Backlash Grows as Investors Press Apple to Act...” David Gelles, NYT, Jan. 8, 2018

• “Former Facebook VP says social media is destroying society...” Amy Wang, Washington Post, December 12, 2017

• “How Social Media is Affecting Teens,” The National, February 24, 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QWoP6jJG3k

• “New Technology Causes Concern...” NBC Denver, July 28, 2013 https//www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpBdQQIPCJg

• Screenagers, PBS, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCT5JcCXMPw