By Carly Cutrara

Have you ever noticed that when people get bored they use their phones? Technology is used all throughout today’s society whether in the classroom or at home and has corrupted today’s society because of its excessive use. According to The Journal, 50 percent of students use a tablet and 60 percent use a laptop in school as of 2013. Why did elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools make the switch? When in the classroom with a device that has access to many games and websites that can distract a student from learning, the benefits of having technology in the classroom is limited.

One of the only benefits of having technology would be having access to an unlimited amount of resources when doing a research project or other homework.

‘‘One benefit is having the students work on projects together,” said Julie Johnson who is a Spanish 4&5 teacher at Batavia High School. “The teachers don’t have to book lab time. We can just have the students share documents and all work on the same document at the same time.’’

However, this technology switch has limited the amount of paper used in a classroom. According to the lifehacker.com, handwriting helps you clarify your thoughts, remember things better, and reach your goals more surely. When a student handwrites something, it sparks three brain processes which are being able to see what you write, using fine motor skills to put the pen to the paper and form the words, and remembering the shapes of the different letters.

‘‘The face to face interactions in the classroom are ruined,” Johnson said. “Also in the high-level Spanish classes, it is important the students understand the texts we give them and most times translators, do not translate properly. We want them to rely on their brains and not a translator.’’

As well as ruining face to face interactions, technology has so many complications such as blocked pages for research and the device not connecting to the internet, among other possible problems. The devices aren’t much use if they don’t work and if a teacher doesn’t know how to help their student fix the problem, what’s the point in using computers?

I was sitting in my second block class today, which is 21st Century Literature and Composition. We had a substitute teacher and we had to read for the first 20 minutes. When the students started pulling out their chromebooks and phones, she said no technology and everyone in the classroom was whining. Do you see how technology is tearing this world apart? It is making students more rude to teachers and each other.

Cyberbullying rates have gone up since technology has taken over the world.  According to BullyStatistics.org, 80 percent of teen use a cellphone regularly which makes it a prime opportunity for cyberbullying. The reason for cyberbullying is it’s a lot easier to insult someone on a screen versus insulting them in person. Society should just go back to the way it used to be when someone would walk to their friends house in order to ask them if they wanted to hang out.

Sources

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/16/why-does-writing-make-us-_n_900638.html

http://www.bullyingstatistics.org/content/cyber-bullying-statistics.html