Has school become too tech dependent?
By: Austin Wymore & Nellie Purdy
English teacher Barry Varela is one of few educators at Riverside who prefers to teach using mainly paper and pencil assignments rather than online materials.
Varela is only in his second year of teaching. On his first day of work, he asked his students if they’d rather have physical or online assignments.
”I was very surprised that the vast majority of the students told me that they would prefer to read on paper,” he said.
Before teaching, Varela worked as an editor. This was his job since before computers and modern technology were introduced to education and the writing industry. He was sent hard copies of books, which he then read through, annotated, and sent back with edits.
After witnessing how technology has changed academia and the writing industry, he believes the modern wave of tech isn’t entirely beneficial.
”If everything is being done online… chatGPT and other AI resources are temptations for students to do less of their own work,” he said.
Beyond student opinions, he finds many digital platforms, like Canvas, and online resources frustrating.
“Some information processing tools are far more complicated than the average person needs,” he said.
Still, Varela assigns essays digitally and uses his projector to share videos and instructions with his class.
His teaching style may not be popular, but he stands with his choice.
”We all spend enough time as it is looking at our phones and at our screens,” he said.
Some of Varela’s students prefer online assignments.
“We have a lot of work on paper that we do,” said sophomore Vince –. “If things are online, it’s easier and it’s cleaner to take care of. If you don’t have internet at home or if the site isn’t working then you can’t access your work. If everything is on paper, you can lose a paper and have to get another one, it can just get messy in your backpack.”
Sophomore Conrad Hamel agrees.
“I like having everything online to be honest,” he said. “If I just feel lazy, I can do it at home.”
Hamel understands Varela’s low-tech approach, but thinks teachers should know how to use the platforms to help prepare students for college and careers.
“I feel like it’s an issue when teachers don’t know how to use technology,” he says. ”You have this system that’s sort of built around technology, and when not everyone knows how to use it it becomes a problem.”
Recent History
Modern technology has been used in classrooms since 2009, but virtual learning didn’t become the standard until the COVID-19 pandemic.
When current students’ parents went to school, they used little more than paper, pencils and books. Personal computers existed, but class sets were rare.
According to the Educational Testing Service’s policy information report from the Educational Testing Service around 85% of schools in America today have adopted chromebooks. The internet, cell phones and artificial intelligence are the new normal.
An unprecedented amount of technology accompanies today’s generation of students to and from school. As social media, cell phones, video games and the internet evolve, their significance, prominence and place in students’ lives does too.
Unseen Risks
Although technology has provided many benefits, there is still more to learn about the negative effects it may have.
Riverside attempts to issue each of its almost 2000 students a personal Chromebook with access to their DPS account. This year it took about three weeks to distribute Chromebooks. It took even longer for many students who were new to the school or district.
IT Support Assistant Coach James Carter gets daily visits from students with technology issues. At the beginning of every school year, new students scramble to him for help setting up their DPS account. Many teachers integrate the chromebooks into their coursework at the very beginning That leaves up to a third of the school at risk of falling behind until their accounts get fixed.
When power outages or internet losses occur, most teachers’ lesson plans become impossible to follow.
“Sometimes [connection problems are] just as easy as resetting something and I can do that,” said Carter. “If it’s not something I [can] do I have to pass it along to our DPS people downtown.”
Computers are not always reliable, either. They can shut down, brake, have software issues, and sometimes require maintenance, which most students can’t perform
The most common problem Carter is approached with is Chromebook repair, most of which can’t be done on campus.
“I have to send them to the warehouse for [district IT] to fix,” he said. “It takes at least a week.”
Personal Problem
Science teacher Tavia Webley has been teaching longer than her students have been alive. In her 25-year career, she’s watched a lot of devices come and go.
”The use of technology has grown tremendously,” she said. “[When I started teaching] we had overhead transparencies. The overhead machine was sitting in the front with that big, bright light. You wrote on the clear transparencies, and students could see it projected”
Cell phones weren’t around back then. The earliest phones could only make and receive calls. When flip phones were the only available handheld devices, students rarely had them out during class.
