PRO Points to Ponder

Megan and Brittney did an amazing job neatly outlining key advantages of technology in the classroom:

–Access to information and resources: A plethora of our textbooks are ridiculously priced while comically outdated. And with time, our colonizer roots show brightly against the backdrop of historical inaccuracies. Online updated information has a clear advantage in staying current when it’s well-sourced. Arguably, both the outdated textbooks and the (sometimes questionably sourced) online resources provide teachable moments in classrooms. Teachers, however, have to be trained and ready for those moments when they come….and they always do!

–Increases engagement and skills for success: Hands-on, interactive content is available for the next generation of learners via 1:1 laptops, Smart and Promethean boards, VR, 3D printers, gamifying, coding, robotics, the list is ever-growing.  Of course, that’s IF your school has the funding for such things (a point I’ll get to….eventually in Part 2).

–Promotes collaboration and communication: Watching students enthusiastically collaborate while coding instructions for their battle-bots remains a career highlight for me. Without clear collaboration and communication, their bots lose…repeatedly. It’s a resilient mindset of lose, learn, lose, learn, win (maybe)!

–Restructures teacher time: In the article Teaching in a Digital Age: How Educators Use Technology to Improve Student Learning, Journal of Research on Technology in Education, the researchers note: “When students ask questions, rather than providing answers, [teachers] now guide them to find and identify relevant information, and to evaluate the quality and validity of that information. For students, the shift was toward active, deeper learning, which aligned well with skills students need to be successful in college and the workplace.” Honestly, who can say it better than that?

–Adaptations/accommodations: Who knows more about adaptations than students and educators these past few years? How would we have navigated learning in a pandemic without technology? Paper packages sent home (printed on photocopiers….cough, cough, technology!) and occasional teacher-student phone calls (old tech, but still tech). Not to mention, assistive technologies provide a host of accommodations for diverse learning styles and abilities, as well as visual and hearing impairments…..I could go on…

CON Points to Ponder

Again, you’ll think I bet all my money on PRO, but Daryl and Nicole brought up many clear issues I have battled over the course of my (almost) 3-year online career:

–Connections are artificial: Personally, I would argue that the relationships I have built with my online students, and students with each other, are anything but artificial.  As I sit in my lonely corner office and my isolated students in their homes, our relationships seem like lifelines to a greater world. It is worth noting, however, that these online relationships are mindfully and meaningfully tended. As mentioned by Nicole and Daryl, student presence on social media accounts can often be interpreted as surface-level and disingenuous.

–Erodes social skills and relationships: First off, there’s a lot of experience in the “Zoom-room” during these debates. Despite logistical and career differences amongst our class, there seemed a general consensus that student social skills, particularly face-to-face interactions, are increasingly….aaaawkward! From behind our masks and screens, have we forgotten how to interact? After some deep-diving (using tech, of course), there’s a surprising lack of longitudinal data to back up the idea that screen-time equals social incompetencies. I shouldn’t say, however, that initial studies have been favourable. Calgary psychologist Sheri Madigan, PhD, tested over 24000 mothers/infants and “found that more time per week spent on screens at ages 24 months and 36 months was linked with poorer performance on screening tests for behavioral, cognitive and social development at 36 months” (JAMA Pediatrics, Vol. 173, No. 3, 2019). Speaking of which…

–Pulls students away from the outside world: My comments here are purely anecdotal, but I cannot abide by family meal times centering on……screens! Mom texting, dad on an “important” call, and the kidlets, tweens, and teens distracted by their tablets and apps. If that’s the focus at home, what takes precedence at school? Unless educational technology is used mindfully in the classroom, and just as mindfully stored away, will the habitual hit of dop(amine) screen time always beckon our students to their digital world? And what is the “real world” anymore, anyway? These are the questions that keep me up at night (and your insights are most welcome)!

–Tech is connected to a plethora of other health, mental and emotional issues: Obesity, sleep issues, anxiety/depression, socioeconomic disparities, limited attention spans….each one of these concerns is worthy of its own post (and does, in fact, take centre-stage in millions of research papers, books, podcasts…you get the idea). All signs point me to one main takeaway from this debate…