If you graduated highschool before 2010, you’d probably find the notion of students carrying laptops into every class a bit of a reach. You might even be inclined to argue that laptops and cellphones in the classroom are nothing but distractions or devices used by students to either play on social media or cheat. But let’s be honest, students have always found ways to get distracted, zone out and plagiarize work with out the help of in-class digital devices. Heck, if you’re in your 30s and 40s you probably remember loading games like “drug wars” and “block dude” on to your TI 83 calculator and spacing out in Algebra 2. So it might seem a little odd these days to hear people lobby for every student to not only have a computer, but that it should be paid for by the local school district. But that’s exactly what I here to do.
Our students lives are already interlocked with the digital world wether we like it or not. They can’t go anywhere without being within an arms reach of a smart phone, or they may even have one strapped to their wrists in the form of a smart watch. According to the CDC students from 8 to 18 spend on average 6-9 hours in front of a screen. This can for a number of reasons such communicating with friends, play video games, or even doing homework. So we can’t ignore the fact that it only makes since that school address something which is such a large part of our students’ lives already.
Social media is often where people first get hung up with using digital platforms in the classroom. There is no dought that social media has a plethora of ills that seem to create a never ending cascade of negative effects, but this is where a growing number of our students and their parents get a majority of their information. So it only makes since that we bring social media platforms into the classroom where students can learn healthy ways to process the data they receive, regulate what information is fed to them, and how to communicate effectively.
That last point can not be stressed enough. Social media has radically transformed the way in which we as a society reach out to each other from text messaging, to digital art, and cross platform dialogs. All of these have increased the breath of people a student can, and do, talk to a daily basis. Some of these methods may be incredibly informal such as the texts we are all used to like “U up?” But they can also be incredibly well thought out and designed memes, gifs, and infographics which are distributed billions of times a day. Teaching students not only how to process these things, but how to make them is providing them with the valuable skills needed in our world today. Simply ignoring the practical implications of teaching students how to effectively create content and communicate on social media such a blogs, facebook, ticktock, and instagram is willful negligence as educators. Our students need these skills, and we can, and should provide them.
The second most common argument against computers is that they will prove to be a distraction. Again, students are as smart and clever as we were, and if they want to be distracted they will find ways to do so without a computer. The methods we already use for effective classroom management are the exact same methods we use in a digitized learning environment. Instead of saying “close your books and eye’s on the board,” you simply say “close your laptops.” When you would normally be monitoring student work, you continue to same. Plus, it’s generally very easy to tell when a student is looking at their screen a little to intently, or typing at time when it doesn’t quite make since to be taking notes.
In fact I would argue that computers are far more engaging than they are distracting. As teachers, we can provide our students with all sorts of new and diversified content reaching more students. They can watch videos, use interactive maps, create video logs of course content, make infographics which they can share with others on social media platforms, and even have discussions with other classrooms on the other side of the globe to gain the perspectives of their international peers. I did this last idea with two 4th grade classes, one in Vietnam and one in the rural USA, that absolutely loved being able to hear about other people from the other side of the globe. Far from being a distraction, student engagement sky rocketed as students individually sought out more ways to learn and connect with others.
If you graduated highschool before 2010, you’d probably find the notion of every student carrying laptops into every class a bit of a reach. You might even be inclined to argue that laptops and cellphones in the classroom are nothing but distractions or devices used by students to either play on social media or cheat. But let’s be honest, students have always found ways to get distracted, zone out and plagiarize work without the help of in-class digital devices. Heck, if you’re in your 30s and 40s you probably remember loading games like “drug wars” and “block dude” on to your TI 83 calculator and spacing out in Algebra 2. So it might seem a little odd these days to hear people lobby for every student to not only have a computer, but that it should be paid for by the local school district. But that’s exactly what I’m here to do.
Our students’ lives are already interlocked with the digital world whether we like it or not. They can’t go anywhere without being within an arm’s reach of a smartphone, or they may even have one strapped to their wrists in the form of a smart watch. According to the CDC students from 8 to 18 spend on average 6-9 hours a day in front of a screen. This can be for a number of reasons such as communicating with friends, playing video games, or even doing homework. So we can’t ignore the fact that it only makes sense that school addresses something which is such a large part of our students’ lives already.
Social media is often where people first get hung up with using digital platforms in the classroom. There is no doubt that social media has a plethora of ills that seem to create a never ending cascade of negative effects, but this is where a growing number of our students and their parents get a majority of their information. So it only makes sense that we bring social media platforms into the classroom where students can learn healthy ways to process the data they receive, regulate what information is fed to them, and how to communicate effectively.
