The advent of new technologies like smartphone has turned our world upside down. We can do almost everything at a swipe of a finger. To more and more people, especially teens, smartphones are becoming important in daily life. And though, some do believe a smartphone is a device with vast potential for learning, quite a number of educators thinks smartphones can destroy our younger generation.
Smartphones are affecting how we do just about everything. We easily start relying on them in our daily routine. We get easily distracted by them. We can forget about everything else that is going on in the real world. That is why educators and teachers should think carefully before allowing students to use smartphones in the classroom.
In his book Mobile Wave: How Mobile Intelligence Will Change Everything, Michael Saylor emphasizes that “This new capability will disrupt long standing behaviors and intuitions affecting consumers, businesses, governments, and the global economy.” Paper is no longer needed to spread the information. You find news and information just by googling. And if you are bored, you have a wide variety of apps. Or, do you want to buy something? There’s no need to actually go shopping. You can just buy and pay for everything online and it will be delivered directly to you. The smartphone allows you to do almost everything without having to leave your couch.
But, are all these possibilities good for us? Aren’t we deprived of some experiences? And when it concerns learning, how much can we learn when we are too tempted to check our friends FB page? Can a smartphone actually aid the learning process and not vice versa?
Some teachers like Karen Bromley argue that smartphones benefit students more than they harm. In an article she says… “I believe this kind of technology can provide motivation and scaffold comprehension so that students can read harder texts”. Although this may be true, the obvious disadvantage is distraction that comes in the form of games, Facebook, Instragram, Twitter etc. Sure, students may get a better understanding of more difficult texts, but will the teachers be able to keep them on track? Besides, students will start thinking of smartphones and the internet as the true source of information and forget about such things as books.
Of course, supporters of smartphones in the classroom often assume that smartphones will be beneficial to all students. But a professor Denis Hlynka feels otherwise. He teaches a Teachers and Technology basic course and wrote an article titled “Looking Ahead Looking Back”. This article is an attempt to break down various misconceptions about technology in the classroom. One of his major “big ideas” or main points in this article is that “Technology is personal”. This means that we all should not and do not want to be using the same technology. He says, “Every technological artifact is simply a piece of the larger puzzle of learning. Things will click into place. They will be useful when the user needs them. I give you some of the pieces. You put them together.” This means that not all students need to use technology to improve their learning. Every student has different ways of learning. By making students use technology in the classroom, we will be limiting those students who do not learn well with it. This causes these students to fall behind.