Group items tagged

Other negative effects of technology on learning: -Technology makes it easier to cheat and plagarize -Decrease in critical thinking -Decrease in analysis skills -Decrease in imagination -Don’t process as much during class, easily distracted

Texting/Digital Communication: One of the issues we discovered is the negative effect texting and instant-message language has on student’s writing capabilities.  Our research shows that acronyms and abbreviations are slipping into student’s writing.  Rather than using formal English when writing papers, many students use digital language, which includes things like: -lower case ‘i’ rather than uppercase ‘I’ -b/c for because -idk for i don’t know -recurrent grammar issues -Many, many more: http://www.aim.com/acronyms.adp

Negative Effects: Spell-check: Through our research we discovered that many students rely too heavily on spellcheck to correct their spelling, and as a result, have poor spelling skills.  In the following video, a high school girl describes her spelling problems from dependency on spellcheck.  It also addressed the problems that arise from text speak.

“Learning is not to be found on a printout,” David McCullough, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer, said in a commencement address at Boston College in May. “It’s not on call at the touch of the finger. Learning is acquired mainly from books, and most readily from great books.”

The simplest argument for why children should read in their leisure time is that it makes them better readers. According to federal statistics, students who say they read for fun once a day score significantly higher on reading tests than those who say they never do.

Reading skills are also valued by employers. A 2006 survey by the Conference Board, which conducts research for business leaders, found that nearly 90 percent of employers rated “reading comprehension” as “very important” for workers with bachelor’s degrees. Department of Education statistics also show that those who score higher on reading tests tend to earn higher incomes.

The internet offers so many gateways to other pages, that it has made it difficult for us to focus on one piece of information at a time. In other words: the internet is making us all a little more A.D.D. Experts describe this habit of darting from page to page as "associative" thinking. They have especially noticed this habit in younger children, whom are comparably less focused on studying, reading, and writing then the age group was when measured in the past. This is damaging to reading ability because it decreases our ability to comprehend what we read.

Another way researchers believe the internet has impacted our critical thinking abilities is that we now use less reliable sources to learn about new ideas. We often accept any article as fact. They found that students children’s reading abilities now do less research before answering a question. They also found that they trusted their friends for answers more than adults. They attributed this habit being a result of internet exposure

"What the Net does is shift the emphasis of our intelligence, away from what might be called a meditative or contemplative intelligence and more toward what might be called a utilitarian intelligence. The price of zipping among lots of bits of information is a loss of depth in our thinking.” -Nicolas Carr, Author of "The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, From Edison to Google"

Among the studies Greenfield analyzed was a classroom study showing that students who were given access to the Internet during class and were encouraged to use it during lectures did not process what the speaker said as well as students who did not have Internet access

Reading for pleasure, which has declined among young people in recent decades, enhances thinking and engages the imagination in a way that visual media such as video games and television do not, Greenfield said.

CONS Social Media can be a Distraction

These instructors maintain that tools like Facebook and Twitter divert students' attention away from what's happening in class and are ultimately disruptive to the learning process.

Cyberbullying

As you well know, technology can be a powerful tool for learning, and it can be the same for cheating. It can be used to inform, and to distort. It can boldly open new doors, while flinging open some that were perhaps best left closed; not every topic is appropriate for all age groups

Instant Research Ask anyone over the age of 50 with a PhD what it was like to get the information that they needed and they will generally begin to swear and discuss how young people these days have it so soft. They are not merely being curmudgeon-esque (well perhaps a few) but on the whole they have a point: nearly every fact is no more than a few taps of the keys from anyone, making the accretion of information, well, child’s play. What does this mean? It has been speculated that this will lead to a decline of respect for intellectuals, but that seems unlikely. Knowing how to search for something is merely the first step to real comprehension, which involves a deeper understanding and critical analysis. On the whole, intellectualism and its pursuits will always command respect

Things such as cheating are now simpler than ever, and I don’t mean writing on your hand. Your class is allowed to use a graphing calculator for the test? Write a program on it that contains all the formulas that you need and presto, you pass the test. Chance of being caught? Zero