While research in this area is still new and limited, information and communication technologies continue to be touted by developers, businesses, and educators alike for their potential in the classroom. And not without reason. Michael Rich asserts that kids are taught by all media they use, inside and outside the classroom, including video games and social media (ctd. in Dakin, 2014). The line between education and entertainment is blurry. Because kids use technology for recreational purposes, using it in the classroom is often emotionally engaging and perceived as more relevant. YouTube alone—when used effectively—can grab students' attention and motivate them, improve classroom discussion of an issue, provide ‘real-life’ experiences and authentic/expert voices, reach multiple intelligences, increase memory (through the auditory and visual combination), and be used to view simulations, collaborate, and practice digital citizenship (Education 4391, 2014).
From an administrative standpoint, using technology enables educators to meet Inspiring Education’s Cross-Curricular Competencies. Clearly, we can’t teach Digital Literacy without using digital technology, but it also assists with Lifelong Learning, Self-Direction and Personal Management. Technology extends both the walls of the classroom and the hours of the school day by enabling students to learn any place, any pace, any time. Some self-directed online programs allow students to monitor their learning against set criteria and identify lagging skills, which contributes to greater metacognition—a key to lifelong learning (Tapscott, 2009, p. 140). Students might also use an online environment in which to develop an e-portfolio that will showcase their learning from K-12 and beyond. When this data is centralized and made available to teachers, they are better able to keep tabs on where students are at and so adapt their lessons or teaching strategies. These self-directed online programs, also known as adaptive learning systems, may also provide welcome relief for students “frustrated with working in a group setting, or having to negotiate the diversity of a public school setting,” or for those who are “struggling academically or irritated by the pace of learning in schools” (McRae, 2013). To this, we might add the benefit of assistive technologies designed to accommodate students with exceptional needs. And even if students are working in greater isolation, as Rich notes, social media can be a place for isolated kids to connect and find community (as qtd. in Dakin, 2014).
Technology facilitates the other Competencies as well. Tapscott (2009) asserts that technology can be used to help education become more student-centred, more interactive and discovery-based, more suited to the student’s learning style, and more collaborative (p. 122). Wikis, blogs, YouTube, Skype, and other collaboration tools enable students to construct and share knowledge with each other, whether they are in the same class or across the globe, and peer-to-peer sharing can promote high engagement and learning (Ibid. pp. 137-138). Cross-cultural interactions can also promote empathy, as it gives kids a chance to interact with and know people who are different from them. While Tapscott doesn’t use the term ‘flipped classroom,’ he describes taking a course in which he could review the material and test himself online, and then receive face-to-face time with the instructor. Virtual classrooms hosted on websites that link to online readings and instructional videos make it possible for teachers to assign for homework what would have otherwise involved in-class reading and listening. They can spend class time doing hands-on, problem- or project-based, collaborative, student-led learning. Web 2.0 participatory tools and the Internet also promote learning-by-tinkering in a social and virtual context (Ibid. p. 135). Multiuser virtual environments (MUVE) enable students—via simulation and inquiry—to pose and pursue meaningful questions about the world, past, present, and future (Ibid.). Truly, technology makes it possible to learn 24/7 wherever a screen is available.
Impact on Students’ Development
Technology has incredible potential to enrich students’ learning in school and to promote life-long learning, but using it also has costs—besides the obvious financial spending required. Increased technology use almost always means decreased time outdoors, which tends to be one of parents’ biggest concerns, aside from online predators. Kids play outdoors fifty percent less than they did in the late 1970s (Juster et al., as ctd. in McRae, 2013). This “nature deficit disorder,” as Richard Louv calls it, is connected to depression, ADHD, obesity, and decreases in cognitive development and executive functioning (as ctd. in Dakin, 2014). The more we use technology, the worse off our brains and bodies seem to be, which is perhaps why people try multitasking: using technology while engaged in another activity.
Unfortunately, multitasking is a recipe for disaster. We end up in a state of “continuous partial attention” in which our “working memory gets overwhelmed and makes mistakes”—mistakes which sometimes result in safety hazards, like walking into lampposts (Stone, as ctd. in Anderssen, 2014). Gary Small associates this state of “continuous partial attention” with our taste for new information, and warns that our tendency to jump from website to website looking for quick answers is actually rewiring our brains. Considering that teens are developing their frontal lobes, Small is worried that, by using too much technology, they may not learn to read social cues, think deeply, or consider the big picture (Anderssen, 2014). McRae (2013) is concerned that kids using customized learning systems may come to believe that the world adapts to them, making them less able to recover from adversity. Likewise, students’ critical thinking will be significantly hampered as they are more able to “access the information they want at any time, place or pace through a variety of devices” and are “increasingly fed only the exact type of information … and sources … to which they digitally subscribe” (McRae, 2013). Many teens also multitask with technology, using multiple devices at once, which contribute to about eleven hours of screen time per day (Dakin, 2014). Of the Moncton teens Pauline Dakin interviewed, one doesn’t use social media for fear of her ability to focus, and another suggested she “should probably cut down,” as if were a bad habit or addiction (Dakin, 2014). This begs the question: are the students engaged in learning through technology, or are they simply addicted?
