Technology enhances, illustrates, and lubricates the learning process. Ideas can be conveyed by technology faster, easier and better than some methods of the past. Data gathering and analysis is far easier today than it was 40 years ago.
However, technology also breeds laziness. Some people sit at their screen like little birds with their mouth open waiting for mama to give them predigested food. Real learning should include work. People who are smart or even brilliant must learn to work, too. And some students get by in school without learning how to work hard because the computer is so enabling.
Einstein worked hard.
It is true in mindfulness as well as sports that some people are gifted. But nobody ever achieves greatness without hard work. Computers give the impression to kids that they don’t have to work very hard. The computer can do all the math calculations for them, for example.
Teachers also get lazy and overuse the computer. I have seen at the high school level teachers turn over their class to computer learning. Indeed, the flipped classroom is an example of what computers can do.
The flipped classroom is where the student reads the text and sees a video lecture at home. That is the homework. Then the student attends class where they do problems and write papers. It is backwards from the traditional structure. A lot of students don’t bother to go to the classroom sessions. They can do the problems by themselves. Thus, they never go to class. They miss out on some stuff.
Furthermore, students today are so amazingly adroit with their gadgets that they have forgotten, or never learned to do things without their gizmos. If your battery fails, you starve because you don’t know how to go shopping and cook a meal. So that is for food, but it also applies to learning. Can you integrate a tangent function from zero to pi/7 without your computer? Calculus students 40 years ago could.
But it might be that all those old school things like spelling actually won’t be needed anymore. I don’t know. I sure like the spell checker, but I know it makes me a lazi (ahem) speller.
Answers & Comments
Technology enhances, illustrates, and lubricates the learning process. Ideas can be conveyed by technology faster, easier and better than some methods of the past. Data gathering and analysis is far easier today than it was 40 years ago.
However, technology also breeds laziness. Some people sit at their screen like little birds with their mouth open waiting for mama to give them predigested food. Real learning should include work. People who are smart or even brilliant must learn to work, too. And some students get by in school without learning how to work hard because the computer is so enabling.
Einstein worked hard.
It is true in mindfulness as well as sports that some people are gifted. But nobody ever achieves greatness without hard work. Computers give the impression to kids that they don’t have to work very hard. The computer can do all the math calculations for them, for example.
Teachers also get lazy and overuse the computer. I have seen at the high school level teachers turn over their class to computer learning. Indeed, the flipped classroom is an example of what computers can do.
The flipped classroom is where the student reads the text and sees a video lecture at home. That is the homework. Then the student attends class where they do problems and write papers. It is backwards from the traditional structure. A lot of students don’t bother to go to the classroom sessions. They can do the problems by themselves. Thus, they never go to class. They miss out on some stuff.
Furthermore, students today are so amazingly adroit with their gadgets that they have forgotten, or never learned to do things without their gizmos. If your battery fails, you starve because you don’t know how to go shopping and cook a meal. So that is for food, but it also applies to learning. Can you integrate a tangent function from zero to pi/7 without your computer? Calculus students 40 years ago could.
But it might be that all those old school things like spelling actually won’t be needed anymore. I don’t know. I sure like the spell checker, but I know it makes me a lazi (ahem) speller.