Education is an ever-changing field as new research in neuropsychology within the realm of learning and memory is discovered and influences how we teach students. In the last 15 years, there has been an increase in the use of technology in classrooms. It first came in the form of writing essays in the computer lab. Then black and whiteboards were replaced with smart boards in schools that could afford them. And finally, using Chromebooks has become ubiquitous in many high school and even elementary classrooms.
With the integration of technology into our lives, the way our brains work in terms of retaining information has changed drastically and influenced our education systems as well. At this point, there is no taking this technology away because it is visible in our daily lives. There are advancements in it that are beneficial but also harmful.
In some manner, we are still learning about the full effects of technology on learning inside and outside of the classroom. Therefore, it is essential to identify the benefits and disadvantages and see how it affects us.
Benefits of Technological Integration in Classrooms
Collaboration is easier.
Teachers and students can build online communities through platforms such as Google Classroom that allow teachers to upload lessons, homework, and supplementary content such as videos and slideshows. Students can interact with teachers there and submit their
homework with ease. There is no chance of students losing their homework sheets
or project research because all of it is collected in one place.
Students learn to use common office skills.
Children and teenagers learn to use simple programs such as the word processor, excel sheets, or slide show presentations while in school. Word processing programs are typically used for writing essays or other written assignments. Slideshow presentations are used to present their projects, whereas an excel sheet is used in math or business classes. These programs are typically used in office spaces, making these skills useful in the job market.
Access to a vast amount of information at your fingertips.
Students learn to research informational resources online for their projects or essays. With a vast number of resources available at one’s fingertips, it is easy to gather information rather than sifting through library books or interviewing people. Teachers can also assist students in differentiating between websites that display truthful information in contrast to falsehood.
Creative techniques motivate students to learn.
Students are more engaged when game elements are put into a learning activity such as a point system, badges, or leaderboards – this is called gamification. For example, in an online educational game such as Duolingo, you get a new badge or go to a new level when you correctly define words in a second language. The same is true for game-based learning when roleplay in pretend real-world situations is involved. According to the Centre for Teaching Excellence for the University of Waterloo, when “students compete in a virtual stock-trading competition” in a hands-on manner, that enhances learning and retention. Another example could be mock negotiations that involve a labour dispute in a political science course.1
Online resources make differentiated learning easier.
If a student is struggling in a subject, he/she can do remediated learning online to practice a skill or exercise, without having the teacher print more activities or sit down with the student. For example, websites such as ixl.com provide numerous practice exercises for math and English that also update the teacher on the student’s progress. Moreover, if there are students that need to expand their knowledge or investigate a topic further, online resources can help with that, too.2 In this manner, one teacher can facilitate multiple learning needs at the same time electronically.
Disadvantages of Technological Integration in Classrooms
Less creativity is used with technology present.
Many parents working in Silicon Valley’s big tech companies such as Apple and Google do not send their children to schools that have technology present. According to an article in The Guardian called Tablets out, imagination in: the schools that shun technology, the teachers at a Waldorf school prefer a “more hands-on, experiential approach to learning” because their pedagogy advocates using the imagination and taking a holistic approach to learning. They want their students to develop skills in executive decision-making, creativity, and concentration as the use of technology – using tablets or watching films – takes away from that.
According to a global report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), “no noticeable improvement” has been made in students’ results for reading, math, and science in the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) tests by students who learned in an environment heavily involved with computers. Many East Asian countries that performed very well on the tests have been careful not to use technology in their classrooms.3
Too much reliance on technology leads to shorter attention spans.
There is a strong link between increased screen time and reduced attention spans in children. For example, preschoolers who had more than two hours of screen time every day were five times more likely to show behavioural problems than children who were exposed to screens for fewer than 30 minutes each day, according to a study done in Canada in 2019 using data from the Canadian Healthy Infant Longitudinal Development (CHILD) study.4 More studies have shown that the longer children and teens watched television or played video games, the lower their attention spans became in association as well as an increase in social problems.5 These lowered attention spans affect the learning ability and social skills of children when they attend schools.
It is getting harder to separate fact from falsehood online.
As technologies such as DeepFake continue to develop, it is getting difficult to differentiate what is real or not on the internet. DeepFake is when artificial intelligence is used to make existing videos of a person, for example, say something which he/she did not do in reality. They use the patterning of someone else’s face under the celebrity or well-known figure’s face to say something. This is an example of tampering with reality online that has dangerous implications.
