Understanding Technology and Its Developmental Impact

Technology has been changing our world since the moment it began to develop. According to the Merriam Webster Online Encyclopedia, “Technology includes the… power to make life easier or more pleasant and work more productive… technology focuses on making things happen…It accelerated with the Industrial Revolution and the substitution of machines for animal and human labor.” Today, technology is evolving at such a rapid rate, which makes it hard to keep up with. Although technology as a whole varies in many ways, most of it has changed similarly in size (making things smaller and portable), in speed (the speed in which information travels continues to become faster) and accessibility (thanks to the changes in size and speed, technology is more accessible to more people). In the midst of all this evolution, there is a generation that is growing up with it, and becoming part of the fast paced giant. In the article “The New Greatest Generation,” by Joel Stein, he refers to our youth of today as the “Millennials”. This group of people who were born in the late 1980s and on, seem to have many similar negative personalities and characteristics, in part, thanks to all the technology they have been exposed to since they were born . Millennials are the “biggest age grouping in American history” and have become part of the new technological era, which means that they don’t know what it is like to not have things whenever and wherever at the tip of their fingers, literally (Stein 28). In the article “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants” by Marc Prensky, he refers to today’s students with a new term: “digital natives”. Digital natives are the “native speakers of the digital language of computers, video games and the internet” (Prensky 1). In contrast, those not born in the digital world reveal their non-native status by using less of this technology, mostly because they aren’t so attracted to it or because they don’t know how to use it. Prensky calls this group of people “Digital Immigrants” and in most cases teachers happen to be part of this particular group . “Our digital instructors, who speak an outdated language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language” (Prensky 2). This difference between today’s generation and the preceding is one reason that educating the youth of today can be difficult. To teach this new generation, educators have been attempting to reach out to the digital natives by flooding the classrooms with technology. Schools have constantly been playing technological catch-up, and trying to bring to the classroom just about anything technological to keep their students focused in their education. It is almost impossible for one to go a day in class without seeing some form of technology, whether it is overhead as a class tool such as projector or the common under-the-table-phone. All of this use of technology isn’t necessarily good. Technology is constantly changing and improving, and it is usually hard to allow the right amount of time to determine what works best in the classrooms. Although there have been some improvements in the classrooms due to technology, sometimes technology isn’t the best solution when it comes to education. Technology might make things easier, but in fact it has negative influences on the new generation of students: it is a distraction, makes it hard for students to communicate face-to-face, and it inhibits learning; such effects are reflected in student’s ability to learn as well as how they are being taught in their classrooms.

The last thing any teacher or instructor needs is added distraction in the classroom, but modern technology provides exactly this. There is an increasing presence of cell phones, Ipods, Ipads, laptops and more devices in the classroom. Such technology overload often distracts students from paying attention, and this is not something new; students are so attached to their technological devices that putting them away for the amount of time they are in school doesn’t seem possible. We as a society should be worried about how much time young people spend each day using these media and how this usage could be affecting how much they are learning in class. According to Prensky, “today’s average college grads have spent less than 5,000 hours of their lives reading, but over 10,000 hours playing video games (not to mention 20,000 hours watching TV)”. But that statistic only includes the technology at home, how about the technology they carry around in their pockets? In a Pew Internet Project’s 2011 teen survey, three quarters or seventy-seven percent of teens have a cell phone, a figure that is similar to the seventy-five percent of teens who owned a cell phone in September 2009. This percentage went up dramatically from the forty-five percent of teens who were cell phone owners in late 2004 (Lenhart, “Teens, Smartphones & Texting” 3). We don’t have to compare numbers to know that more teens have cell phones today than in previous years, and the age at which they get a cell phone is younger each year that passes, which means that starting from middle school, teachers are already losing the undivided attention of their students. The typical American teen today is sending and receiving a greater number of texts than they were in 2009, and teens who text the largest number of messages are texting even more messages on a typical day than they did two years ago (Lenhart, “Teens, Smartphones & Texting” 2). But on top of that, each day there’s more a cell phone can do. The new trend in cell phones is the futuristic and expensive smart phone. Smart phone ownership is highest among older teens, as thirty-one percent of teens ages fourteen to seventeen have a smart phone (Lenhart, “Teens, Smaprtphones & Texting”. These multi-tasking devices are a major reason that students are distracted today. Within this hand-held, compact phone, they have the ability to communicate twenty-four-seven with family and friends. Stein says in his Time magazine article, “Millenials are interacting all day but almost entirely through a screen. You’ve seen them… sitting next to one another and texting. They might look calm, but they are deeply anxious about missing out on something better. Seventy percent of them check their phones every hour, and many of them experience phantom pocket vibration-syndrome” (29). No wonder is it hard to make them focus on what is going on during class, when they are constantly worried they are missing out on something more exciting outside the four boring walls. This can be very frustrating for instructors, and can make it increasingly difficult for them to teach effectively.

