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Jacoby Wiege
Dr. Christopher
English 102
March 16, 2015

Technology in the Classroom

Now days 78 percent of teens ages twelve to seventeen have a cellphone on them and
about 50 percent of them are smartphones. This is a problem schools and teachers face every day
because students are not trained to use their technology for an educational purpose. Imagine a
student going to school and having to walk through a metal detector and then be patted down if
they had any kind of technology on them. This is some of the extreme measures schools were
taking in New York City to keep technology out of schools. There are schools that take
technology bans to the extreme like that and there are schools that do not care at all. I believe
that all students should have the right to choose to use technology for themselves because it is
their learning and money that it is affecting.
A lot of schools take advantage of the growing technology in their classrooms daily. I was
in a class room that used iPads in class every day, it made the class a lot of fun plus gave us skills
that we can use in our daily lives as adults.
I feel that if a class room has a policy that bans technology from a class that students will
be more likely to be distracted from their learning. The students will be more distracted trying to
hide the fact that they are on their phone in class. Schools should embrace the use of technology
in our class rooms rather than banning it. In this essay I will be exploring how teachers, students,

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and parents think about the growing technology in class rooms that help students learn. I believe
that technology has a huge impact on how students learn, how teachers teach, and how parents
interact with their children and their schools. How technology is being involved in classrooms is
affecting how students learn and how they grow up.
Julia Klaus has her masters degree from The University of Portland and author of
Negative Effects of Using Technology in Today's Classroom talks about how technology is a
classroom might not be so great. Klaus believes that having technology in the classroom will
take away from time that can be spent on something educational. There are so many students in
the classroom that everyone will be at different levels of experience with technology so a lot of
time will be wasted educating the students that are not familiar with the technology. Klaus talks
about how there are many schools that do not have the access to technology like the others do, so
would it be fare if a student grew up where technology was just not around and having such a
different education levels. Students use computers for playing video games, so the students might
see a connection with their computer at home and may get distracted and start creating bad habits
at school. The last thing Klaus talks about is the overuse of technology in the classrooms.
Technology should not be the only source of students learning but should be a key tool teachers
can relay on but not to overuse it. I do not agree with Klaus because she states that some students
do not have a basic understanding how to use technology and that it would be a waste of time
teaching the students a new skill. As a freshmen in college I could not imagine a student not
being able to use a piece of technology because I have used technology numerous times
throughout my school life. If this were true schools could just start using technology at a younger
age in the classroom so students would get familiar with technology earlier in life.

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A study shows that teachers are more likely to use the traditional ways of teaching
because it is all they have known and they did not grow up using the newer teaching methods
that utilize technology. David Feldon talks about the research of Larry Cuban in his article
Educational Technology Use in Schools and Classrooms. Cuban discovered that in a twenty
year research period that technology in a class room does not improve a students education.
Feldon explains that teachers lack skills with technology which is making it harder to have a
technology built class room. Feldon discovered that when a lesson is on a piece of technology
there is a risk that a class might have to be cancelled if the technology crashes because often
times teachers do not have the training with technology that is needed. There could be the same
problem with the teachers notes for the class if they somehow they lost them. I believe that the
teachers will do just fine with moving towards using technology in the class room. For example
one day in my English 102 class the computer would not turn on and the class went on just as
planned. Because a teacher should already know what they are going to be teaching so they can
just use the white board if something happens it just makes it a little harder but all the days it did
work it was easier.
Linda Starr talks about the views of teachers on the growth of technology in schools in
her article How Teachers View Technology. Starr states that, The Teachers Talk Tech survey,
conducted by CDW Government, Inc. (CDW-G) to provide a forum for teachers to express their
views on technology in their classrooms, found that teachers view computers as a valuable
teaching tool that can improve students' academic performance and attention in class, while
strengthening the lines of communication with parents (Starr). This means that as a community

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we should embrace technology in a classroom because it is not just helping the learning of the
students it also helps parents to stay in touch with the teacher.
Teachers are the key essential to a students learning, so they need to know how to work
and be knowledgeable about using technology to their advantage. I see every day that technology
makes teachers lives a lot easier for example one of my teachers gives us a test that is multiple
choice and has it graded the next day thanks to technology. Most teachers can take days to go
through every test and check if it is right, but a computer can scan, check, and grade all the tests
in seconds. Not only does this give teachers more time to improve their teaching for the students,
it takes away an amount of stress of grading hundreds of papers. I just love how technology is
making it so easy to take online classes, I get my test grade back the second I hit submit. Just like
how Stephanie Hicks states in her article Technology in Todays Classroom that technology
helps students to acquire and integrate learning; practice, review, and apply learning; and plan
for technology in the classroom (Hicks). Hicks gives the example that when students write
blogs online that they can get feedback faster and more of it because students can access their
work anywhere at any time because all you need is a computer and an internet connection. Also
she talks about how students can use technology to get help on homework and to get more
practice on it. Hicks ends by saying that students will benefit from technology and that it will
help them in school because they can play educational games to get a better understanding in a
subject.
In the article The Most Powerful Tool in the Classroom Sarah Loyola discusses that
teachers need to stop teaching the students and let them teach themselves because they will

