At
the beginning of the school year in 2008, TC Williams High School started
teaching in a new $98 million building making it one of the most expensive high
schools ever built. Each room is
equipped with the latest technologies such as LED screen projectors. Teachers should be thrilled at this
opportunity; but then why aren’t they? According
to a former superintendant to the district stated that teacher moral is the
lowest and most negative it’s been in years because of a phenomenon known as “technolust”
which is a disorder affecting publicity-obsessed school administrators
nationwide that manifests itself in an insatiable need to acquire the latest
and supposed best computer gadgets out there regardless of their actual need.
Teachers
say that they are being forced to use these technologies even when they are not
the most productive. Math and science
teachers are being told they cannot use overhead projectors even though they
are very useful in getting concept and formulations across. Teachers were even given a $500 device that
underlines words on the boards that the teacher can control from anywhere in
the room. While convenient, it’s seen to
be more of an expensive gadget that caters to the lazy. It is also being seen as the steps moving
toward replacing teachers with cyborgs.
Students
report that their favorite teachers are the ones not using this
technology. They appreciate their
teacher’s energy and overall teaching style using the board and enthusiasm for
the topic. When it comes to each student
being given a laptop, it’s frustrating for the teachers to walk around and see
students surfing the web or playing video games. Even when they are on task, most of class
time is being spent downloading programs and waiting to connect to servers which
can lead to the students getting distracted along with wasting precious
learning time.
Response:
This
article was a very interesting read, especially in light of the positivity that
we have explored in having technology in our classrooms that can help aide
students. I agree that technology has its
place in the school setting, but there has to be a limit. By creating this all technological school, we
are asking our students not to be social and only learn from a screen, not
other actual humans. How would that
affect students through their development of being able to work with and learn
from other people; all of our answers do not come from a screen or the
internet. The social phenomenon from
this article speaks volumes to what we are going to ‘expecting’ from our
students one day; and apparently that is the ability to look at a screen and
know everything. The concept of a
classroom and working through education requires engagement in the task at hand
and not simply the task at keyboard.
I
understand wanting to have the new gadgets; why would they make new gadgets if
they were not better than before and did not enhance the students ability to
learn? But this is not always going to
be the case; it is also the idea that throwing money at an issue will make it
all better. We wouldn’t have invested so
much time and resources into getting students into schools to be taught by
teachers if it was as easy as flipping on a screen and letting students loose
on the material.
In
the article, it also talks about the school installing 126 security cameras in
the school. While safety is an issue,
there was no indication that safety had been an issue before and it seemed to
be more of a control issue for the school.
I would hope that they could only be used for safety reasons and not as
a ‘big brother’. That leaves students no
chance to explore and be individuals because they know they must conform to the
rules because they are being watched all the time.
APA Citation:
Welsh, P. (2008, February 10). A school that's too high on
gizmos. Washington post. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/08/AR2008020803271.html
No comments:
Post a Comment