That last point can not be stressed enough. Social media has radically transformed the way in which we as a society reach out to each other from text messaging, to digital art, and cross platform dialogs. All of these have increased the breath of people a student can, and do, talk to a daily basis. Some of these methods may be incredibly informal such as the texts we are all used to like “U up?” But they can also be incredibly well thought out and designed memes, gifs, and infographics which are shared billions of times a day. Teaching students not only how to process these things, but how to make them is providing them with the valuable skills needed in today’s world. Simply ignoring the practical implications of teaching students how to effectively create content and communicate on social media such as blogs, facebook, ticktock, and instagram is willful negligence as educators. Our students need these skills, and we can, and should provide them.
The second most common argument against computers is that they will prove to be a distraction. Again, students are as smart and clever as we were, and if they want to be distracted they will find ways to do so without a computer. The methods we already use for effective classroom management are the exact same methods we use in a digitized learning environment. Instead of saying “close your books and eyes on the board,” you simply say “close your laptops.” When you would normally be monitoring student work, you continue to do the same. Plus, it’s generally very easy to tell when a student is looking at their screen a little too intently, or typing at a time when it doesn’t quite make sense to be taking notes.
In fact I would argue that computers are far more engaging than they are distracting. As teachers, we can provide our students with all sorts of new and diversified content reaching more students. They can watch videos, use interactive maps, create video logs of course content, make infographics which they can share with others on social media platforms, and even have discussions with other classrooms on the other side of the globe to gain the perspectives of their international peers. I did this last idea with two 4th grade classes, one in Vietnam and one in rural USA, that absolutely loved being able to hear about other people from the other side of the globe. Far from being a distraction, student engagement skyrocketed as students individually sought out more ways to learn and connect with others.
Furthermore, we as educators have to admit a very humbling fact, we simply can’t teach all the wonderful content that we love. Students now have access to a far greater breadth of information than we ever had, or will ever know. Plus, they can access it in seconds. In a digitized classroom we can teach the students the skills needed to correctly and effectively seek out and analyze a wide array of information. That is a far more beneficial skill than being able to simply recite the Bill of Rights, or memorize the Pythagorean theorem. Today, students can look those things up faster than you or I could teach either. Providing students with the skills needed to be able to research and learn on their own also sets them up for success in our modern world. Just look at how fast job markets are changing as new technologies get introduced. Teaching students the skills that are inherent in a 1:1 ratio class where every student has a laptop or tablet prepares them for the need to be highly adaptable in a rapidly changing world.
The last argument that people usually bring up is that of cost. More commonly than not, most opponents of providing students with laptops and tablets point to the high costs of devices such as Macbooks and iPads. But there are numerous and more viable alternatives which are far cheaper. Data collected by statista.com shows that the average laptop currently retail at around $700. With devices at the lowest end, such as the Lenovo – S345-14AST 14″ Touch-Screen Chromebook, retailing for as low $269. When this is compared with the outrageously high cost of purchasing textbooks yearly for every student the savings are astounding. According to data compiled by Applied Educational Systems, as of 2016 US school districts paid out of pocket 250$ per student per year for textbooks. Not assuming students take any AP or higher level courses, a school district already plans to pay out $1000 in textbook fees per student for a highschool degree alone. Right away the school districts can save an average of $300 per student that attends four years of highschool. When this is multiplied by the NCES’s average highschool population of 854 students, the average school can expect to save $256,290 in textbook fees over the course of four years for it’s student body. That’s money that could be better spent, instead of buying tons of paper books that most likely can’t even be recycled because they are printed on high gloss paper. This savings gets compounded when students start to take AP or post-secondary courses where the cost of textbooks can reach as high as $1168 a year. The benefits of using laptops with digitized textbooks goes even further. Instead of having to purchase 1000s of copies of the same textbook, schools and districts can purchase multiple textbooks from different sources and use that material to build lesson plans which offer a wide variety of perspectives which better prepare our students for the global market. Instead of being limited to CCSS textbooks, schools can bring in new perspectives like British GCSE textbooks, or IB approved textbooks providing our students the opportunity to interact with a larger scale of perspectives.
The cost alone is enough of a reason for school districts to immediately switch to a 1:1 policy of digital devices to students. But the benefits go way beyond that. When we incorporate personal digital learning devices into our schools we prepare our students for the increasingly high paced, globalized, and rapidly changing markets that they will be forced into. With a 1:1 environment students learn effective social, critical thinking, communication, and research skills that touch every aspect of their lives. This doesn’t mean we as teachers abandon tried and true low-tech teaching techniques, instead we simply add to our teaching toolkits. The world, and our students, are already digitized; let us not fail them when we can so easily be setting them up for success.
