Are Computers Taking Over Schools?
... it is subtracting from other subjects. “Honestly, how long does it really take for someone to learn how to surf the internet and check their mail online?” By placing computer labs in schools it makes a funding decision about what is academically important. Many music and art classrooms are being taken over to put computer labs in schools. Many schools are dropping classes dealing with labor work. How are things going to be produced without laborers? Many programs are being cut because of computers. Are the skills we learn from these programs going to affect a student later in his or her lifetime? Students may have a harder time to decide what they want to do with their lives since they are not being exposed to different types of work. Computers are ruining the teacher student bond by using new techniques of teaching. Many kids appreciate the old fashioned way of teaching. Some students find it more beneficial because they do not get side tracked in class by looking at a presentation with a lot of pictures and sound. Power points in some classes are taking over lectures. The teacher simply reads off his or her power point presentation and does not go into enough depth like a discussion would. By students doing homework online is it really benefiting them as a learner? Studies show that kids who use an interactive learning experience perform better in class. Math for instance homework is being assigned online and the computer asks you to do a problem. A student types in the answer and the computer informs the student that he responded wrong but the information is correct. By not typing it in according to the programs standard is it benefiting the student? The student may second guess themselves because the computer said it was incorrect and the student may change his answer and then it is truly wrong. Teachers now assign many presentations to be done in class about material that needs to be covered. So they tell the student to read the chapter or section and make a presentation. So the student chooses the important things and puts it on a several slides. Is a student learning from that? He is making the text interactive but is he or she truly picking out any key information from what was just read and applying it to his or her course? This brings up the issue of plagiarism and how schools are trying to crack down on it. Students are being assigned to do many papers throughout their education career. Since schools are pushing kids to use the internet students are more likely to pick out articles online and claim them as their own work. The most commonly used way of plagiarism is taking what the article he or she found and scrambling the words so that it does not appear to be someone else’s work. Also there are online paper mills where you can submit one of your own papers and be able to search through thousands of submitted papers and take them for your using. Are schools going to regret in the long run the big push for computers? It seems that some instructors are trying to get away from internet sources and demanding that you only use one online source for your assignments and the rest have to be books or encyclopedias. Will skills be affected because of these new technologies? Computers encourage kids to do projects and make them animated but it is at the expense of compositions and hand drawn projects. There is no way any amount of web searching can make up for a lack of critical thinking or communication skills. These skills are taught through doing assignments and trying to apply them. There are courses that you can take that teach these skills, do you think the web will teach you those skills without daily practice. Discipline is taught and is respected once a student knows how to apply it to his or her studies...