I have been thinking quite a bit today about the reasons that we use technology in the classroom. There is a camp of people that are pretty convinced that technology is not going to help students learn. They feel that teachers who are using technology to teach are doing so out of an attempt to entertain students in hopes that they learn something.
While I don’t agree at all with this thinking, I do think that the entertainment factor of technology does have its benefits. However, this is not the main reason that it should be used.
Student engagement is the reason we need to be using technology in our classrooms, and there is a stark difference between a student being engaged in learning and being entertained. I think one of the biggest problems is that the definition of “using technology in the classroom” is wide and varies from teacher to teacher.
Having a classroom of students watch a video might be deemed by some a use of technology to teach. Many school districts are buying interactive whiteboards by the truck load and installing them in classrooms as fast as they can in hopes of bringing up test scores. Then there are the teachers that video every class project they can and post them on Youtube. No one can argue that these teachers are not using technology in the classroom, but there is definitely an argument in whether or not they are actually using the technology to teach. There is a very good chance that none of them are.
Here is the problem. Teachers often use gadgets like projectors, computers, interactive whiteboards, and calculators to teach, but these tools are not used to help the students think. They are often used to teach students at the most basic levels of Bloom’s. It seems that there are number of teachers who are cramming as much knowledge as possible into students minds, and they mean well. After all, that is how most of us learned. We sat in the room and copied notes off the board and had a test at the end of the week. Now the teacher can make a fancy PowerPoint with nifty animations and even videos, but many of these lessons still amount to “cramming” the mind with knowledge. For many, this constitutes using technology to teach.
I am going to apologize now to those who see the interactive whiteboard as the greatest teaching tool to ever come along, but I am having a hard time with it as a stellar teaching tool. Sure, they are a great tool to use for writing on the board, and I can prepare some pretty cool lessons with interactive activities for the students. They are definitely a great thing to have in the classroom, but they do not require a whole lot of upper level thinking. Those districts that have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on them hoping to raise test scores are spending money in the wrong place. It’s kind of like paying for the dentist to fix a broken tooth when you really have a broken arm!
Even something as simple as a calculator, if not used to make a student think, is a waste of that student’s time. What good is the knowledge of how to graph a line if the student has no idea how this knowledge can be applied to life?
What we need to do is carefully evaluate each lesson we do and make sure that we are pushing student to think with each one. Technology, if used correctly, can help do this, and it does so in a manner that truly engages the mind.
Engagement is another word that is used loosely in education. Oftentimes, student engagement is recognized as a teacher who has a class full of students looking at the board or projector screen. As long as no one is sleeping then the class is engaged.
That is not what an engaged learner looks like. An engaged learner is thinking and then acting on what they have learned. Even better, they take some information or knowledge from the teacher and then run with it. They are engaged in their own learning because they want to. They want to use their new found knowledge and come to understand it on their own terms. This is learning, and technology can help students achieve this kind of learning when they are allowed to.
I guess my point here is that we need to make sure we are using the tools we have to their fullest potential. In these days of high stakes testing. we cannot afford not to.
I think you are probably right about much of this. I am a SmartBoard fan, but I find it a much better recording tool than a presentation tool. If someone asks a question about how to properly punctuate ‘however’ and ‘therefore,’ the explanation I give can be saved, dispersed and used as a reference.
With the math example, I can see the point you are making, but there is a value to pure mathematics — the technology we use would be impossible without it, but the complexity of that connection is impossible to pack into a word problem.
Good point on the math. I know that the pure math is important, but how much of the general population is going to use it. Now, this is not to say that it is a waste of time to learn higher math. I figure any learning is good and expands the mind and helps a person think better, but we also need to focus on what is going to be helpful for the future of our students. I just get tired of walking past classes, math is one subject but not the only one, and seeing students sitting there looking at the clock. I want to see students engaged in learning.
Great post, as always! You’re right — technology, in and of itself, doesn’t automatically help kids learn. We still need to keep an eye on all the pedagogy and best practices that we know work. Technology just makes it easier to utilize those best practices.
For example, brain research shows that students learn better and retain more when they learn through creating and through multi-media — technology shines in both of these areas. In fact, technology lets students create multi-media. What could be better?
Lastly, I’d say that aside from engagement and best practices, technology integration does one other thing that nothing else can do. It teaches students how to use the technology to learn. Teachers often tell me that they can engage and teach students without tech integration, which is true. But most of our students simply don’t know how to use the technology effectively. And in the 21st century job market, those students WILL be left behind. It’s our job to get them ready for the world.
I like your last point. Teachers always tell me that the students already know how to do everything on the computer, but I now know that most don’t know how to do much more than access their Facebook and add pictures. The majority of students aren’t proficient, but they want to learn. The cool thing is that once they learn a little about an app, they figure it out real quick and then find new and cool ways us it. Their brains are definitely wired to work with technology if we allow them to do so.
Technology is an important facet in learning…not only for students…it can help everyone.
I totally agree!
great ideas, i am a middle school student and a lot of times i find myself in math class having trouble just keeping my head from flopping down on the desk in boredom. She uses the projector and turns off the lights as we stay in our desks and explains the quadratic equation etc. It makes it hard to learn because you arn’t involved in what you are doing. Just the projector and her explanations are not enough. I want to be involved in the classroom, using the fun technology that goes hand and hand with my generation. That would help.