How Much Technology is Enough for our Classrooms?

With schools acquiring bigger budgets than ever before, where does the money go to? Infrastructure? Teachers?

Once, in my freshman year at high school, I had a teacher who talked about respect for the laptop cart. Basically, a cart containing about twenty laptops needed as much attention as a student getting bullied, maybe even more. Also, the teacher told the whole classroom that there was more than $15K worth of technology in the metal cart. That was just for one cart. Now multiply that by ten carts in the whole school. I might as well get a hundred thousand dollar sports car that would actually get me “someplace.” Are these laptops even helping students? Last time I checked, my friend was in a corner of a classroom playing “Tanks.”

The classroom has become the epitome of non-productivity.  No wonder the school budget is so high. Robbing taxpayers’ money just to get students to play computer games once they hacked through the school firewall.

All I could reply back to the teacher was a sarcastic “thanks.” At the end of the day, I was actually grateful that the teacher reminded me of how much the school pays for just laptops alone. It was actually an issue that needed some recognition.

Don’t get me wrong, computers and technology as a whole are beneficial to the classroom. However, as a student who can easily see what other students are doing, possibly even better than the teacher, I could offer some “expertise.” I have seen lots of improvements within classmates through the use of technology. There are thousands of websites to check student progress and it’s really beneficial to teacher due to stringent time management. With high school students coming from different backgrounds and choice of online tools, things can become a bit hectic for the teacher. Latest tools such as D2L and Edmodo have very different styles and user interface. It’s something that students can catch up to in no time but as teachers sometimes being technologically “behind”, it can be very hard for them. Personally, I have no issue navigating different learning websites but I have seen some students being dependent on a specific tool or website. Overall, it’s an issue concerning certain students and teachers.