“After a highly successful experience in the renowned Special Education program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, you took a critical position with a school district seeking to accelerate technology and innovation throughout its classrooms. Midway through the year, a building principal has forwarded you an email from a concerned parent. The parent had just read an article from the Moving to Learn group titled “Ten reasons to NOT use technology in schools for children under the age of 12 years“, and is now concerned about the expanded use of technology in the school district. The principal and superintendent would like you to provide a significant and meaningful response.”
Dear concerned parent,
I understand why you may be feeling torn about the use of technology in your child’s classroom after reading this article. However, I feel as though there are many points made within it that I can change your view on. Before the article even begins to list the ten reasons not to use technology, it states as follows:
“Four critical factors for enhancing child development, behaviour, and learning are movement, touch, connection, and nature. Technology stops children from engagement in these critical factors. Technology is sedentary, isolating, overstimulating, and results in child neglect, causing delays in child development, problematic and difficult to manage behaviours, as well as limited attention and learning ability.”
Through my experiences as a teacher and my research on new age technology, I have had similar concerns myself. However, I have come to discover that technology can actually be a great way to encourage children to get those critical factors.
The first critical factor, movement, is something that many adults misconstrue as something that is used only when a child is stationary. However, there are many games and activities that schools are now incorporating into their programs and gym class is one of them. Here, you can see one P.E. teacher discuss how beneficial it has been since adding the use of technology into his classrooms.
Touch and Connection are things that can also now be demonstrated in the classroom using technology.
The last factor, nature, is something that can even be experienced with something called an Occulus Rift. If you click here, you will see a video in which a man experiences the ocean as though he was there. The graphics may not have been perfected, but I strongly believe that within the next few years, it could great perspective to children on what life is like on the ocean floor, or other places that the child might not be able to go like Yellowstone National Park or the Peak of Mount Everest.
(1 & 2) In the article, the author says that technology is something that children don’t need. Although I agree they don’t necessarily need it, I know that it is something that could potentially open doors and make many more connections for the students. I would also like to point out that when the article says that there has not been “research evidence” on the subject, that is because we don’t have any. Technology in the classroom is something new that we have been trying. Digital age students have yet to reach full grown and explain their experiences with in class technology.
(3)I find it especially disturbing the the article considers technology to be something that causes high levels of radiation and believes it is something that will fry our children’s brain.”There is currently no consistent evidence that non-ionizing radiation increases cancer risk (1).” Cancer.gov states. Non-ionizing radiation is given off when WiFi or cellphones are in use. However, this has been studied and researched for years and there is no conclusive information that anyone has been able to put out about it causing caner.
(4) Another concern the article raised was that Pediatricians say that children should never be exposed to technology when they are young. However, I was raised using technology. At a young age I was taught to type on the computer and had been watching videos and playing games on the computer. Some of my best memories of learning involved such games like Reader Rabbit and Pajama Sam. Currently, there are many studies being done that suggest technology at a young age can be very beneficial to the growth and development of a child which makes me question how recent their data was.
(5 & 6) When many people think of technology, they think of children remaining still. This does not necessarily need to be the case. Active movement is something highly encouraged by leading specialists everywhere for the proper growth and development of students. I do not suggest taking away recess or P.E. to give more time for students to learn. I am certainly a supporter of giving students time to run around and explore. I would however, like to also point out that there are active technological games that have now been invented and can be incorporated into the classroom. I am very aware that anxiety is something that many students struggle with. I myself had it from a young age and was always very nervous at school when I was learning or with my peers. I was prone to panic attacks. Although this may not work for all students, there are certainly some times when getting to sit in the hallway and listen to music off of my IPod for 5 mins helped me a lot.
(7) Many teachers believe that the use of technology would make a classroom very difficult to manage. I, on the other hand, believe that if used correctly, technology could bring students together as a whole. There are many games which a class can play together which use electronics. There are also ways to monitor what all students are doing, so as to make sure they are on task.
(8) In some cases, yes technology has been considered highly addictive. This however, is only true if not taught properly. Teachers should always manage how much technology is used in a class, and how many learning games are played.
(9 & 10) As for “displacing the basics” and not being “sustainable”, I am actually very unsure what they mean by that. As we have learned throughout history, the first way is not always the right way. There are many times where we believed that teasing students for being “stupid” or a “dunce” would encourage them to work harder and punish them for not trying hard enough. Education will never stop advancing. Students are learning more and more every year due to our newest programs and practices. To take this away would be taking away all of the wonderful advances that we have made.
Overall, I really hope you reconsider the points within the article, and if you have anymore questions, please send me an email. I am always happy to discuss.
~Sleddingpenguin
sleddingpenguin 