Moreover, many social media platforms, news websites, and more on the internet use algorithms to tune into the interests of the users to keep him/her engaged consistently. This creates an “echo chamber” where one is trapped within the realm of ideas that only confirm his/her own biases. This is troubling if youth are not supervised for what they search and engage in online.
There is less privacy online and much censorship.
It is very hard to keep an unknown identity on the internet. Once students have made their own profiles online within any platform, their data has been shared and is continuously being monitored. Again, search engines will know where a student lives, therefore catering to his/her interests depending on that region, as well as censoring results that might have been more beneficial to their learning or research. Unless students make a concerted effort to find information that is not subdued by their search engines, it will be hard for them to get all the facts about a given topic.
Cyberbullying has become prevalent.
Whether it is on an educational or social media platform, students are at risk of being either bullied online or negatively affected by viewing the lives of other people. Cyberbullying has unfortunately become a severe public health issue. It can be worse than traditional bullying because bullies can act anonymously and hurt children or teens from any venue (even if one venue blocks them) and anywhere in the world.6
Students are less likely to pay attention in school, have mental health issues, and less social interaction all around when they are being bullied online – their perpetrators do not even have to be their peers as it can be any one of their followers on an Instagram account or a preying adult acting like another teenager. Moreover, teenagers in particular are negatively affected by what they see of other people’s lives on social media, encouraging them to compare themselves and to imitate the influencers they follow online. These situations often lead to increased low self-esteem, anxiety, and depression.
Decreased face-to-face interaction decreases communication skills.
We are wired as humans to understand the messages behind every facial expression in the other person. When two people speak to each other, there is a great increase in neural synchronization in our brains, i.e. the mirror neuron system, which is associated with empathy and social cognition.7 We are also better at responding to the other person because we are better able to sense the social cues in the other’s gestures and speech.
No doubt the pandemic pushing us indoors and online to communicate with each other has affected our communication skills, especially in children and adolescents. Interacting online with others makes us lose the sense of seeing nuances and cues in another person’s behaviour or speech, which makes for more superficial relationships. Therefore, it is important that our youth engage in more face-to-face interactions at schools.
Other key points we should consider are that underserved communities do not have the advantages of easily accessing the internet at home in order to conduct research, gain remedial skills, or complete assignments. Moreover, there is also a rural and urban divide in terms of online access as schools in rural areas are less likely to have technological integration and dependable internet access than urban schools. Children in these two communities then are less likely to develop skills that may be helpful to them in school and in careers in the future.
Overall, as parents, we should be keen on seeing how technology integration into our learning environments affects our children’s minds. We are in an experimental phase as continued research on how our interaction with technology affects our overall health and society in general. Therefore, in the interest of our children's education, moral and religious upbringing, and overall well-being, let us take steps to ensure that every avenue they learn from is mostly beneficial. Rather than becoming absorbed by and completely reliant on the technological advancements around them, we want our children to become adults who have better self-control when using them, and are able to use them for helping others have safer and more productive livelihoods.
Further Reading:
For Students of Color, Remote Learning Environments Pose Multiple Challenges
Technology in Education: How Racism Affects the Technology in New York City Classrooms https://ag7850.medium.com/technology-in-education-how-racism-affects-the-technology-in-new-york-city-classrooms-1235fd9e7686
There’s an Education Gap Between Rural and Urban Communities. Can Technology Bridge It?
https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/education-gap-distance-learning
How the Rural-Urban Divide Impacts Digital and Technology Literacy https://www.ruralrise.org/digital-technology-literacy/
End Notes:
[2] https://www.gcu.edu/blog/teaching-school-administration/8-benefits-of-classroom-technology
[4] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0213995
[6] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2021.634909/full
[7] https://elearningindustry.com/face-to-face-communication-virtual-classroom
Sumayya Khan is a homeschooling mother of two and a teacher. She has worked with several Islamic schools and organizations in the last 10 years. She is currently teaching Literature online with Dawanet and studying the Qur’an through Al-Huda Institute. In her free time, she loves to spend time with her family and friends, play sports, enjoy nature, and read books. She currently resides with her family in Toronto, Canada
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The Pros and Cons of Integrating Technology into the Classroom
As salam Alaykum:
Thank you for a very well-researched and written article. In friendship.
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