Technology Moving Into Schools

In the fast paced, technology filled life of today, there is much debate about technology moving into schools. Some schools want to do away with paper and textbooks entirely, but some believe using technology will come at a cost, and not just the price tag. Many middle and high school students are being introduced to the idea of replacing textbooks with tablets; however, tablets are causing multitasking and attention problems, changing the way people learn, causing distractions, and causing health problems. First of all, tablets are causing attention problems in students, as well as leading to the issue of multitasking, while the textbooks aren’t. For example, Matt Richtel, an American writer and journalist for The New York Times, quoted
For example, Terry Heick, a former English teacher in Kentucky, stated,“Because we’re so busy, we have this false security that we understand something because we Googled it. Now we’re moving on to the next thing instead of really rolling around with this idea and trying to understand it” (Yun Tan Paragraph 32). By this, Heick is saying that people are only scratching the surface with the depth of our thinking, instead of being critical thinkers. Critical thinking is the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgment. Another example is when Richtel stated in his article, Technology Changing How Students Learn, Teachers Say, that “But there is mounting indirect evidence that constant use of technology can affect behavior, particularly in developing brains, because of heavy stimulation and rapid shifts in attention” (Richtel Paragraph 10). In this quote, Richtel is saying that new technology is changing behavior, especially in younger kids. Another example is from Nicholas Carr, the author of Is Google Making Us Stupid?, when he stated, “My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski” (Carr Paragraph 4). This quote is an excellent example of how tablets are changing the learning process, a person searches for something in Google and in a few seconds their question is answered and they’re already doing something else, no deep thought is put into it. In contrast, some people believe that tablets aren’t changing the way people think. For example, Steven Pinker, who wrote Mind Over Mass Media, stated in his article, “Yes, every time we learn a fact or skill the wiring of the brain changes; it’s not as if the information is stored in the pancreas. But the existence of neural plasticity does not mean the