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forget everything they learned after the course. Students forget most of the topics they learned
during the class because they do not have importance to them but when the students teach them
selfs they learn more since they had to do the research them selfs. Loyola believes that teachers
should steer away from being the "sage on the stage (Loyola) which means that the teacher
should not be the main person in the class and shift towards being the guide on the side which
means that the teachers should be pushing the students to learn themselves. (Loyola) Loyola says
that students should be the ones that teach themselves and find the answers the teachers ask them
in their own. Loyola is a teacher and she gave an example that she asks her students a question
and they have to do all of the research themselves on the internet. Loyola believes that students
should use the technology to their advantage to learn because when students have a teacher
giving a lesson they are not going to take it all in as well if they did the research yourself. What
Loyola is saying is very similar to what Jonathan Wulffleff said during an interview in the article
What Students Really Think About Technology in the Classroom by Sarah Garland. Wulffleff
enjoys taking online classes with his face-to-face classes, he states that If you have issues,
you can watch the video again, With a class, you only get it once and you have to remember it
(Garland). Wulffleff is saying that if the students do not catch what the teachers said the students
can just go back and rewind it but on the other hand for an online class and you can just replay
the video. There are many ways teachers are moving towards the use of technology in the class
room and that is one great example of how technology is benefiting the class room.
Samantha Gray talks about how about 77 Percent of teens have a home computer they
have access to in her article Technology Helps Students Find Comfort in the Classroom. Gray
states that By incorporating these same digital social elements into the classroom, students can

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feel more comfortable within their school environment. The goal of an educator is to create an
atmosphere that properly facilitates learning while also supporting a students needs and
interests. (Gray) This means that if schools use technology in the class room like in lessons and
assignments, that the students will be more likely to learn more because they are Comfortable
with it. It will not just give the teachers more time to prep it will also allow the students to be
more personally connected to the class. Gray ends by saying that students complain that the
topics they are learning is not relevant to the real world. By taking the lesson and adding
technology into it, for example putting it into a slide show, it will somehow make the topic more
relevant because the students are closer to the technology.
I found the chart below in an article called Convenience, Communications, and Control:
How Students Use Technology by Robert B. Kvavik who has his doctorate from Stanford
University. This chart was made from a survey taken by Educause.com, students voted for how
they thought technology benefited them in the classroom. At least 94% of students saw that
technology was useful to their learning in the classroom. The biggest percentage was the
convenience of the technology because as a student having my laptop and phone is a big
convenience for me. For example I can just take a picture of something on the screen or board so
I can use it later for notes or I can add something to the calendar on my phone so I remember to
turn something in.

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Todays teens in this generation have grown up with technology growing all around them.
Most jobs in the in the twenty-first century require the use of technology in one way or another.
Students that learn in a class room that is mostly taught from technology will be getting an
advantage when they graduate and start looking for a job. Jobs such as working at a retail store
you have to use technology every day. For example I work at Party City and I use technology
every day, even if it the cash register, the iPhones we use as scanners, or the computer in the back
to print labels. Pretty much every job is going to use technology in a way even if you do not
think so. Just like how Alan Spies talks about how he believes that technology should be used in
classrooms because this generation of students that are in school now have grown up with
technology and use it as a primary method of learning. in his article Use of Laptops and Other
Technology in the classroom. (Spies) He also says that this generation is the best known for its

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skilled multitasking making it easier for the students to use a computer in the classroom while
listing to the discussion in class. Spies states that students that have technology in a class room
will more likely follow through with getting a degree and be more motivated to do so if
technology is promised and followed through with. On the other hand if technology is promised
and the classrooms do not follow through with the promised students are less committed to
getting a degree. Spies also believes that if students have technology in class rooms, that they
are getting the real taste of how the real world is going to be.
Michael Russell talks about how making the technology better in schools for testing and
in the classroom will prepare twenty-first century kids for jobs in the real world in her article
Bridging the Gap Between Testing and Technology in Schools. Russell believes that having the
improved technologies in the classroom will improve the teachers ability to teach which makes
the learning better for the students. Russell discusses the research that was done that proves that
students that take a test with a pencil and paper do worse than the students that take the same test
on the computer. Russell concludes by saying that thanks to the improvement of technology that
students are improving in the class room and on tests.
Parents are one major resource that can help a student succeed in school, because if a
parent does not care whether or not their children go to school it is more likely that the student
will not do as well as a student that gets pushed to do well in school by a parent. I wanted to get
different points of views on this topic and why not a parents, they are one of the best teachers
there are. On February 17, 2015 I interviewed Crystal Howard a parent of two students in
Evergreen School District. During the interview I asked her what some of her thoughts were on

