Education is a very important process to which we all need to contribute. The word education has a variety of meanings depending on where you're from, who you are, or your culture. It is defined as “the act or process of imparting or acquiring general knowledge.” Though education is a beautiful and very helpful thing to obtain, there are many roadblocks when it comes to the process of receiving and gaining education. I would like to touch on technology usage.
The first roadblock I will talk about is the use of technology when learning. Technology can be a major distraction regarding education. Students love to use technology, and most use cell phones, laptops, and computers. Social media or video games can be a grave distraction during class which can and will lead to a decline in subject grades if students have access to one of the two during their time of learning. In “On the Education of Youth in America” Noah Webster argues that students who have too much access to tech in class decline in subjects such as reading and math. Though the middle school students' grades are dropping, their perspective on this matter is very closed minded. They seem to not pay any mind to the matter as long as they are entertained by this technology.
As a student myself I enjoy using technology and find it very helpful if used appropriately. For example, in the majority of my classes we use a learning platform called Kahoot! which helps us study by competing against classmates. This helps us learn while also never straying far away from fun. Another learning program we use is NoRedInk which lets us dive into structuring sentences properly while also mixing our favorite cartoon or movie characters in the picture. I also find myself becoming distracted at times because of the technology given to us as students. I'm sure teachers see this as a serious problem because of the technology getting in the way of many lessons. The next problem with the usage of technology is providing disadvantaged, or weaker, students with access to technology. In the article, “Can Students Have Too Much tech?” Susan Pinker dives into the problems faced by many students struggling with distractions and possible complications with learning using technology, disadvantaged students struggle far more. According to a study of academic progress conducted by Jacob Vigdor and Helen Ladd, disadvantaged students' reading scores plummeted after they received computers. Though it isn't touched on why this is, I'm led to believe that maybe there’s a disconnect between the students and the possible foreignness of using the technology. They could not be familiar with the technology and take longer to use it. Though I’m not suggesting that we get rid of technology when learning, I believe that we should come up with better ways to implement technology in education, especially regarding students at a disadvantage and students as a whole.
I wrote this essay because I myself have struggled with the usage of technology while trying to learn. In middle school my teachers were very pressing on implementing technology such as laptops or tablets in their lessons. This caused me to get off task the majority of my time in school. Writing this was very interesting because I got to dive into the problems regarding technology being used in learning. It made me want to come up with my own solutions to this problem.