Technology Distractions in School

           Schools today compared with schools of yesterday are extremely different in so many ways.  Technology is the main reason for this.  It has affected every part of our lives, school included.  Only 15 years ago, school consisted of huge textbooks, pencils and large libraries.  Today, school consists of computers and cell phones.  This is good in a lot of ways.  It allows students so many resources of information and connection.  However, it is terrible for students in many other ways including distraction and connection.  I used connection as both a positive and a negative here and the reason is because it is both.  It is good for students in that they may be able to reach professionals and teachers whenever they need to, but it is also bad because they can also reach friends and other distractions whenever they want as well.  This is bad for getting any learning or work done. 

Matt Richtel, 2013

            Procrastination has always been a barrier to students.  Despite this fact, time wasting and distractions have reached a new high thanks to the influence of stimuli offered by cell phones, computers and the internet (Richtel, 2010).  Just 15 years ago, students were procrastinating by watching TV or playing outside.  Today, students are procrastinating by watching TV, playing outside, playing video games, going on YouTube, texting with friends, going on Facebook and so many more options.  The list of distractions, with the inclusion of technology, goes on and on.  It may be the opinion of some that these distractions only exist at home, but certainly not at school.  This assumption would be erroneous though.  Computers play an important part in the classroom now, but students are not only doing schoolwork while on their computers at school.  Students are texting, shopping or browsing the internet at school which impedes their learning and the teaching performed by the teacher (Muyingi, 2014).  

 

Ryan Avery, 2017

            Due to all of the distractions offered by technology, and all of the positive uses of it in schools, some believe that it should integrate social media into the school environment and curriculum (Cheong, Shuter, and Suwinyattichaiporn, 2016).  The idea behind this thought is that if students are going to visit these internet sites anyway while at school, they should at least have some educational importance and relation.  I personally do not believe that we should accept bad behavior because it would be too difficult to rally against it.  The fact of the matter is that when students are distracted, important work is not being completed and students are not able to focus.  This is how life has always been for students.  One thing we learn in school is time management and how to manage distractions and still complete our tasks.  This should not be lost to today’s students just because they may have more distractions to guard against.  Instead we should help them deal with their many distractions and teach them how to manage in this digital age in which we live.  So I’ll finish with a couple questions so that I can have your views of this current dilemma.  How are we to manage technology and the distractions it presents in today’s classroom?  Should we include it or exclude it from our classrooms?  How can we keep students engaged in schoolwork instead of the distractions presented by the internet and their smartphones? 

References

Cheong, Pauline Hope, Shuter, Robert, Suwinyattichaiporn, Tara.  (2016).  Managing student digital distractions and hyperconnectivity: communication strategies and challenges for professorial authority.  Communication Education 63 (3).

Muyingi, H. (2014).  Factors contributing to technology-enabled distractions in the classroom: a case study of students at the Polytechnic of Namibia.  Polytechnic of Namibia 8 (1).

Richtel, Matt.  (2010).  Growing up digital, wired for distraction.  The New York Times.

Privacy and the Internet

Privacy is a term that has many different meanings depending on the person it describes and/or the person using it.  I used to think it had a simple meaning: privacy means not allowing other people to know things about you that you don’t want them to know.  However, since the internet has surfaced, privacy has taken on new dimensions to its previous “easy” definition.  The internet allows people access to banking, bill paying, education, social media and the list goes on and on.  In order to use these sites, people need to create passwords.  Passwords do not necessarily guarantee protection.  Hackers are constantly working to breach “secure sites” to obtain personal information.  Financial information is often a target for these hackers.  So, it would be easy to conclude that if a person wants privacy, they should not bank online.  This would be an erroneous conclusion because companies, including banks, have their customer information on their company databases (Punagin and Arya, 2015).  This could be an avenue for hackers to use (no matter how conscientious the consumer is) to obtain personal information.  This is becoming increasingly concerning for the majority of United States Citizens (Spiekermann and Cranor, 2009).  People are beginning to realize that seemly harmless perks like customer rewards cards are giving hackers an avenue to their personal information (Spiekermann and Cranor, 2009).  A person may conclude therefore, that the only “problem” the internet permits concerning privacy is a financial one.  To these people, I suggest we take another approach to the privacy issue. 

 

TaylorWessing, 2014

Social media is, to many people, a major function of the internet.  They use it to stay connected to people anywhere and everywhere.  We have seen numerous studies and reports that talk about the privacy issues and concerns that social media brings and the adage that once something has been posted on the internet, it’s always there.  Before concerns about privacy surfaced, people were posting very personal information to their accounts.  Now it seems that consumers of social media are starting to apply the suggested solutions to their accounts.  Almost simultaneously, companies that own social media platforms are also trying to adjust privacy issues from their end as well (Spiekermann and Cranor, 2009).  Therefore, it would seem that these sites are as private as they can be.  However, there is one variable that can’t really be accounted for: the user. 

 

Lori David, 2014

 Novices and children are very vulnerable to the internet and all of its uses.  Children are almost required to use the internet for education purposes.  Their personal information, grades, assignments, readings and homework may be entirely online.  This opens up another danger (other than social media) to children and their families.  Parents and teachers may opt to download and recommend apps or web sites that claim to help the students in their education, but these sites have not been adequately vetted for privacy by the school (Singer, 2015).  Many districts have already seen data breaches of their systems (Singer, 2015).  Therefore, some schools are just now beginning to think about teaching a privacy curriculum.  This would teach children about the dangers of the internet and the positive implications of privacy (Egelman, Bernd, Friedland and Garcia, 2016).  Should schools be teaching internet privacy to their students?  If so, where does the school’s responsibility end and the parent’s responsibility begin?

References

Engelman, Serge, Bernd, Julia, Friedland, Gerald, Garcia, Dan.  (2016).  The teaching privacy curriculum.  International Computer Science Institute.

Punagin, Saraswathi and Arya, Arti.  (2015).  Privacy in the age of pervasive internet and big data analytics – challenges and opportunities.  I.J. Modern Education and Computer Science, 7 (36-47).

Singer, Natasha.  (2015).  Privacy pitfalls as education apps spread haphazardly.  The New York Times.  https://nyti.ms/1Ms03de

Spiekermann, Sarah and Cranor, Lorrie Faith.  (2009).  Engineering privacy.  IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 35 (1).