Last updated on February 22, 2020
This MIT Technology Review piece by Natalie Wexler titled How classroom technology is holding students back discussed how technology fails to help students in learning. As an educator who uses technology extensively for learning, I disagree with the view of the piece and I wish to discuss the view of the author.
In a first grade classroom I visited a few years ago, most of the six-year olds were using iPads or computer. They were working independently on math problems supposedly geared to their ability, while the teacher worked separately with a small group.
Six year olds are students who just embarked on the lifelong journey of learning. Most of them have little learning skills, and teachers are essential to ensure that they picked up both the necessary content and skills needed. It is not appropriate to hand the children the devices and expect that the first-graders to suddenly get it.
This is what I feel is holding back technology in class. Many educators and administrators have little ideas how technology can help the students. What’s worse is the idea that technology can replace the teachers in class. The most common outcome of such mentality is creating online courses and getting students to work through the lesson content and completing a list of online questions that are, usually but not always, multiple choice questions. This seems to be the case that the Wexler is observing. She described a question that required students to combine 3 and 8. Then it followed that there are questions to round 119 to the nearest ten and Find the area of the following triangle. The last two questions do not seem to belong to a first grade curriculum. She rightly suggested that the students may not understand the concept of round, area and square units. This suggested that the teacher who created the resource, or the vendor who provided the resource, did not prepare them according to the cognitive competency of target students.
Eighth graders who took Algebra I online did much worse than those who took the course in person…
This shows that the test was more about comparing one online course against dynamic living teachers, who no doubt would be able to adjust the pace and delivery according to the classroom situations. There are many factors in play here to conclude whether technology is really affecting learning in a negative way. How are the online courses delivered? How relevant and comprehensive were the online contents? How were the students learning online summatively assessed? It is also important to understand that eight-grade students who had spent years in a traditional classroom setting and assessed after taking an online courses is not a conclusive test.
A flipped college math class resulted in short-term gains for white students, male students, and those who were already strong in math. Others saw no benefit, with the result that performance gaps became wider.
The article’s premise on technology in education is that technology is not a replacement for teachers. I would certainly agree on that perspective. Many evidences quoted in the article are however, technology implemented badly that are causing the negative impact. Some statements, like above, seems to have an inherent bias towards technology. How is the gain of students strong in math categorised as short-term while no benefit by others is ignored? I would think that conducting a flipped class resulting in gain for strong students and no improvement in others, is considered an overall improvement. We could investigate further the factors that are causing the others for not improving. It was definitely a good start given that average and weak students did not fare worse in the assessment after learning through a different paradigm.
Maybe it can deliver instruction better than a human being in some circumstances. But if the material it’s delivering is flawed or inadequate, or presented in an illogical order, it won’t provide much benefit.
Ultimately, if the content is mediocre, technology will not provide much benefit.
In the later part of the article, Wexler seems to take on the view that technology needs to be implemented in the right way to reap its benefits.
Videos and audio recordings can help bring topics to life or give kids access to texts they would struggle to read for themselves. Online textbooks can be easily updated. Math software could be used to facilitate debate between students who arrive at different answers to the same problem. Technology can also enable motivated, gifted students who might be bored in class to race ahead of their peers or take online lessons that aren’t taught at their school.
This is how technology should be understood. We should not try to replace teachers with technology. Rather, we should leverage the affordances of technology in suitable ways to enhance learning.