New Trier’s Mobile Learning Initiative has brought iPads to about 2,300 students this year, a number that will expand to the entire student body for the 2014-2015 school year. According to the New Trier website, this initiative will contribute, “access to resources in classrooms; a plethora of easy-to-use apps; increased digital communication with teachers; efficient feedback about learning between teacher and student; improved classroom routines and practices; and improved student organization and management of work.”
In a nutshell, iPads will make academic tasks more efficient and replace textbooks to save your back. Instead of cutting down trees, we complete digital assignments that don’t require a paper and pencil but rather a screen and stylus. It’s an innovation that will push students forward and enhance their learning. But there is definitely a level of concern.
At first, it will take some babysitting from the teachers. If a student decides that a lecture is boring or meaningless, he will take out his iPad to play videogames or surf the web. For all the teacher knows, he’s taking notes — that’s why he’s looking at the screen. Or maybe the teacher does have suspicions… The point is, no one should be playing the guessing game in the classroom — it distracts from the learning process.
More and more, it both fascinates and frustrates us how technology is taking over the world. It allows us to make medical advances, organize information efficiently, and find data that simply would not be possible without the power of the computer and internet. But including iPads in the classroom is a dangerous endeavor.
God knows how much the average high school student spends on Facebook, their smartphone, and watching television combined. Even from the moment the bell rings, what’s the first thing you do? Many resort to their phone immediately. Overuse of technology outside of school has become a significant-yet commonly ignored-problem, and including more technology inside of school will perhaps worsen these bad habits.
Our sight, too, will be constrained in exchange for more “efficient” learning purposes. Slowly, our vision will deviate away from the teacher and toward the screen. Gone will be the days of dealing with what’s around us. We will be taught that whatever lies in our 9.5in by 7.3in device holds the answer.
We have to be careful about how much technology consumes us. The added efficiency brings extra baggage, which includes gradually poorer eyesight and a potentially less social classroom. There needs to be a line drawn for how much technology becomes a part of our daily lives. In a study conducted by Stanford University professor Gerald Crabtree published in the journal Trends in Genetics, humans are becoming dumber because finding information is becoming easier, and we no longer have the need to be as intellectual. Having iPads just to make my backpack lighter and the work more efficient isn’t enough to convince me that they are necessary. We know and accept that we can use technology to communicate, be entertained, and also type our essays, but iPads becoming a mandatory item in everyone’s class next year might be taking it too far.