How Technology Affects Learning: Views from Teachers

With iPads, Facebook, smartphones, video games, music, and others, technology now occupies a significant amount of a child's time in the United States (almost eight hours a day - National Center for Education Statistics, USA). Students in the Philippines probably face the same increasing amount of time spent on these activities provided by technology. Thus, it is time to ask how current technology affects student learning. The response from teachers is particularly important since their perspective comes directly from the classroom. In the United States, the nonprofit group called Common Sense Media recently published a survey of US teachers regarding this issue:

http://www.commonsensemedia.org/sites/default/files/research/view-from-the-classroom-final-report.pdf

The highlights of this report are as follows:

• Entertainment Media, which includes television, social-networking sites, video games, internet, smartphones, iPads, texting, and others, according to 71% of the teachers hurt a student's attention span.
• Nearly 60% of the teachers say that the new media have also harm students' writing and face-to-face communication skills.
• 40% of the teachers say that students' critical thinking is also harmed.
• Among the various media, the most problematic according to the teachers are video games for elementary students, and texting and social networking for adolescents.
• Two-thirds of the teachers surveyed say that media have affected negatively the student's social and emotional development.

The report concludes:

This is not a study that can document whether teachers’ perceptions about media’s influence are accurate. It does not include any objective measures of attention span, writing, or face-to-face communication, nor any way to link outcomes to individual children’s media use patterns. However, it does surface some important and broadly held concerns of the nation’s teachers.

To read the entire report, please visit
Children, Teens, and Entertainment Media: The View From The Classroom