Nadine Schroeder
CONT933
Analysis and Justification: Comparing and contrasting two articles about the use of technology in the classroom
Going into these articles, my belief is that technology is necessary within education, but that its usage needs to hold value to students. Screen time is a deep concern of mine both for my students as well as for myself. I feel the tension of the increased screen time due to Covid 19 (both due to working from home on a computer each day and due to taking online courses through Queens University) in a physical sense of increased headaches and poorer sleep. None of my attempts to include technology in the classroom lead my students to have hours upon hours in front of a screen, however I do think that many of my students go home to afternoons and evenings of video games and shows. I feel obligated to ensure that I am limiting their exposure to the blue light of screens. I also believe that many children do not know how to play with one another and I am curious if part of the reasoning is because of their overexposure to shows instead of human interaction.
As I examine my chosen articles, I begin with the question: does this article promote the use of technology in the classroom?
My first article is by Noel Bitner and Joe Bitner. In their article, entitled “Integrating Technology into the Classroom: Eight Keys to Success”, the lay out ways that educators will find more success utilizing technology. They start off recognizing the challenges that teachers face. Teachers must teach the curriculum, a curriculum that changes on occasion, with whatever resources they are given. “Teachers must learn to use technology and must allow it to change their present teaching paradigm. This is not an easy task because change can seem intimidating and threatening” (Bitner and Bitner, 95). Teachers are constantly being told what to do without often being shown how to do. They point out that in addition to the lack of capacity to take more on, “teachers lack good models to emulate for the effective integration of technology into the curriculum” (Bitner and Bitner, 95). I am curious as to how the stakeholders asking educators to instill certain technologies within their pedagogy expect those same teachers to accomplish that task. In a staff poll last week, the answer to “what do you need most in order to make [task we were being asked to accomplish] happen”, nearly every teacher wrote “time”. I think it is important to highlight that most educators I know are open-minded, hopeful, and imaginative humans. It is not for a lack of desire that teachers sometimes are unable to complete the endless task list of teaching the entire curriculum. Ultimately, it is a lack of expertise and expertise comes with time.
Another aspect that Bitner and Bitner point out is the fear that many educators can feel when faced with approaching new technology. “Helping teachers overcome their fears, concerns, and anxiety is crucial to the success of the program” (96). At my school we often have “lunch and learns” which are lunches where a district helping teacher comes in and shares on a topic for our lunch break. While these events are helpful, they’re never long enough! They are a good start though. I know that pro-d days get a bad reputation, but I have found my pro-d days to be incredibly useful. It is so great to have a day to dive into one thing and learn as much as I can.
Bitner and Bitner go on to share the importance for educators to view technology in use by students. They recognize the desire for not simply another task for a clipboard but a tool for a toolkit. “Teachers need to be aware of the different kinds of programs that can be used in large and small group instruction. They also need to experience programs that are available in each content area” (97). Practically I believe that as an educator, I can only grow in a couple areas per year. I am new to my teaching career but spent a decade in other fields using skills that occasionally translate to teaching. I chose this year to focus on bettering my ability to teach writing, and chose this program at Queens to better my ability at teaching math. Next year I will likely focus on reading skills. As the years pass I intend to keep honing my skills, area by area. I think that this relates to technology because it would be less than wise for me to decide to add technology to every area of my classroom. However, hopefully in this course I can learn about a few different areas of technology that can improve my math class. I find myself curious how we can trial the tools we are using on our students when we are without our students at this time.
I could not have pictured, back in Ms. Odegard’s classroom in the early 1990s when I was young the way that the world would change in 30 years. Neither could she. We do not need to know the future in order to prepare our students. Technology will change but certain aspects will remain true. “Students today must learn to search and discover knowledge, actively communicate with others, and solve problems so that they can become productive life-long members of our society” (Bitner and Bitner, 97). Students need to know multiple means to acquire knowledge information, need to know how to evaluate what they see, need to know how to work well with others, and need to know how to find a solution to the problems they face. This can be done with or without technology, but it would be an error for educators to ignore the ways that we can use technology to better this learning.
