Technology in the Classroom

A drowsy twenty something University of Arizona student shuffles his lazily laced loose feet through the rear of the lecture hall and makes his way to the fourth row from the back, trying not to spill his coffee as he forces down his ill-functioning flip-up seat with the corner of his laptop. His entry, without consequence—for the professor continues seamlessly through an orderly historiographic review of twentieth century Central America. He opens his laptop, taps the mute button (so the whole lecture hall doesn't hear Windows start up) and from the moment the blue internet icon illuminates, not another single word of significance enters his conscience. Between Facebook and Catmail messenger on his laptop and the two unread messages on his Blackberry, a three-decade long civil war in Guatemala  loses out to social priorities.

Though the scholastic ambience has changed little in the last two decades, the technologies students have at their disposal certainly has. Students are not unmotivated now, students are not less intelligent than in the past, students are distracted—by everything newer technologies offer. Frontline’s Digital Nation: Life on the Virtual Frontier has shed some light on the ways in which new technologies have affected life in the classroom.

MIT professor Sherry Turkle admits students are “doing themselves a disservice by thinking that a multi-tasking environment will serve their best purposes.” She further explains that students have now placed new pressures on professors who have to compete with technology for their attention (although it is noted that at MIT, use of laptops and internet enabled devices are allowed at the professor’s discretion). Professor Turkle suggests that with new technologies come new problems, and now, professors need to find new ways to ensure they’re effectively communicating and providing meaningful instruction for students.

A second faculty member, Associate Professor David Jones asserts that students cannot possibly be working to their potential because they’re “too distracted by everything else.”

Frontline’s Digital_Nation: Life on the Virtual Frontier

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/