Education & Technology

In what will hopefully be good news for the kids in my home state of Washington, Gov. Gregoire has removed WASL Math testing requirements for students to graduate high school. For more on this particular story check out this link.

Now, you may be wondering what said story above has to do with the title of this particular post… well its not so much the words on that page that brought it up as much as it was the picture in the story. The picture depicts what looks to be middle school aged students with laptops on their desks in class. There’s no caption associated with the picture, so I can’t really say which school it was taken at or really deduce much of anything from it other than students have laptops and are using them in school.

I’m all for technology being used to help kids learn better, however I’m not too keen on technology being used as a replacement for the more traditional tools of writing and arithmetic even if it does speed things up a bit. Our society as a whole is, with every day, becoming more and more dependent upon technology. A perfect example of this could probably be found out on the street of any major US metropolis. Ask people on the street to do some simple division and multiplication problems and see how many ask for a calculator. What is to be said about students using laptops in English class? Will our children soon forget how to write and take notes by hand? Many people have already forgotten proper spelling and grammar thanks too spell and grammar checkers so it is certainly a possibility. I for one don’t intend to forget such things (and if you’re going to comment on my grammar and spelling, note that went out the window LONG before spell check ever showed up) and endeavor to keep them fresh daily.