As published in the Record Journal on Sunday March 3, 2013
By Eric Vo
Record-Journal staff
evo@record-journal.com
(203) 317-2235
Twitter:@ericvoRJ
Walk into Brian Kirby’s class at Cheshire High School, and you’ll see his students using laptops and tablets as they do their work. They scour the Internet for information, as Kirby walks around the classroom with his iPad — ready to help and to make sure students are focused.
“These devices place a world of information literally at a student’s fingertips,” said Kirby, a social studies teacher. “This can be a valuable tool in fostering discussion, stirring interest and collaborating.”
Schools across the state are moving toward a classroom where students are allowed to use their own personal laptops, tablets and smart phones. Although Cheshire is the only local school district with a formal Bring Your Own Device program, Wallingford and Southington are slowly making the transition to a more electronic classroom environment.Kirby was an early convert and began operating a paperless classroom before the BYOD program started.
Cheshire High School Principal Jeffrey Solan views the program positively, describing the devices as an enhancement to learning. While middle school and high school students in Cheshire are able to bring their personal devices to school, Solan said they don’t abuse the program and really do stay on task.
“Technology, when integrated in a classroom, is the same as integrating anything else in the classroom — whether it be a calculator or pen or paper,” Solan said. “It’s an incredibly powerful tool.”
But while these students are becoming comfortable using devices in the classroom, they may encounter a different situation in college, where some professors don’t allow personal devices for a number of reasons — mainly, the distraction they cause. A number of professors at the University of Connecticut don’t allow students to use any device in their classes. Ruth Fairbanks, an English professor at UConn, said she tried to have an open mind when it came to letting students use their laptops, but she found it was ultimately too distracting for students.
“I tried to have a tolerant attitude toward technology,” Fairbanks said, “but I have found the students don’t pay as close attention to the text and also their attention to the device really distracts them from the intellectual discourse in the classroom.”
The inability to focus and effectively contribute to a classroom discussion is the most common reason for a professor’s refusal to allow personal devices. F. Elizabeth Hart, another UConn English professor, said she doesn’t allow phones in her classes because it affects her ability to be a good instructor.
“I prohibit the use of those devices in class ... (because) they distract me,” Hart said. “Anything that distracts me — as the leader of my class — constitutes a compromise of my feeling effective. And when that happens, I am less effective.”
However, unlike Fairbanks, Hart doesn’t prohibit the use of laptops entirely. She acknowledges it allows students to do “a quick spot of research.” But she doesn’t allow students to use laptops for note taking.
“The open laptop constitutes a barrier between the student’s face and my teaching,” she said. “Another reason is that the students are supposed to be following material in their textbooks or literary texts.”
While there is a possibility for students to become distracted, administrators and teachers believe the distraction would occur with or without the devices. To make sure students are focused, it comes down to instruction, Solan said.
“The issue of kids being focused has existed since the one-room schoolhouse,” he said. “The way we attack it is not through rules and regulation, but rather good instruction.”
During professional development and through collaboration, teachers in Cheshire focus on how to effectively use computers in class, Solan said.
“Kids get distracted today without a personal device,” he said. “Technology is not a root cause for distraction. It’s no more distraction than kids playing kickball outside the window.”
Not all professors prohibit laptops in their classes. Like Solan and Kirby, Patrick Hogan, an English professor at UConn, said he believes having access to the Internet allows his students to find answers to questions that he can’t answer. But Hogan has a different view of maintaining a college student’s attention.
“I don’t have the common view that it is up to college teachers to direct their students’ attention. In grammar school and high school this is important,” he said. “But in college, students are adults and should be directing their attention themselves.”
In addition to being distracting, using personal devices “throws students’ minds into a realm of the abstract, where many things can happen invisibly that have nothing to do with what is going on in the classroom at the moment,” Hart said. In one of her classes, she planned to use technology in her lecturing, but students were so engaged in the discussion she never got around to using the computer, she said.
“We got into such an engaged conversation,” she said. “What classes like (that) show me over and over is that when they’re not on their laptops and are all watching, listening and talking to me and one another, they’re present in the room.”
Although a student may focus on something other than what is being taught, Kirby said his students know what is considered an appropriate use of technology.
“I set the ground rules for when it is acceptable to use a device and when a student needs to set it aside and engage in discussion,” he said.
In fact, during a class Friday morning, Kirby confronted a student who was playing a game on his iPad. After telling him to get back to work or put the iPad away, the student immediately began working with his classmates on a project.
While there are differing opinions on the benefits of technology in the classroom, Kirby believes the move to an electronic classroom is inevitable and allows students to produce greater quality work.
“We live in a digital society, and whether it’s a classroom or a business boardroom, interactive electronic devices are now the norm,” he said. “Over the past several years, my students have produced original research that a decade or two ago I would have expected at a much higher academic level.”
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