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technology in schools, and Howard replied Technology is a great thing to have in schools,
because when I was in school the teacher would take five minutes to write on a chalk board, but
now days the teacher just pulls up a slide show. (Howard) This leads back to how much time the
use of technology can save the teacher and how many more things can be taught. The more I
talked with Howard the more I learned about how the twenty-first century schools are easier than
when she went to school.
I watched an online video called Learning With Technology Conference: Parents and
Teachers Working Together by Taking it Global and they went in to detail on how parents feel
about the use of the technology in the class room. One of the parents talked about how they were
fearful of the technology at first but they went through a couple of workshops that showed them
what it was all about. The parent got to see how the technology was going to be used in the class
room and how there was going to be a connection, at the end of the work shop he said that he
was inspired to go buy a computer for his son for home because of this great program. Another
parent thought that he knew everything that his kids were doing, but after learning that the
classrooms were going to be including technology he was amazed. He said that There are so
many opportunities to engage with the world and to learn different skills that they will carry with
them forever. (Taking it Global) The biggest thing that he learned from seeing the technology is
working in schools is that how powerful technology is these days. (Taking it Global) The end
result of this workshop the school hosted for the parents is that the parents got to see how they
can help and encourage the students to do better in school with technology. There are many
parents out there that are not informed about how many great things technology can offer to a
classroom because they did not grow up with it but when they do find out they are blown away.

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I found out that most people want to include technology into the class room but just need
the rescores and motivation to do so. In all of the instances that I looked at have all worked out
and have proved that the use of technology in classrooms has benefited the students learning. I
was surprised that more teachers were supportive of the technology in the classroom but after I
looked in to their point of views that technology makes is teaching easier and they can connect
and help the students with more depth. I learned that there is a lot more technology for schools to
come and a lot of schools are already integrating technology in to their teaching already. The best
thing that I learned from my research was that the students learning experience can completely
change with technology because by having it in the class room, it is something that students
know and like, which makes learning easier when they are familiar with the method of delivery.
Technology is benefitting schools in ways that we never even knew about, that we can
learn from the teachers, students, and parents. The growing technology is effecting the students,
teachers, and parents in the twenty-first century. This is important because the students are the
future of America and they should be taught the best way technology will allow. We should all
care about this because in one way or another this could affect us. It could be your sister/brother,
your friends kids, where you work or even yourself first hand.

Works Cited

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Feldon, David F., and William Morris. "Educational Technology Use in Schools and
Classrooms." Encyclopedia of Educational Reform and Dissent. Ed. Thomas C. Hunt, et
al. Vol. 1. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Reference, 2010. 313-317. Gale Virtual Reference
Library. Web. 7 Feb. 2015.
Garland, Sarah. "What Students Really Think about Technology in the Classroom." The
Hechinger Report. The Hechinger Report, 14 May 2014. Web. 22 Feb. 2015.
Gray, Samantha. "Technology Helps Students Find Comfort in the Classroom." Getting Smart.
N.p., 18 Sept. 2012. Web. 23 Feb. 2015.
Hicks, Stephanie D. "Technology in Today's Classroom." ProQuest. The Clearing House, 2011.
Web. 7 Feb. 2015.
Howard, Crystal. "Technology in the Class Room." Personal interview. 17 Feb. 2015.
Klaus, Julia. "Negative Effects of Using Technology in Today's Classroom." The Classroom.
Demand Media, n.d. Web. 13 Feb. 2015.
Kvavik, Robert B. "Convenience, Communications, and Control: How Students Use
Technology." Educause. Educuse, n.d. Web. 02 Mar. 2015.
Loyola, Sarah Wike. "The Most Powerful Tool in the Classroom." The Huffington Post.
TheHuffingtonPost.com, 10 Oct. 2014. Web. 23 Jan. 2015.
Spies, Alan R. "Use of Laptops and Other Technology in the Classroom." ProQuest. American
Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, 2010. Web. 7 Feb. 2015.

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Starr, Linda. "How Teachers View Technology." Education World. Education World, 22 Oct.
2003. Web. 22 Feb. 2015.
Taking It Global. "Learning With Technology Conference: Parents and Teachers Working
Together." YouTube. YouTube, May-June 2013. Web. 23 Feb. 2015.