POINT: Technology in classrooms has wasted potential
One of my roommate’s professors said technology like texting should be allowed in classrooms because it allows students to communicate with each other about material.
This is only half true. If my high school teachers had let me have my phone out during class, I would not have been texting my friends about the material. I would have been texting my friends about everything but the material. I know this to be true because now, in college, I text openly in most of my classes. It is never about the material.
Professors who give a blanket ban on technology in the classroom, especially in discussion-based courses, are right in a way because no one’s talking when the whole class is posting Facebook statuses about how much it sucks to be in class.
But when I’m not having any of what a class is offering, I’ll bring a book to read or a pillow to pass out on. Technology may be the best distraction in the classroom, but it certainly isn’t the only distraction.
No professor would throw a student out of class for bringing a book. Rather, the textbook is a key component in the education system. A school without books is like a music hall without instruments.The birth of the internet has been likened to the invention of the printing press. The printing press didn’t go anywhere. Technology isn’t, either.
Students are going to be sneaking texts in class regardless of whether it says not to in the syllabus. People are going to open laptops under the pretext of taking notes and will instead be on Facebook chatting about the weekend.
Technology is engaging. It is stimulating. That’s why it’s so popular. There’s so much to be done with it, and that’s why there’s no room for Luddism. The Luddites never win.
Nothing puts a packed classroom of people to sleep faster than the droning of a 75 minute lecture on the French Revolution or cell division. That’s why the best teachers now will be the ones who can use technology in clas-rooms in creative ways.
Instead of creating horrible students, it should be creating better students. Activities involving technology have the potential to get students up and moving, while facilitating group learning through communication, which is the best form of learning.
Rather than it being a toss-up for professors between, “You can’t, under any circumstances, use a laptop or cell phone in this class,” and “I don’t care either way what you do,” there should be an encouragement to bring that cell phone to class and do something interactive with it.
After all, everyone has one.
