We cannot allow our education to be automated

An Internet shortage felt throughout Coachella Valley schools this year could be a warning shot for both the state and the nation, an example of how a rapid climb of classroom technology and online testing can stress a limited bandwidth.

As a high school student, it is sad and concerning for me to see the increasing reliance on technology as a substitute for direct instruction in our schools.

Classrooms across the nation have more access than ever to online, self-paced programs, individual devices, and instructional packages for teachers. It would seem the post-distance learning, newly discovered use of technology to aid in instruction is a positive.

However, our access to technology is not aiding the learning process, it’s replacing the magic of teacher-to-student connection and animated classroom discussions.

According to EdWeek, as of May 2020, at least 59 percent of schools in the U.S. have a computer for every student, and per Gallup, 65 percent of teachers use technology to teach every day.

However, in a 2020 Gallup poll, only 27 percent of teachers felt that “a lot of information is available” about the effectiveness of the tens of thousands of educational technology apps now accessible to them, and yet, those apps have a greater presence in the classroom especially following remote learning.

Among them, Kahoot!, a multiple-choice learning game, offers more than 100 million “ready-to-play games” to students and teachers. Another ed-tech app, Nearpod, allows teachers to use any of its more than 22,000 completely digital lessons, videos, and activities across every subject area.

Actively Learn is an online software providing nearly 20,000 literary works and explanatory texts, and even an automatic grading system for its activities. This type of program can all but replace every teacher-developed component of the classroom experience: it provides built-in, publisher-provided assignments, projects, and assessments which could completely stand in for an English class.

All of this takes the learning out of the classroom and onto the screen. It eliminates the verbal interaction between students, their peers, and their teachers — not ideal as we return from the social isolation of remote learning. Now, the overuse of technology and computer-based software in the classroom threatens to exacerbate the interaction-draining impacts of remote instruction.

Schools should embrace enthusiastic classroom debates and discussions instead of relying on the Nearpod app’s 250-character limit for student posts on its “discussion boards.” Face-to-face discussions foster critical thinking and attentive listening skills and teach students to respectfully disagree while supporting their own positions, something that rarely happens on today’s digital apps.

Teachers should promote hand-annotated essays and hand-drawn posters as learning tools. Letting technology function as the teacher during in-person learning is simply a physical classroom version with distance learning’s downfalls.

Of course, not all technology in school is a negative; a balance can be found. Online library-like websites, for instance, can save schools money and allow access to digital textbooks if hard copies are unaffordable. The internet offers numerous scientific simulations in which students can visualize the atoms in chemical processes. And virtual typing programs help students with the development of that key skill.

That said, technology in the classroom — such as at-your-fingertips research information — should only assist the learning process.

I advocate for the traditional method because I remember lively and engaging class debates on current events issues, small-group discussions about literature and hands-on projects from before technology dominated every lesson.

Whiteboard lectures and notes taken by hand lead to priceless aha! moments. For example, I will always remember more the part of math classes where students demonstrated their knowledge in different ways in front of the class than the online math games we played.

Actual labs in science class make that light bulb go off more than staring at a screen. And writing information down for a spelling test always helped me to better deconstruct and memorize words than simply copy-and-pasting them online.

How will endless hours on computer screens solve any of distance learning’s long-lasting social isolation and learning loss? We must try to save the special moments of human interaction in the classroom, or risk stifling our social and academic development. Our education is not something we can allow to be automated.