Then came text messaging, and over time phones changed from a means of communication to what seems like an extension of its owner.
“Now, cell phones are out on a regular,” Webley said. “I think, after the pandemic, students may have thought of cell phones as their best friend.”
To accommodate these changes, DPS developed policies surrounding the technology use of students. At first, phones were prohibited. Then the district allowed students to use them for assignments, but only when teachers permitted. The current rule in Riverside’s current parent and student handbook, is:
“Unless specifically authorized by a teacher or school administrator, students shall not use, display, or have in the “on” position any personal electronic communication or entertainment device, including cell phones, pagers, music players, electronic games, or similar items, during instructional time or mandatory school assemblies and activities.
Any device possessed or used in violation of this policy may be confiscated and held for return
to the student’s parent or guardian”
At this point, many rules about phone use during class are left to teachers’ discretion.
“I wish everybody was on the same page,” said Grayson Knotts, a junior in Webley’s class. “Going from one class and not using your phone to another and being able to use it whenever you want is a little weird.”
Webley uses all types of technology in the classroom. For example, students review concepts using Kahoot and use internet search engines to find more information about course content.
“I like to use it for the students to do research [and] understand how our particular concept that we’re learning,” she said.
There are times, however, when she struggles to keep her students off their phones before and after those activities.
“Now it seems like students feel it is their right…to have a cell phone in a classroom,” Webley said. “They don’t understand the flip side, how it is a distraction. It is really impeding them communicating with people, as well as completely engaging in the content that’s being taught.”
A New History
Matt Smith has taught English at Riverside since 2003. Early in his career, long before programs like ChatGPT existed, he remembers students cheating on assignments.
“A student handing another student paper copy of homework, and then copying, was really common,” he said. “I feel like I never see that anymore.”
For about the past 10 years, he’s used digital writing assignments, especially Google Docs, because it allows him to track student edits throughout the writing process.
“It’s great because a student shares it with one time and then we have an archive of all of our interactions and annotations all the way through,” he said.
He acknowledges that technology can positively and negatively impact student learning. Students are able to research and use primary sources through the internet, but much of the time the answers submitted are identical to the first Google result.In Smith’s experience, today’s high school students lack research and citation skills.
“They don’t have any sense of what’s valid and invalid source,” he said.
But Smith is still careful to use technology in his classes.
Smith believes this is because everyone has a smartphone in their pocket and access to apps that can do math for you and show work, or AI engines that can simulate voice, they don’t have copy a classmate’s homework anymore.
“It’s just become so easy [to cheat],” he said.
To combat students’ urge to take shortcuts, Smith collects handwritten work samples at the beginning of his writing-intensive courses to get a sense of his students’ voice. He uses it as a reference to compare later work to, and observe any big changes in writing level or style.
“Maybe I’m not that great a teacher, but it’s probably more likely that they’re using one of the AI bots,” he said.
“It’s crazy to use a robot to help you cheat, but you can still learn from it,” said junior Brendan Lee-Tate, a student in Smith’s class. “It’ll explain everything and break it down.”
Smith also became the sponsor of the AI club.
“I’m fascinated by it and curious to see what will happen with it in the classroom.”
For some, it’s easy to be tempted to plagiarize or use AI when you want to find the quickest and easiest way to complete a boring assignment. But for students in advanced classes, Smith has observed a different motive. Even prior to AI becoming mainstream, he caught students plagiarizing to maintain their GPA.
”We have a lot of students taking AP classes who don’t remember ever getting a B,” he said. “It was like ‘I’m in the top 15 of my class. I can’t afford to get a B in this class. And I know that cheating was wrong, but the grade is more important than the academic integrity.’”
Whether as a learning tool or as a cheating method, AI likely isn’t going anywhere. Smith believes that AI writing will become a larger part of education, but as the technology advances it also will be tough to navigate.
“I think that we are going to see writing-intensive classes move back to pen and pencil,” Smith said.
