Gone are the days where teachers used to write and erase on a chalkboard. Over the course of time, Horizon along with other schools have been quietly snuffing out old school styles of teaching for new technology based learning. It’s from this that the possibility of students not being able to work due to problems with their chromebooks, or teachers being unable to give lessons due to sites like Schoology being down for maintenance has risen dramatically. It’s because of this overreliance on technology that allows for a malfunction in the internet be it a thunder strike or some other disturbance to completely shut down a school. Does technology actually help education?
Chromebooks have become an everyday piece of technology that students have to bring to school to get their work done. While they enable students to quickly reach out for information on the internet via Google and other sites, they aren’t exactly the most durable pieces of equipment. Cheryl Johannsen, the Horizon Media Technician explains “The majority of actual broken ones are broken screens. The screens on the chromebooks are very easily broken, and it’s not because students are careless. You can put a pencil in and just shut it and it’ll shatter the screen.” Another issue with the chromebooks is that due to the fact that Adams 12 has banned certain websites such as YouTube, which inadvertently barred students from accessing research they otherwise would have acquired.
Alecia Wilder, a counselor at Horizon commented, “I think there is an educational component to Youtube that was probably pretty helpful for students and teachers. I know as a counselor we could’ve shown how to use common app and how to write a good essay with it.” While YouTube might be the biggest example, there are also plenty of other smaller sites which the district has banned that could’ve been used for learning. This causes others to bring up the question of how functional chromebooks are as a school tool.
After using technology for a certain period of time, one might begin to question how teachers along with administrators who have worked with education for such a long time compare modern usage of technology to how it was like in the past. Assistant Principal at Horizon Terra Paul explained, “I do think we’ve become over-reliant on technology and if we take a step back from it some of our mental health issues would go away. Just the exposure that kids have to all things that maybe they shouldn’t have at such a young age that they do have is all because of technology.” It’s for these reasons that Paul also believes that phones should be prohibited from schools, since they only provide a distraction to kids in class who could instead be using it for learning.
There’s also the possibility that the internet randomly decides to go out during the school day, completely prohibiting the ability for students and teachers to work as they normally do. Kelly Parpovic, a counselor at Horizon commented, “Today it came up that IC and the internet was down district wide, definitely making it interesting to try and do work and find ways to do such work and realize that everything has been tied to the internet.” Internet errors can happen at essentially any time, so it’s theoretically possible for students who have to do their finals, which are very important sections of their grade, to be no longer available to access.
Technology has become such a vital part to the school education system that it may feel strange to some that it wasn’t like this 15 years ago. Teachers having to flip through hundreds of papers and grading them in red pen has almost entirely been replaced with the ability to put scores into Infinite Campus and have it sent out on a website.
Kids in the modern era are able to get away with cheating more than any other previous generation due to having access to any information that they want from the technology they’re given. It’s for these reasons that it’s important for schools like Horizon to understand that only a combination of both traditional education and the modern advancement in technology can lead to the best environment for student growth.
