A recent survey from PBS Learning Media reported that three-quarters of American grades pre-K-12 teachers believe that technology in school has positive benefits on education.
Differing opinions on whether educational technology is beneficial to learning in the classroom may primarily lie in a person’s fundamental opinion about technology in general.
For example, one common opinion is that the increased exposure to technology is shortening our children’s attention spans. One could also argue that attention spans haven’t been shortened, but merely shifted to something else. For example, the same child who doesn’t have the patience for reading a book for an hour may have no problem completing a word game on the computer for that same amount of time.
The question then perhaps, shouldn’t be whether it is more or less beneficial to have technology in the classroom. Instead, we could be asking and encouraging educators to find creative ways of integrating technology into the classroom to facilitate learning.
According to Atsusi Hirumi, Associate Professor of Instructional Design and Technology at the University of Central Florida, research shows that technology itself has little relevance on increasing learning – it is the design of the instruction that causes the most variance on learning.
When used effectively, technology has a number of documented, positive outcomes. It can facilitate active participation with information as opposed to passively receiving info from a teacher or textbook. Studies show that students retain information better when engaged interactively. Tools such as blogs and YouTube can facilitate that and over great distances and across cultures.
Many teachers have seen technology open new doors in ways that weren’t always possible for children with learning disabilities or students who previously had little interest in academics. Used as a resource to personalize education, technology can be a powerful tool.
Today there is a thin line between engagement and drowning in the virtual world. It would be irresponsible to ignore worries about technology. Is too much screen time taking away from children’s motor skills, social skills, and other “life skills”?
However valid these worries may be, the potential for technology to increase learning in the classroom are seen in ways that were never before possible. In the end, the answer to whether technology is good for learning may have little to do with the technology itself, rather more dependent upon the teacher behind it.