Matt Richtel writes in his New York Times article, “Technology Changing How Students Learn, Teachers Say,” about the results of a survey given to several teachers in 2012. Teachers are worrying and coming to the conclusion that “students’ constant use of digital technology is hampering their attention spans and ability to persevere in the face of challenging tasks” (Richtel). Many teachers in the survey and even those who weren’t surveyed say that “they felt they had to work harder just to capture their students’ attention” (Richtel). Educators are complaining about having to do much more than they used to simply to get the attention of their students, and once they have their attention, actually keeping them focused on the subject is challenging. The reality is that having more technology in and out of the classroom is contributing to students not being interested in staring at a pen and paper anymore. “Digital Natives are used to receiving information really fast…they thrive on instant gratification and frequent rewards. They prefer games to ‘serious’ work” (Prensky 2). If students are constantly involved in their more-interesting-than-reality technological world, how can one possibly make them focus on what’s going on in the class? Some schools believe that adding more technology to the classrooms is the answer, but it certainly is not. One of the teachers interviewed in Ritchell’s article wonders “if teachers were adding to the problem [of distraction] by adjusting their lessons to accommodate shorter attention spans [by using more technology in class]” (Ritchell).

Schools have taken notice of technological advances, and they don’t want to stay behind. Most schools have installed technologic devices to make teaching “easier”. I am not referring to the simple technology such as white boards, but instead the more advanced technology like projectors, social networks to encourage students’ participation, online classes, and cameras to record the lectures in the class. Many teachers are finding that it is making their teaching worse. The more technology is added to the classroom, the more likely things will go wrong. Using technology is time consuming. Have you ever seen a teacher waste ten minutes of class trying to fix some sort of technological device in class? Or have you experienced “Death by PowerPoint”? Or perhaps you’ve heard about internet servers crashing, PowerPoint’s freezing and printers refusing to print correctly. These are all issues that any modern educator is more than familiar with. Usually, when something goes wrong in class, students see this as a “break” and instantly run to their phones for distraction. Technology often causes a valuable loss of time that could have been used to teach actual course content. When technology fails, classes can be completely disrupted or even canceled, which is damaging to the student learning process. What’s more important, technology is very expensive. Schools usually have to hire full-time technology assistants to help with these tech issues, adding another layer of increased costs on shrinking school budgets. Doug Johnson says in his article, “Stretching Your Technology Dollar”: “Schools in the United States spend a lot of money on educational technology—estimated soon to be $56 billion dollars—36 percent of which is spent in K-12 education. That’s about $400 per student per year.” And let’s not forget that a lot of teachers have to be trained to use the new technologic devices and programs. This is often a waste of time and money, both of could be put to a better use.

On top of students losing valuable learning time, they are quickly losing the skills needed for effective face-to-face communication. Social Networks have also revolutionized everyday communication. You can now communicate to hundreds of “friends” about something that happened during your day by simply posting it online. And when young people have more time on their hands, online video watching or video chatting is another form of communication that draws their attention and takes up their time. Amanda Lenhart, the Senior Research Specialist of the Pew Internet Project, says that “Shooting, sharing, streaming and chatting – social media using teens are the most enthusiastic users of many online video capabilities” (“Teens and Online Video” 1). When it comes to solely video chatting, thirty-seven percent of teens are actively using services such as Skype, Googletalk or iChat (Lenhart, “Teens & Online Video” 2). With this access at home, they no longer have to go out to meet up with friends, and if they don’t take the time to go out and hang out, what incentive do they have to go to class to see their teacher face-to-face, when they could easily have access to online chatting with their teachers as well?

Schools have adopted online learning and communication through social media, and have brought it into the classrooms in order to engage students to participate more in class. The reason this has been done is because many believe that students should be able to work in convenient places, and need highly flexible schedules. When compared with face-to-face instruction, the argument goes, online communication provides students with more time to analyze and reflect on content and to compose thoughtful responses. Gustavo Mellander talks about this in his article, “Technology and the College Experience,” where he states that “…students have forced faculty to become computer literate…We can be optimistic for some faculty who have adopted modern technology to reach their students…Now more and more we have three modes of teaching: face-to-face lectures, online, and hybrid learning.” As an example to Mellander’s positive outlook on technology in the classroom, the article “Using Social Networking Sites to Facilitate Teaching and Learning in the Science Classroom” reports on a project done in a hybrid classroom (traditional and online). The students in this classroom were given a science project where they were supposed to research, interview professionals, and communicate both online and in the classroom (Wang, Hsu, and Green 75). This article gives an example of teachers using social networking sites such as Edmodo to attract the attention of their students, and make them communicate with one another. This project proved to be very successful for students. But although technology is really beneficial for short projects, and short-term class interaction, it doesn’t have the same benefits when used to teach a class for an entire quarter.

