How do students at E&S feel about device usage in schools?

This week interviewed three carver students about the usage of technology in school.

The first student I interviewed seemed to have a more “scholarly” opinion on the usage of phones.

When I asked him how often he uses his phone in class he responded with this, “Honestly, I don't use my phone that much, I mainly use is to listen to music.” He then went on to say that music helps him focus and not get distracted in class.

However, the other students seemed to have a harder time in class.

Interviewee 2:” Honestly I spend around 22-28 minutes each class, which is nearly half the class.” Interviewee 3 had a similar response. 

Interviewee 3:” I’m not going to lie, I spend half the class on my phone, sometimes even more than that.” 

This is very worrying because as a fellow student I know this behavior is very common in classes. Although the students seemed like they couldn’t go a day without their phones they still feel a certain way about technology usage. 

When I asked interviewee 1 “How do you feel about the use of technology in today’s age?” at first he didn't know to answer the question. After some time he responded with this ”I feel like people are too attached to their phones now, not just students, like when I walk through Temple’s campus everyone is glued to their phone.” This is the same student who said he barely uses his phone in class so this should be expected.

Now when I asked interviewee 2 the exact same question (the student who spends more than half the class on his phone) they had an interesting answer. 

Even though this student is almost always on their phone in classes they said this in response to the question ”Though I think that technology can be useful, we use it way too much in the modern era.” They then went on to say that that statement was awfully ironic coming from them.

I was a little surprised by the answer interviewee gave me, especially because they seemed to have totally different values. When I asked interviewee 3 this question as well I was prepared for everything. 

When their response was ”I feel like technology is making us more superficial and we are definitely on our phones so much that it's making us lazy.” I wasn't surprised at all because it seems like all these students are on the same page about technology.

Based on the few people I interviewed it seems like most students are very similar when it comes to usage and opinions. Even though I gotta their opinion on technology as a whole I wanted to dig deeper. So I asked the students “How do you feel about device use in schools (Chromebooks and smartboards included)“.

One of the students' answers really stood, they responded with this” I feel like we don’t really need this much technology in schools, and sometimes the technologies and a distraction in classes” I totally agree with this student because personally I get distracted in my classes even if I’m just on my Chromebook. 

The final question I asked everyone I interviewed this, ”Do you think that students who use technology perform differently?”

The general responses were along the lines of this ”I think the students the use their phones more will most likely have worse grades, but that doesn’t mean everyone who uses their phone has worse grades than people who don’t.” I wholeheartedly agree with this quote because i personally have seen students who don't focus at all and will still get good grades.