Teaching with Tech: Does it Work?
Are students in the digital age getting dumber?
Students today don't just write papers—they create PowerPoint presentations, design Web pages, and take tests using interactive software. The rise of these computer-based technologies over the past decade has been heralded as a boon for education. However, stories abound of students repeating inaccurate facts from sources like Wikipedia, peppering their papers with instant message lingo or wasting study time on Facebook. These concerns have caused some educators to take a more critical view. Are students merely learning how to use computers, but not actually learning?
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Technology a False Promise?
"When you’re on the computer instead of in the real world, when you paint with a mouse instead of using a paint brush, do research on the net instead of the library, or go on a virtual field trip instead of a trip to the pond, you develop bad habits," says Tom Oppenheimer, author of The Flickering Mind: Saving Education From the False Promise of Technology. "It causes a stunting of imagination. A narrowing of mental capacity."
Oppenheimer was a new technology reporter for Newsweek in 1997, when he first went on assignment to observe technology use at a Massachusetts high school. A teacher showed him a PowerPoint presentation that a student had made. As Oppenheimer wrote in his book, "Its content was no deeper or more complex than what one commonly sees in civics papers done elsewhere, with pencil and paper, by seventh and eighth graders." The student admitted he’d spent nearly twice the time working on the graphics than he did researching the report.
Dan Leyes, a college teacher for twenty years and Assistant Professor of Speech at Brookdale Community College in New Jersey, has noticed many of his students depending too much on technology in their class presentations. "Students think because they can cut and paste a ton of information onto a slide and read it, they're doing well. The truth is, having someone read off slides generally makes for dreadful presentations."
While students can find information quickly and easily on the Web, Leyes worries that they absorb it less. "Years ago, students had to work much harder to find and record information, and by going through that arduous process came to a greater genuine understanding of it."
Elona Hartjes, a secondary school math teacher in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. for twenty five years and a Teacher of Distinction Award winner for her work with at-risk kids, encourages her students to do equations by hand before trying them out on calculators and computers.
"I tell the kids that if they don't do math in their head the brain cells that do math will die and they won't be as smart as they used to be," Hartjes says.
