Technology in School

Technology in School

In the past few years technology has advance rapidly and has reached people all over the world. It is used every day by everyone. Whether it is at work, at home, or school, everyone has some type of access to technology and might even use it without knowing. Doctors need it, police officers need it, lawyers need it, engineers need it, teachers need it, students need it, basically everyone needs it, but yet still some teachers are against its use by students. Who can judge them? Some students don’t use technology appropriately. But there are other students, like myself, that need and use technology according to the schools guidelines.
Students at Empire High School (Source A) have started out the year with no text books. Instead, the school issued a laptop computer to each of their students because they believe that the electronic materials will get students more engaged in learning. I personally believe that this won’t only help them learn, but it will also make life easier for them. For example, simple technologic electronics such as a calculator is a great help for students when they need assistance in subjects like math. This helps student work faster, better, and most of the time they are able to get their work correct the first time. But this is a problem for students that get used to using calculators because they are not able to answer a simple math question given by their teacher. I also believe that schools or teachers should allow students to use technology because technology will benefit a student in different aspects of their life. For example, if there is a student that has all honor classes, they are most likely to carry several books for each class and will probably have to spend a lot of money in those books if he was a college student. Now, if that student was allowed to take and use eBooks in class, it would help him prevent future back pains from the weight of those books, it will save the student and their parents a lot of money because they could buy all the eBooks needed at the fraction of the price of a regular text book and it will all be stored in one small personal electronic device.
Technology also has its dark side, it is taking control over society but it is mostly affecting students. As we can see in the picture (Source F), it is getting harder and harder to be able to communicate with students because they now live inside their own box or in their little world. A real life example is when a student is sitting in classroom listening to loud music going directly into his ears; he gets disconnected with the outside world because he can’t hear anything that’s going on around him, and specially, he can’t hear the lesson that teacher might be giving or anything that teacher is saying to him. This is something that teachers get upset with, because that student is not only hurting himself by not paying attention. He is also hurting students around him that get distracted by the cacophonous sounds that come out from the students headphones. I can say that I have once been in a situation like that and I had asked myself of why some teachers allow students like that use their electronic device. In that type of situation, students should be deprived from the use of technology and teachers should think twice about what electronics they let their students use.
No matter how you look at it, schools should not evaluate whether technology should be used or not in them. Technology in schools is the way to go for the benefit of teachers and students. Whether the school decides to allow certain technology or not, will depend on the maturity level of their students and the use they give it.