Technology Continues to Shape the Future of Classrooms
The year is 2003. Students stress about the big English examination coming up on the book they’re currently reading. For some, that means it’s time for that regular grind of skimming through the entire book in a night or two, pulling their hair out, lying in bed late at night, and trying their best not to get distracted as they strain to absorb any drop of information they can acquire about the story.
Twenty years later, in 2023, students have the entire world wide web at their fingertips. Rather than reading a hard copy of a book under their bedside lamp, many students simply listen to an audiobook as they go to sleep. Or, more likely, they take advantage of the plethora of online study websites that have summaries of every book ever written and the answers to every exam ever made up.
Needless to say, the school experience today is vastly different from that of a few decades ago. Computers first started showing up in classrooms as early as the late 1980s, but of course, they were much more limited than they are today and there was only one or two per class that had to be shared between all the students.
In 1990, the junior high school at the Methodist Ladies’ College in Australia adopted the first-ever one-to-one student laptop program and wealthy private schools worldwide followed suit. It wasn’t until the mid-2000s, however, that the majority of public schools in the United States started taking advantage of technology in classrooms.
Between 2013 and 2014, schools nationwide set an extreme record by purchasing over twenty-three million laptops and tablets, a tremendous growth compared to previous years.
And the trend isn’t slowing down anytime soon as schools exponentially incorporate more and more technology into curriculums every year. But what is the result of all this new technology, and how will this technological renaissance affect educational experiences moving forward?
Of course, technology has its pros and cons. But in the end, the reason technology exists in schools is to make student learning easier and more efficient, and today’s abundance of resources such as online documents and research websites offer students more streamlined and efficient learning than ever before.
“One thing I really prefer about computers is that you don’t get hand cramps when typing long essays,” says Ryan Barber, a junior at South Kingstown High School. “Handwriting an essay on paper is such a pain because I get cramps and it’s hard to keep going, so I can get a lot more work done on a computer.”
CJ Huckins, another SKHS junior agrees.
“The internet makes it so much easier to access information and compile notes,” says junior Huckins. “You can easily keep multiple tabs open, but it can be really annoying to keep huge notebooks and stacks of pages next to your computer to flip through.
“I can be a lot more efficient thanks to the internet,” Huckins added.
And it’s not just students whose jobs have become easier.
Soon-to-be retired SKHS social studies teacher, Kristen Bjorness said her work has become remarkably different than it was ten years ago thanks to technological advances.
“As a history teacher, there are so many fabulous resources online,” Bjorness said. “Pictures say a thousand words, so students are more engaged watching a video than reading out of a textbook. They remember what they see more than what they’ve read. Even if a student has a learning difference that prohibits them from reading, they can still watch a video and learn from it, so technology can put students on an even playing field.”
But there are also some things that have been made more difficult by the integration of technology. Because technology is constantly evolving at such a rapid rate, teachers have to learn to acclimate more than ever and find new ways to reasonably incorporate these new tools and adapt to students cutting corners.
“Every year it becomes easier for students to cheat,” Bjorness said, “especially nowadays with all this new AI like ChatGPT.”
The social studies teacher added that “educators now have to come up with new projects and test questions that aren’t so easy for students to just look up, which is a problem we didn’t have to consider way back when.”
And then there’s the enormous dent it’s made in the district’s limited budget.
“There’s no doubt that all the technology we’ve purchased in the past decade is a huge expense,” said history teacher Toby Kimball. “I think it’s worth it as long as it’s being put to good use. Anything the school pays for that isn’t used is a waste, and buying ‘bleeding edge tech’ for the sake of having it is just stupid.”
With so many implications on the overall system, both good and bad, it’s clear that technology will make a huge impact on both the current and future generations of students. In many states, school boards are requiring that a certain percentage of the curriculum is taught digitally just to make students more and more comfortable with using technology in a productive way. The current generation of students is the most technologically capable generation in history, and it’s estimated that by 2030 over 75 percent of jobs will require advanced computer skills.
Software-based classes such as cybersecurity, advanced programming, and computer animation have only started appearing in schools in the past decade, and the teaching of these skills is being emphasized by schools to prepare students for this new age.
“Our world is increasingly becoming more and more software-based,” said Neile DiNitto, a computer science teacher at SKHS. “It’s an essential part of learning nowadays and an essential skill that students need.
“I have no problem with schools spending their money this way because it’s just the current cost of education,” DiNitto added. “I obviously wouldn’t be able to run my classes at all if they didn’t.”
Whether or not you’re a fan of how laptops, tablets, and cellphones are used in classrooms, it’s something that school districts across the country have accepted as the new status quo. However, it’s still much too early in the game to predict what schools will look like ten years down the line due to how rapidly this hardware is evolving.
The science and computer teacher DiNitto said that she believes that “Future generations will have infinitely more creative job opportunities as we continue to incorporate more and more software-based learning.”
“It’s hard to imagine how things will change because they change so quick,” DiNitto said.
“Whoever thought five years ago that one day we’d be teaching from our couches to kids laying in bed?”
