Relationship with Technology

Today's Technology; 

Should We Have It In Our Classrooms? 

    From as far back as I can remember I have had technology around me, of course not as advanced as it is now. I grew up watching movies in the living room, playing Barbie games on my grandpa's laptop, and eventually got my first tablet and phone. Technology has been integrated in my school since elementary school with smart boards, iPads, and chrome books replacing white boards, textbooks, and notebooks. This has me thinking though, because I'm so used to all of theses things do I realize the effects it has had on me and society? Let's talk more about it! 

Just like everything else technology has it's pros and cons, Grand Canyon University wrote an article about the benefits that technology in the classroom bring, while ViewSonic wrote one about the disadvantages. Some of the positives are that it can increased student engagement, productivity, automation, and creativity. Some of the negatives are that technology can distract students, costs money, and students will have less face to face interactions. 

Teacher's can benefit from using interactive programs and websites to keep kids engaged and motivated, I have seen first hand how kids of all ages really light up during Kahoots. Technology allows students to access information or resources that they otherwise wouldn't have, kids with learning disabilities or younger kids use digital resources for reading, writing, and spelling. Technology also helps teachers with grading and keeping track of assignments, planing, and contacting students, and visa versa for students. Online classes are a great way to learn new ways to express yourself weather it's with a video you're making, music, or an art piece. Teacher's are able to use online classes to come up with new and more engaging ways to teach students. 

Having technology in the classroom can be great but there are the downsides to providing young kids with screens everyday. Technology when given to a student without constant supervision can be very distracting, students can leave the actual program they need to be using to do something more fun. My school had iPads provided to students during class time and many of us would just watch YouTube, play online games, or take pictures of each other. As we got older we were allowed to use our personal phones or devices but that increased the goofing off, we would go onto Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok and just clear it out when the teacher came by. Even with the school's Wifi banning apps students will always find a way around it. 

Students will also experience less face to face interactions with one another. The lack of personal connections and constantly looking at screens will have a long term effect on these students and young kids, we saw this in full effect when everyone came out of lockdown. After months of talking to loved ones and classmates through the screen we found a disconnect from the world. With our teens, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics found a 31 percent increase in mental health emergency calls and that teens mental health worsened during the pandemic. During a study, they concluded that 42 percent of women's time awake was spent alone and 58 percent of men's time awake was spent alone. We are seeing the effects in young children as well, National Institutes of Health (NIH) found that there was an increase in developmental delays, learning disabilities, and behavioral disorders. Was this caused from isolation or from screen time? 

There have been countless articles on how excessive screen time is effecting our children and their development. The Hanen Centre has an article breaking down studies on toddlers and their screen time's affect on their communication skills, those who were exposed to more handheld screen time were more likely to have delayed expressive language skills. Studying over a thousand children under the age of two they found that children who watched more videos said fewer words, for each hour losing an average of six to eight words. The NIH surveyed over 100 thousand children aged between 0 and 17 year olds and found that 70.3 percent of preschoolers and 80.2 percent of adolescents had excessive screen time. Excessive screen time has been positively associated with behavioral and developmental problems, higher odds in boys and children 5 and under. 

Mountain Vista Psychology talks about more health conditions that can be caused by too much screen time. Technology before bed has been linked to less hours and lower quality of sleep, attributes to the obesity in children, and disrupts the circadian rhythm. Sleep is very important for everybody as it helps our body's regain energy and work properly, blue light has been proven to have an effect on the body's natural way of producing melatonin. When one's circadian rhythm is disrupted or broken you may have difficulty staying awake during the day, frequently getting sick, and have trouble staying asleep at night. Sleep helps the mind and body stay healthy, lack of sleep may cause anxiety, irritability, and depression. The hyper-arousal being caused by giving a developing child a screen can short- circuit the frontal lobe, this leads to more tantrums, anxiety, and potentially short- term memory loss. 

Moving back to the topic at hand after discussing in detail of the negatives I will say my conclusion. As helpful as screen in the classroom can be, I strongly believe in school continuing to rely on paper and physical assignments. Kids are now always on their devices and school is a place for not just academic learning but as well as socially. We are seeing many parents co- pilot parent their own children with overstimulating videos, putting an iPad in their kids hands instead of helping them regulate and understand what they are feeling. Connecting with peers your own age, playing outside, and using their hand to create, write, and build will help expand their minds more than any device. 

As fun as Kahoot and CoolMath were, I remember my favorite assignments were posters, arts and crafts, and being able to see the science projects close and hands on. Technology is a super helpful resource that we have available to use but our reliance and "need" for it has gotten out of hand. Allowing kids to be kids and play in dirt, cry when they're upset, and creating things with their hands is one step in the right direction. Kids are our future and if we want to be a better society we should fry their frontal lobes before they even get a chance to use it.