Modern Technology As A Tool For Education
With an ever-growing development of technology and an expanding use of the Internet, children are starting to go onto phones, tablets, and computers at a younger age and are getting accustomed to technology and to relying on the internet for information and for entertainment. Unfortunately, this has resulted in a drop of students enjoying the outdoors or reading a good book and in an increase of risks for children, but education could be promoted through the use of technology and with the internet.
Nowadays, most students spend hours watching television, playing video games, talking on the phone, and playing on the computer. Yes, of course, pushing a button and getting immediate entertainment is simple, which is why they choose technology over books. With two hours of their time, students can watch a movie, get the full storyline, and get transported into a utopian or dystopian world that is presented to them. Babies are now basically born with technology in their hands, so they are much more used to pulling out a tablet to play games than they are used to pulling out a book and reading a few pages during any free time they might have. It is also much easier to connect with friends by playing video games together, rather than asking parents if they can go to a friend’s house.
But it with parents and teachers pushing for better social skills and a better education, it is easy to use this increase in internet-usage to better schooling and to promote reading. To improve social skills, parents could limit the time that children are allowed to use the internet, making them more prone to spending time with friends in person, rather than over technology. But as seen in “It’s a Wired World after All: Children, Books, and the Internet,” technology can empower children in many ways. Firstly, playing games online allow children to “learn the patterns of the way problems are solved (Skurzynski 182); secondly, technology would allow children from impoverished communities to let the world know of their situation and could begin to educate themselves and find ways to solve real-life problems they might encounter. Because there has been such a push for collaborative and group learning, where children work in groups for assignments in order to learn cooperation and to work with others, technology could be used to assign group projects to young students and ask them to work together.
However, with an increase of technology comes an increase in risks, especially when it comes to children. Because kids are very innocent and often do not see danger, it is easy for them to be fooled by dangerous websites or by dangerous individuals. With the use of video games, it is extremely simple for anyone to connect with younger children and to coerce them, either by trying to meet with them or getting information from them. In order to minimize those risks, there areprograms and applications to make sure that they cannot access certain sites or channels, but they often find a way anyway.
Technology has multiple positive and negative impacts upon children, but it is impossible to stop the development of it. Although it has caused a decrease in reading and outdoor activity and an increase in risk, parents and teachers can implement programs to fix that and can use technology as a learning tool.
