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How does technology affect academic performance
Technology and academic performance
The effect of technology on students' academic performance
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In a culture where families tend to leave their children alone with technological devices, screen time is bound to play a role in a child’s happiness, psychological development, and academic progress. In The Village Effect, Susan Pinker (2014) discusses the research that has been done in regards to technology and the potential consequences it has on our overall well-being. Pinker (2014) asserts that, while many have made attempts - using technology - to close the academic achievement gap between the opposite ends of the economic classes, the effects of this effort have been either inert or adverse. It is essential to understand the possible damaging effects of screen use on developing children; if we can grasp the ways in which children develop cognitive skills most optimally, it becomes easy to see that technology isn’t the forerunner in tools that is able to deliver success. Rather, face-to-face contact is shown to be the ultimate mechanism that help children to succeed, not only in school, but many other areas of welfare as well (Pinker, 2014). For years, people have been trying to figure out ways to equalize the divergent academic achievement rates between rich and poor children. A study published by the Kaiser Family Foundation in 2010 found that, since the late 90’s when they first started monitoring over 2,000 children, media …show more content…
Technology would, not only transform the education system, but also equalize academic achievement (Pinker, 2014); the One Laptop Per Child project anticipated that in providing every child in a developing country with their own personal laptop, knowledge would spread and academic success would be easily cultivated (Pinker, 2014) - an undertaking that, when infiltrated in countries afflicted with civil wars and malaria, such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, only led many to acknowledge the case
Poor countries do not always have resources to fit the bill of education services for technology. “For children in poor countries, future connectivity promises new access to educational tools…” (Schmidt 227). “Physical classrooms will remain dilapidated; teachers will continue to take paychecks and not show up for class; and books and supplies will still be scarce” (Schmidt 227). A survey was done in 2012 about Ethiopia give out tablets fully loaded with educational information to poor country; it irresistibly gave poor students a wealth of knowledge where students could write and speak English (Schmidt 227-228). Inversely, the education of poor countries has hit all time low. The countries that do not have the finance to buy or create technology for classes is detrimental to the country growth. Technology must be available for everyone. The world is hindered from becoming a better place without technology being present in education. “Just imagine the implications of these burgeoning mobile or tablet-based learning platforms for a country like Afghanistan,
Children who are deemed poor, do not receive nearly as many educational opportunities as children who are deemed rich. Kozol acknowledges that poor children barely have any social skills, which will help them in Kindergarten. In contrast, children who have been in preschool like programs since their toddler years, are more likely to develop social skills and have early-learning skills, like knowing how to hold a crayon. Children in all social classes, in the United States have to take the same standardized tests and are measured on the same grading scale. Kozol questions, “Which of these children will receive the highest scores?”(Kozol 413) Sadly, poor children will not be the ones with the highest score, and they will be held accountable for their test scores, as Kozol points out “There is something deeply hypocritical about a society that holds an eight year old inner city child “accountable” for robbing her of what they gave their own kids six or seven years earlier” (Kozol 413). It is unfair to expect a child to perform on a test equally with other children who started their education earlier. Kozol mentions that some people, who are well-educated, feel that money is not a problem with education inequality, and that other factors such as, “The values of the parents and the kids themselves must have a role in this as well-you know, housing, health conditions,
Child poverty is and has been a big problem in America, and children below the poverty line do not do well in school. David H. Arnold, a scholar and studier on the subject, said in an article, "Child poverty has reached epidemic proportions within the United States. Of the 35.6 million people living in poverty in 1997, 14.1 million were children … One third of American children spend at least one year below the poverty line, and 18% experience extreme poverty … Younger children are more likely to face poverty… and its impact may be strongest during children's earliest years ... Among poverty's effects is a devastating negative influence on academic achievement; the relation between socioeconomic status … and underachievement is most dramatic near and below the poverty line” (Arnold). Child poverty is a very real problem in America and most children with money problems are likely to fall behind in school. In addition, Parents having a bad education will most likely lead to poverty, and it is hard for their children to improve their way of life after they have based under the poverty line. In Arnold’s article, he stated; "Numerous factors contribute to the relation between [economic stance] and educational outcomes … Such factors may, for example, have repercussions on child cognitive functioning or parenting, and in turn, educational
After watching the Teach Us All documentary on Netflix, it opened my eyes to many of the issues regarding educational inequality. The study looked at schools in Little Rock, New York City, and Los Angeles to show us the current state of U.S. education and how far we have come since the school desegregation crisis. The thesis of this documentary is that since the efforts of the Little Rock Nine, our belief is that educational inequality has improved when in reality, it hasn’t improved and the actions of our country have had negative effects. Teach Us All emphasizes the need for unity and collective action to improve our education system for the kids in poor communities that are in the most need. Our country has devoted all the resources to the middle and upper class for education and are taking money away from where it needs to
According to Clarisse, during school they sit and watch ‘ educational’ programs all day, these programs are not like documentaries in this time period, “they just run the answers right by you” (Bradbury 27). The program has no student input in an era where television should have interactive features. In areas like Africa where there is less education opportunities and less books and materials due to them being expensive, it is reasonable to think that technology would be an answer to the education crisis, but electricity is expensive and hard to get in the African savanna. Even the universities in Africa are lacking books because “they are produced in Europe so the end user in Africa has to pay more”(Spinks). People can’t even afford the books needed to get the education they deserve, low-end schools probably use what they can and it ends up that they are just running answers by the student because they don’t have the materials to show the learner visually. Many new battery-efficient and solar powered tablets have been released as educational tools for people in Africa that can supply the learning to students without Wi-Fi. These new”tablets come preloaded with a mix of the Kenyan curriculum and international content”. This gives the students the joy of learning without technology or the distractions that some devices have, such as ipads. The need for extra stuff such as Wi-Fi and
Standardized tests are very common throughout the United States. They are used to measure students’ academic performances in school. These tests vary from state to state in all grade levels. However, these tests are believed to be biased towards those students who come from higher-class neighborhoods, simply because they have more educational resources. “The absence of standards virtually guarantees stratified resources and access to knowledge, based upon income, color of skin, and the community and neighborhood in which one lives” (French, 2003). The resources in the suburban areas differ from those in the urban areas, because of the gap within the difference of incomes. Families living in suburban neighborhoods have a bigger income, which enables them to have more resources than those living in urban neighborhoods. Most educational resources come from taxes, which plays a big part in the gap between urban and suburban neighborhoods.