According to Mellander, “first experiences with an online course can be a struggle. It is easier to procrastinate, to skip a lecture, to fall behind. Since there is less personalized assistance, educators who prize human contact say it’s a poor development.” Students rely so heavily in their virtual communication, that they have developed a communication deficiency face-to-face and often procrastinate when taking online classes. When a student knows that they have all day to go online and begin to read on a new chapter, most of them don’t do it right away, knowing that the information will be available to them anytime and anywhere. Furthermore, in face-to-face teaching, the teacher or course instructor is able to show enthusiasm for a topic by the use of his or her tone of voice. However, with distance learning, the displaying of enthusiasm through the use of voice by the instructor is not possible most of the time, this makes it harder for students to really become interested in a topic that they have no enthusiasm for. Also, during class, an observant instructor can notice whether or not students understand from their facial expressions. Many times during class a teacher will stop a lesson to ask a student if they understand. But if an instructor can’t actually see that one of the students is not grasping the concept, as is the case with online instruction, he or she will automatically move on, leaving the student behind. This happens often in online learning. In a doctoral dissertation, a University of Phoenix doctoral candidate, Andree Colette Swanson, conducted research on social interaction in online classes, where she states the following:

…Although distance education adds value, students are often less successful and have a higher dropout rate than in traditional schools. Although online education is experiencing a continued expansion, an omission of social interaction in the online classroom as compared to the traditional classroom exists… Online instructors do not achieve a social connection (e-connectivity) with their students… In online education, students may not have their social and psychological needs met (2, 3).

The communication skills that students had in previous generations are slowly fading away. But technology isn’t only hindering the student-teacher communication; it is also creating a deficiency with the communication between teachers and parents. Today teachers can easily “communicate” with parents about what is going on with their children through email, or checking their children’s progress online. Ongoing parent-teacher relations in the virtual world will make parent-teacher conference nights obsolete, since sending an email will become more accessible for both parties, but not necessarily good for the student. Parent-teacher conferences are a good way for both to “talk freely and in confidence…the conference can be a way to clarify the process of learning” (Blom). Many would argue that technology actually enhances parent’s involvement in school by creating continuous communication between parents and teachers. However, when technology is involved, there is no longer a need for the parent or teacher to meet, and have a face-to-face conference about the long-term plans of the student’s education. In fact, although technology is a way for communication to be faster and more efficient, not many parents take advantage of it. In the article “Involving Middle-Graders’ Parents,” Shelley Billig explains that “outside of parent-teacher conferences, families seldom asked about their children or about improving school programs. When a family is contacted, it is usually because their child is in trouble” Parent-teacher conferences and activities alike that require parents to be physically present in school create a higher success rate in students (Billig). In the same article, Billig gives an example of a community in Stratford, New Hampshire, where teachers, students and their parents had a “Spaghetti Night” where they discussed “how to raise student achievement.” When there is a physical presence of parents in their child’s school it “can go a long way in helping adolescents meet challenging academic standards while developing important personal and social skills” (Billig).

Despite the distractions and deficiencies caused by excessive amounts of technology in a student’s everyday life, still some may argue that technology has positive impacts in education. In Richtel’s article, he says “roughly 75 percent of 2,462 teachers surveyed said that the internet and search engines had a ‘mostly positive’ impact on student research skills. And they said such tools had made students more self-sufficient” (Richtel). However, the key word there is “mostly”, technology also leaves much space for cheating, laziness and ignorance. For example, many students have a hard time using resources in the libraries that aren’t electronic. In the article “Going Out of Print,” Ed Wetschler writes about several schools in Massachusetts that have decided to turn their traditional libraries into electronic centers. One of the schools decided to give away most of their twenty-thousand books and buy Kindle e-readers and laptops for their 445 students (Wetschler). Many schools all throughout the country have spent millions of dollars training librarians to use technology as well as trading books for more technological devices. Many people believe this to be a positive impact in the students’ education. In this article David Loertscher, author of The New Learning Commons, is quoted saying that “the old model of having the kids check out books and then sending them back to the classroom doesn’t mount to a hill of beans. Kids can now check out digital resources anytime, anywhere…That’s the way the world is going.” However, using reading devices doesn’t have the same psychological and neurological effects that reading a printed book and turning pages do. Reading in Kindles and Nooks becomes a hard task due to the extra distractions that are within the same device such as games, movies and TV shows. Also, studies have shown that students have a weaker comprehension level, they develop “cursory reading” (twenty to thirty percent slower), requires more effort to concentrate, and they don’t learn as well as if they were reading from a printed book (Wetschler). On top of the less effective reading habits developed by replacing books with e-readers, when it comes to research, most students are easily drawn to the unethical, but now very popular, plagiarism. A higher percentage of teachers interviewed in a survey agreed the internet had conditioned their students to finding quick answers. Students do not want to bother with a trip to the library, or with the responsibility of checking out a book, when they can easily Google any information they need, copy it and then paste it into their so-called “research”. Richtel says “…students have grown so accustomed to getting quick answers with a few keystrokes that they are more likely to give up when an easy answer eludes them.”

In conclusion, technology has developed so much in the last few decades, and with its development a new generation of students has grown to be attached to the technology that they are told they need in order to learn. This isn’t necessarily the truth. Although technology does have significant benefits in education, it is a distraction, creates communication barriers and it inhibits learning.