Neema Moraveji, director of the Calming Technology Lab at Stanford University, effectively compares some technology use to gambling, reporting that checking social media can be “energizing and mood-boosting. We get a rush – what scientists have called a ‘dopamine squirt’ – when anticipating the contents of a potentially juicy e-mail, much like pulling the arm on a slot machine” (as ctd. in Anderssen, 2014). But just as feeding a drug addiction degrades mental and physical health, so being connected to social media 24/7 (what researchers at King’s College Institute of Psychiatry in London call “unchecked infomania”) is linked to depression, eating disorders, and a temporary 10-point drop in the IQ, ironically double that of marijuana users (Anderssen, 2014).
If that’s not enough, when searching the web or checking email, people exhibit what Linda Stone calls “e-mail or screen apnea”: they subconsciously “take shorter breaths, or hold their breath entirely, restricting oxygen to their brain” (Anderssen, 2014). An expression of the flight-or-fight response, screen apnea can lead to “long-term stress and its potential risks: teeth-grinding, diabetes, heart disease and depression” (Anderssen, 2014). While sleep is often the prescription for stress, technology impairs this as well.
Screen time is cutting into sleep, which is a major factor in student performance. Many teens interviewed by Dakin (2014) reported getting somewhere between two and eight hours of sleep, as opposed to the nine to ten hours recommended. They would stay up late to check (often trivial) social media updates or would have their sleep interrupted by text message notifications. Nocturnal screentime decreases sleep quality and quantity, as well as kids’ readiness to learn (Howard-Jones and Rich, as ctd. in McRae, 2013). From my previous studies in fatigue management, I know that this is primarily because exposure to light inhibits the release of melatonin, a hormone essential for inducing sleep. Chronic fatigue is linked to obesity, depression, irritability, decreased reaction time and inability to focus, compounding the effects of both stress and technology use. Students may even be taking frequent microsleeps in class, unrecognizable to themselves or teachers.
Socially, teens feel they are unable to log off, are afraid of missing something, find themselves occupied looking at random things, and fear being unable to respond to emergencies or to reach out to others if they are in crisis. Their phones are amulets, providing safety and connection (Turkle, 2011). They’re also under tremendous pressure to keep up their online appearances (Turkle, 2011). Students’ social media profiles, along with the likes, tweets, and comments entrenched in such systems, are a primary source of self-worth and identity creation. Adolescents need safe spaces to experiment with identity, and, while some teens continue to post provocative photos and status updates, many more understand the Internet as their permanent record, and fear sharing (or having others share) anything because it can easily be saved, copied, edited, pasted, and broadcast anonymously (Turkle, 2011, pp. 256-257). While the media tell us that teens are savvy tech users, Turkle (2011) also finds that they don’t actually understand the ins and outs of privacy, surveillance, and protection online. Restless and confused about life online, many teens resign themselves to anonymity, which has perils of its own. Rushkoff (2010) observes that online anonymity engenders mob mentality and incivility, encourages dehumanization of participants, and promotes lack of empathy and remorse for having wronged someone. For all the benefits technology provides, we must promote responsible use.
Proposed Technology Policy
The difficulty in creating a technology policy (as I found when attempting to create a fatigue management practice in my previous job) is that technology’s effects are so pervasive and so strong that responsible use requires a lifestyle change. People change when they have enough information and incentive (usually discomfort or fear of some kind) to do so. Ideally, the school will provide both to staff, students, and their parents in the form of workshops, literature, meetings, and initiatives (such as a student-led tech-lifestyle club designed to raise awareness of technology’s impact on students, as well as how to use technology to enhance learning, collaborate, and create). Lifestyle discussions need to be worked into the Digital Citizenship curriculum. I propose the following as a starting point.
We, the staff and students of Hypothetical Affluent Middle School commit to:
- Valuing wisdom over information
- Valuing resilience over convenience
- Valuing relationship over customization
- Valuing face-to-face interactions over texting
- Valuing community over anonymity
- Valuing focus over multi-tasking
- Valuing deep breathing over list-making
- Valuing critical thinking over mindless surfing
- Valuing creation over consumption
- Valuing being in the moment over being digitally connected
- Valuing rest over stress-pride
- Valuing free play over workaholism
- Valuing movement and time in nature
- Valuing moderation and autonomy to determine what that means
- Valuing the freedom to let go and just be
References
Anderssen, E. (2014, March 29). Digital overload: How we are seduced by distraction. Globe and Mail. Retrieved from http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/relationships/digital-overload-how-we-are-seduced-by-distraction/article17725778/
Dakin, P. (2014, February 20). Re-Wiring Our Kids. Atlantic Voice. Retrieved from http://www.cbc.ca/player/Radio/Local+Shows/Maritimes/Atlantic+Voice/ID/2438446358/
Education 4391 - YouTube in the Classroom. (2014). Additional Information. Retrieved from http://ed4391presentation.weebly.com/additional-information.html
McRae, P. (2013, April 14). Rebirth of the Teaching Machine through the Seduction of Data Analytics: This Time It's Personal. Retrieved from http://www.philmcrae.com/2/post/2013/04/rebirth-of-the-teaching-maching-through-the-seduction-of-data-analytics-this-time-its-personal1.html
Rushkoff, D. (2010). Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age. Berkeley, CA: Soft Skull Press.
Tapscott, D. (2009). Grown Up Digital. New York, NY: McGraw Hill.
Turkle, S. (2011). Alone Together. New York, NY: Basic Books.