Integrating technology in the classroom may be a solution but it is also the problem.

A few days ago, I was in a classroom supporting a group. Nothing was actually happening as the teacher was dithering about some activity. I took the opportunity to write some thoughts I have been having about how technology is used in the classroom, how it can be a disaster if not structured and how the fundamental idea behind the computer room is flawed.

There is a real risk of having a disastrous lesson in a computer room. I know this for myself after one memorable observation when I had planned lots of activities for the students to do, yet one student still saw fit to try and sell some DVDs to a classmate opposite. In other lessons in the computer rooms, it became a real problem trying to prise students away from the screen. There have been situations where students become really angry if they are badgered to get off the computer and it has led me to worry about how much time the education system devotes to having students simply sit in front of a screen. Many students spend a lot of time welded to their phones, and of course at home there’s the screen-based activities of the internet, the TV and games consoles.

Having observed many lessons, I have sat with a sort of rising dread as another worksheet gets handed out for the students to carry out. The task is a means to an end, an opportunity to extract something from the assessment criteria out of the students. There have been times when no actual learning has taken place because there is a systemic failure to spend time developing life skills the students really need. That failure allows students to build up bad habits, producing work of variable quality and in some cases, turning class work into solitary exercises.

Scary offices

Let’s take research as an example. I commented on twitter on the Wikipedia blackout day that students across the globe would be unable to copy and paste their college work for the day. It was meant in jest, but there is a deeper truth to the way that students are not challenged enough in how they rip off other people’s work and claim it is their own. Even worse is that it often does not cross their mind to realise they are cheating, not learning and wasting precious time.

Research techniques are not embedded enough across the curriculum in colleges, from my experience. Often, students have found the idea of referencing work odd or long-winded and it can be an uphill battle to get the discipline of crediting people where credit’s due.

In my teaching, I have done what I could to stem the flow of Wikipedia entries coming to me dressed as work. It would partially explain my constant look of terror as I approached the marking box. I familiarise myself with key Wikipedia entries and I have made a habit of copying phrases into google to search for the string of words. I would withhold marks for work I was not confident about and I would go as far as finding the source material and stapling it to work with no further comments.

There seems to be an idea that plonking students in front of a screen and getting them to get work done is ok, but it takes a great deal of skills to manage the situation successfully. Time-constrained targets often work well, with feedback at the end of the task. However, the students need to think the work they have been asked to do is worthwhile; consider the distractions available online and then think about the priorities for the students. Will the work be more interesting than an addictive computer game, a facebook chat or youtube videos of keyboard cat in a Hitler parody? Even in the colleges with blocking software, it is inevitable that someone will find a way to get through the filters!

I was once shown software by a library assistant that showed what each student was looking at one the internet in the computer cluster. At the time I was a bit concerned by it, but as time has passed I have become even more averse to this sort of surveillance. It allows the teacher to keep control but that comes at the risk of student autonomy, which I don’t think is a good precedent to set. I would much rather set out expectations with eventual sanctions rather than a system that explicitly shows a lack of trust in the student.

If Kim Jong-Un likes computer rooms, should we abandon them?

I am consciously trying to balance an argument for computer rooms, but my mindset at the moment is that the computer room is all too often a cop out for actual teaching. As someone who probably has some form of Attention Deficit Disorder, I find classes based primarily around computers really boring; and I know how I react to boredom is to lose motivation to do work. I stop seeing the reason for working, and allow distraction to take over unless I am challenged. I fear this is something students can appreciate all too well and ineffective timetabling can mean some students spend a large proportion of their college time in computer rooms.

There are certainly ways to resolve these issues, and I’m sure that many teachers manage computer rooms brilliantly, so this post is more an observation on what I’ve witnessed and my problems with the concept of computer rooms.