Technology in Education

[ub3rman123]

I'm not sure if I'd trust the kids in school with laptops. Where I am, people regularly smash screens, snap off CD drives, and break off keys on the keyboard out of boredom. The best policy for this might be, "If you want a laptop, bring your own." Right now my school doesn't allow us to bring in our own laptops because they think they'll be distracting or get stolen. But if you bring your own in, you don't have to worry about you breaking it out of boredom or on purpose.

[Genzel]

My school is constantly trying to keep up with technology and use less and less paper. In many classes the teacher still writes out notes, but the school is always spending money on new ways of integrating technology.

 

I firmly believe that students should still take notes by hand; you just can't absorb the information the same way by typing. People learn all different ways, but no one learns adequately when they aren't processing the information and re-organizing it themselves. A good mix of technology while the students still take written notes would be ideal in my opinion. Cutting back on paper use, especially for organizational purposes is great, but I think people learn best when working with something more tangible.

[evilneko]

I'm thinking you haven't seen enough classrooms if you think #3 doesn't exist. ;)

 

I think there are subjects that lend themselves well to use of technology by both students and teachers, and there are those that don't. Tech should be used where it provides a benefit, not just because it can be used.

 

The various maths, for instance, do not lend themselves easily to computerized note-taking. However, computerized presentation by the instructors can be very helpful. Imagine a math teacher working with a "smartboard" -- a sort of computerized whiteboard -- he/she can carry on writing his problems on the board just like on a chalkboard, but instead of erasing previous material when he needs more room, he can hit a button and have that stuff saved in a buffer that can easily be recalled if a student gets behind or he needs to refer back to it for any reason. That would be pretty awesome and is possible with today's tech (I've seen boards like that, they're very cool). A much cheaper method of accomplishing the same thing is the projector/camera device they have in most classrooms at my college, though that limits the instructor's space to how much the camera can see and the size of a sheet of paper.

 

Highly academic subjects such as law and literature would benefit from both teacher and student use, as it's pretty easy to not only take notes electronically but study electronic material (powerpoints, books in PDF, etc) without really losing much. (Hell I took the lecture section of my Biology II and Macroeconomics courses online, spent the entire time reading a book converted into a webpage. Actually, I wish college textbooks came with a free electronic copy, I'm much more comfortable reading on the computer for some reason)

 

At the pre-college level much of the same applies, but to prevent students wandering off onto the internet, the school network should either block student computers from the internet completely, or operate a whitelist based on teacher-requests.

 

All that said I dread going into a class and having the instructor say "no laptops." My note-taking and learning has become so computer-centric that I now pretty much depend on being able to take notes electronically, and struggle with a class when I can't.