Future of Learning?

By Merideth Byrne

Today, kids spend more time than ever using technology. According to an article on Bloomberg Business Week by Steven Reinberg, kids today are using media on an average of 7 hours and 38 minutes a day. They have become more plugged in to all the different media, and less plugged in to what they should be learning in the classroom. This increased usage of technology has harmed students’ ability to learn in traditional ways, making it even harder for teachers to teach their students. To combat this growing problem, schools are starting to fight their problem with technology, with technology. At the Amelia Earhart Middle School in Riverside Unified School District in California, they launched the “worlds first iPad-driven algebra curriculum,” (Aimonetti, 2012).

When given the California Standards Test to test their knowledge after using the iPads “78 percent of students in the pilot program scored ‘proficient’ or ‘advanced,” (Aimonetti, 2012). According to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, a premier interactive education company, “by engineering a comprehensive platform that combines the best learning material with technology that embraces students’ strengths and address their weaknesses, we’ve gone far beyond...a one-way math lesson into an engaging, interactive supportive learning experience,” (Aimonettie, 2012). By giving the studentsa tool that gives them the best of their technology world, combined with the lessons of the teachers’ world, schools could give students a better chance to succeed. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt noticed that students who were in the pilot program were “more motivated, attentive, and engaging than traditionally educated peers,” (Aimonetti, 2012). From this article, it seems that eventually the only way to really get students motivated to learn would be to incorporate some sort of technology.

In the article “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants,” by Marc Prensky, we are presented with information about the disparities between students and teachers today. According to Prensky, “students have changed radically. Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach.” Growing up immersed in a technological world has changed students’ ways of learning. Digital Natives (those who grew up with this new technology) are finding the traditional ways of learning out dated and boring. One reason why this could be is that their brains are programmed , causing them to think differently than the Digital Immigrants (those who didn’t grow up with new technology). According to the article “Do They Really Think Differently?” by Mark Prensky, video games in particular have affected the brain causing it to rewire; causing the Digital Natives attention span to decrease “for the old ways of learning.” They do, however, have a good attention span for games and other things that interest them. Why not teach them in a way that would interest them then? As long as it gets them to learn the material (and apparently excel at it according to the California Riverside ipad algebra pilot test from above), whats the harm? Many people would say that using technology in the classroom would only fuel the fire for kids to become more connected to technology and less connected to the real world.

Mark Bauerlein, the author of the “Dumbest Generation,” would say that my generation is in fact the dumbest generation. What is the main cause of the dumbness of my generation? Technology, of course. Technology has given access to more information than ever before, but instead of using it to learn, we are using it for social networks. I do see where Bauerlein is coming from, when he says that my generation is the “Dumbest Generation,” but in my opinion he is wrong. My generation is not the dumbest generation. We just think differently than the generations before us. Just like his generation thinks differently than the generation before him, and so on. With every generation, adjustments have to be made to fit them. My generation’s learning style is just different. If we are taught in a learning style that interests us, we could excel even more than if we were taught with traditional styles. I learn best when I am genuinely interested in what I am learning about, and how I am learning about it. For the majority of the people in my generation, using some sort of technology to teach them would be the best way to grab their interest. Just because my generation is more into social networks and other technology does not mean that all hope is lost for us. This just means it’s time to change things up a bit. It’s time to combine traditional teaching styles with the technology of today.