Ultimately, I believe that this article highly promotes the use of technology while kindly acknowledging the difficulties that educators face. Lack of resources, time, practice time, and little room for failure and mistakes along the way lead many educators to put aside technology. I believe this is true for many other areas of the curriculum, and that if educators were given the resources they need we would see shifts in our children to more prepared for the life ahead of them.
My second article is a report entitled “Bidirectional relationships between sleep duration and screen time in early childhood.” by Christopher A. Magee, Jeong Lee, and Stewart A. Vella. In the article, they seek to find the connection between how children are sleeping to the amount of screen time they have. I chose to use this article in conjunction with the first article because I find that they approach the topic of technology and children from differing perspectives. Bitner and Bitner highlight the issues that educators face with an ever-changing technological world whereas Magee, Lee, and Vella turn their attention to the ways that young children are effected by the use of tech. The articles work together to highlight challenges without necessarily dissuading usage.
Magee, Lee, and Vella note that a variety of “population data suggest that shorter sleep duration and excessive screen time are growing problems among children and could be interacting issues” (465) and note that "excessive screen time and shorter sleep durations are predictive of behavioral and social problems, poorer academic performance, and health conditions such as obesity” (465). They suggest that a large reason that “these findings are concerning [is] because the level of media use (ie, computer use and television viewing) among children is increasing” (465). When we examine the daily life of the modern child, technology is as close to them as a sibling. Whether it is simply a show while their caregiver makes dinner or whether it is hours upon hours of video games, the amount of exposure that children have is only ever on the increase. As I consider the current age of Covid 19 where students are at home, how much of the work that I am asking them to do requires their valuable eyes to stare at a screen? I have intentionally, alongside my colleagues who I collaborate with, tried to have as many outdoor and non-screen activities as possible. Yet I know that many of my families, understandably, need to have their child on an app that they can use without aide in order for those caregivers to get their work-from-home work done each day.
One aspect that I found most interesting in Magee, Lee, and Vella’s finding was a piece that surprised them. Though they already knew that “lower socioeconomic status among children is linked with increased television viewing and poorer sleep quality, possibly because of lower parental awareness of recommendations regarding health behaviors, fewer rules regarding media use and limit setting, and a reduced emphasis on routines” (468-469), they had not predicted that they would see a higher correlation between screen time and lack of sleep in children from higher economic status situations. They recognized that this link is likely due to the fact that “higher income is correlated with a greater number of media devices in a household,8 which could contribute to shorter sleep duration and increased screen time for some children” (469). We blame the lower socioeconomic families for not having the knowledge of how and why to create rules around media usage and we blame the higher socioeconomic families for giving their children too many screens in general. It seems to me that perhaps we have not yet figured out how to navigate a world with this much access.
I would be curious to read a study examining the sleep patterns of students during Covid 19 when many students, especially in the intermediate grades and secondary school are accessing screens for a substantially longer time per day. I would also be curious to ask my own families if they notice their child sleeps better or worse on days when I have used technology in the classroom (when we in a typical functioning at-school classroom).
Ultimately, these articles are very different. The first is more of a guide for educators and those who support educators on how to navigate an ever-changing world. The second is a report showing the link between increased screen time and worse sleep for children. Neither have swayed me from my belief that technology is useful yet needs to be managed, because I think that that is what both are attempting to say. Teachers cannot be expected to know everything, but they also should not wait around until technology goes away. If we notice that our children are not well-rested, there are things we can do to help them. Neither article speaks to the importance of ensuring our students and teachers are hydrated, that they are moving their body, that they take breaks, and that they do more than simply spend their lives married to technology.
Work Cited:
Bitner, N., & Bitner, J. (2002). Integrating technology into the classroom: eight keys to success. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 10(1), 95–100.
Magee, C., Lee, J., & Vella, S. (2014). Bidirectional relationships between sleep duration and screen time in early childhood.(Report). JAMA Pediatrics, 168(5), 465–46570. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapediatrics.2013.4183