Michael Oher was from an all-black neighborhood located in the third poorest zip code in the country. By the time he was a sophomore, he’d been to 11 different schools, he couldn’t read or write, and he had a GPA of 0.6. In his first-grade year alone, he missed 41 days of school and ended up repeating both the first and the second grade; he didn’t even go to the third grade. Oher was one of the thousands of children that have been identified as having four or more of the at-risk factors mentioned by the National Center of Education and Statistics (NCES). According to the NCES, poverty and race are high on the list of things that negatively affect students’ ability to succeed at school. Other risk factors include changing schools multiple times and being held back from one or more grades. Oher’s biography, The Blind Side by Michael Lewis, proves how socioeconomic status impacts a child’s academic success because placed in perspective, education is not as important as the hardships of reality.
Education is now more important than it has ever been. Because it is the law that every child receives an education, most people believe that all children are getting an equal education. But, that is not the truth; low-income children are receiving poorer quality education than middle-class children. These children also experience racial inequality, and they live in an unbreakable low-income cycle, all of which are things that have an effect of the quality of education a child is receiving. As stated by Brooks and Duncan (1997), "How does the relative lack of income influence children 's day-to-day lives? It is through inadequate nutrition; fewer learning experiences; instability of residence; lower quality of schools;
Throughout the nation, education inequality affects many minority students that have low-income which reinforces the disparity between the rich and the poor. The amount of children that have a socioeconomic background of poverty in the United States is estimated to be 32.4 million (National Center for Children in Poverty, 2011). Since many of these children are from
Living in poverty exposes children to disadvantages that influence many aspects in their life that are linked to their ability to do well in school. In the United States of America there are an estimated 16.4 million children under the age of 18 living in poverty (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010). “The longer a child lives in poverty, the lower the educational attainment” (Kerbo, 2012). Children who are raised in low-income households are at risk of failing out before graduating high school (Black & Engle, 2008). U.S. children living in poverty face obstacles that interfere with their educational achievement. Recognizing the problems of living in poverty can help people reduce the consequences that prevent children from reaching their educational potential.
Exposing the Negative Effects of Technology on Kids. Global Post. ND. Web. 19 February 2014. Martin, Alice.
In the Southern Education Foundation’s (SEF) October 2013 report, A New Majority Low Income Students in the South and Nation, it is shared that a majority of public school children in 17 states, one-third of the 50 states across the nation, were low income students as of 2011. Thirteen of the 17 states were in the South, and the remaining four were in the West. Since 2005, half or more of the South’s children in public schools have been from low income households. During the school years 2010 and 2011, for the first time in modern history, the western United States had a majority of low income students attending P-12 public schools.
Richmond, Paulette Natasha. "Wealth and Achievement Gaps: An Examination of Virginia Middle Schools." Ph.D. Old Dominion University, 2007. Print. United States – Virginia.
As disclosed in the article, The Impact of Technology on the Developing Child, Chris Rowan acknowledges, “Rather than hugging, playing, rough housing, and conversing with children, parents are increasingly resorting to providing their children with more TV, video games, and the latest iPads and cell phone devices, creating a deep and irreversible chasm between parent and child” (par. 7). In the parent’s perspective, technology has become a substitute for a babysitter and is becoming more convenient little by little. It is necessary for a growing child to have multiple hours of play and exposure to the outside world each day. However, the number of kids who would rather spend their days inside watching tv, playing video games, or texting is drastically increasing. Children are not necessarily the ones to be blamed for their lack of interest in the world around them, but their parents for allowing their sons and daughters to indulge in their relationship with technology so powerfully. Kids today consider technology a necessity to life, because their parents opted for an easier way to keep their children entertained. Thus resulting in the younger generations believing that technology is a stipulation rather than a
It can be argued that the academic performance of children has nothing to do with their socioeconomic status, because there have been many cases of children from very poor families who have excelled greatly in academics (APA, 2017). Furthermore, many predominantly high-end schools have posted poor results when compared to school with poorer backgrounds. This is despite the fact children from lower socioeconomic classes do not have access to the best forms of learning materials. The high performance of children from poor backgrounds is often attributed to the fact that they are not preoccupied with many activities which would otherwise hinder them from concentrating on their studies (Sacerdote, 2002). Therefore, some believe it is false to say that poor performance is associated with children who come from low socioeconomic classes. Rather, they believe academic achievement is genetic (Sacerdote, 2002).