Raab 1 Lauren Raab Margaret Mauk ENC 2135 21 March 2016 Technology in the Classroom Is it Actually Effective Technology has evolved to become a huge resource in society today so much that people are relying on technology for their everyday lives We exist in a world where technology progresses at a rapid rate and with this more and more establishments are using it In fact classrooms have started to incorporate more than just computers but also Smartphones iPads and other advanced forms electronics into their curriculum There is a huge difference between the generation of our parents and grandparents as compared to the students of today While back then people relied on books and material objects or face to face encounters individuals now rely fully on computers wifi and cellular phones Even though this technological era has brought many advantages into the classroom are they actually benefiting the students or just causing detrimental distractions and issues Is the technology being used properly or is it being taken advantage of These are the kind of questions parents teachers and researchers are asking Yes technology in the classroom is great but is it really that constructive to students as everyone says it is Although some may disagree technology in the classroom is not as effective as society perceives and in fact causes many issues in the classroom involving distractions cheating and academic concerns Raab 2 Imagine sitting in class with an iPad in your hand and a computer right in front of you You are supposed to be paying attention and taking notes of the lecture on your iPad Keep in mind you also have Twitter Facebook and Snapchat all installed on that tiny tablet you are supposed to be taking notes on Think about how tempting is it to snap tweet or post on Facebook It is not hard at all According to Brandon Thomas a fifth year senior fine arts major at the University of Nebraska Lincoln students today have a lack of discipline Bane This lack of discipline can cause a decrease in students grades because they are simply not paying any attention to the class lecture and are instead focusing on their phones or social media 1 There have been several studies that have found that the use of technology has been extremely irrelevant to the classroom According to a case study done by H Muyingi students who use their phone during class are usually engaging in distractive apps that have nothing to do with the lecture Muyingi 1 There are numerous applications that users can download and use like Snapchat Facebook or even games These applications distract students and cause them to miss the entire lecture The education world has pursued new technology with an almost evangelical zeal and it is time to take a step back and give proper consideration to how we use it Moody 2 There is so much hysteria about technology in the classroom yet many fail to realize that it has truly taken over in a negative way Many problems have occurred with distractions and it is time society takes a step back and realizes how it is affecting our classrooms today Raab 3 Now imagine you are sitting in class and you decide to sit next to someone who has a phone out That person has consistently been on their device which has been going off the entire class How are you supposed to concentrate while you have another peer consistently making noise and being distracting with a phone Another experiment was done by Barney McCoy which involved how technology can be distracting to students McCoy is an associate professor of broadcasting He closely observed 777 students at six universities His studies showed that ninety percent of the students he observed claimed that their technology was distracting them from the lecture In fact about 39 percent of the students admitted they recognized they were distracting others by using their electronics Bane Not only do having these electronics in class distract teachers but also other students use of them can take away from their peers attention Not only is the use of technology affecting students by having distractions but it also is contributing to cheating With the click of a button the answers of a test can be sent to an entire class and now that phones and iPads have cameras it does not take much to snap a picture and message it According to Heloise Pechan a teacher at McHenry County High School while she was reading one of her student s essays she discovered that the entire essay had been taken off an online paper mill a website that offers research papers on thousands of topics Not only did the student plagiarize the paper in its entirety but she also used technology to cheat Keilman This is where the issue of having Internet available to students becomes a problem Instead of using it morally they are able to find websites that already have papers written and simply copy and paste the information According to Carol Baker a curriculum director at a school Today kids are used to obtaining any kind of information they want online There are so many Raab 4 things that are free out there I think kids don t have the same sense of Gee it s wrong to take something that somebody else wrote The Internet encourages all of us to do that Keilman Because this generation is so technology based students have become educated in utilizing computers so much that they are finding ways to cheat This is an issue that is hard to manage because not all teachers can watch what every student is doing at all times Although cheating has always been an issue in the classroom the evolution of technology gives the student many more outlets to cheat Recently statistics show that between years of 1992 and 2002 incidents of cheating have increased dramatically Bedford 231 In the year of 1993 the World Wide Web was invented and in 1998 Google was founded Coincidentally with the creation of Google and the Internet cheating also became extremely prevalent Back in the day the classroom was primarily based on pen paper and books Now the classroom has everything from wireless access to the Internet to lecture capture systems Because students are more experienced with technology teachers do not always catch on if they are cheating or not 231 According to The Benenson survey in 2009 more than a third of teens with cell phones admitted to cheating at least once with them and 52 admitted to cheating involving the Internet Harkins These statistics go to show that although cheating has always taken place in the classroom