Last week at my internship, a tech guy gave a presentation to the kids about their tablets – how to utilize them to the best of their ability, and how beneficial they are to have in the classroom. I believe every student in 9th and 10th grade at the high school has been loaned a tablet for the school year, and within the next two years every student in the school should have one.
This got me thinking about how classroom technology is changing so rapidly from year to year. It wasn’t too long ago that I graduated high school, and we didn’t have a single SmartBoard in the building that wasn’t glitchy. I understand the benefits of the tech – ready-made activities and streamlines paperless grading – but I’m having a hard time seeing the “Oh wow, how did we ever learn before this stuff?!” value. I’m not anti-tech by any means, but my favorite classes in high school always involved more straight teacher-student interaction, away from computer screens and projectors.
It’s also been shown that kids learn better from taking notes longhand than they do from typing them. So I get that some of these new features and programs can make teachers’ and students’ lives a little easier, but some of these big pushes for technology don’t seem like they would accomplish a whole lot more than the ‘good ole fashioned’ way of doing things.