The impact of technology on the overall progress of humanity is quite obvious and even undeniable. We are often unconscious about how much technology surrounds us at the moment, including the time we spend communicating in messengers with friends, watching movies on laptops, listening to music in the ‘background’ mode, and so on. Well, the effect of technological innovations may be very often good but are we also aware of the other side?
Thinking of technology as of the absolute good and trusting it more than we trust our own minds – that is what should be avoided. Technology has come so deep into our lives that we take it for granted. In education, it is practically irreplaceable – providing great benefits for learners with impairments and, for example, dyslexia, technology is doing a great job! So when it comes to giving our preferences to education with or without technology, we should think much.
Technology in Education: Pluses or Minuses?
On the one hand, electronic devices are the best possible helpers when it comes to monotonous tasks or some higher-order operations; on the other hand, technologies are frequently accused of weakening learners’ memory along with reducing the attention span.
In fact, its influence has caused alarming findings to go viral over the last few years. In this article, we will critically look at the situation of the effect of technology on education, taking into account facts and studies.
The results of integrating the digital world with education are numerous. So, let’s read on and together come to the right conclusion about technology in order to decide what kind of influence should be evaded and what is okay to use.
In education, bad results are revealed in the unwillingness to process information of greater volume. Writing a term paper turns into a near-global disaster for an average student who is used during all his or her life to reading memes in social networks or writing only small pieces of elementary text. And, the ‘solutions’ to problems like that are also found in the digital realm – students seek the urgent help of an expert essay writing service, willing to do anything and everything (including buying an academic paper) to get points.
As for the evident and proven minuses of technology, here are a few examples.
1. Information abundance makes it more difficult to retain data. Electronic devices have a negative impact on the way we remember since the streams of information are so huge that our brain doesn’t always manage to ‘sort it out’. According to Tony Schwartz, CEO of The Energy Project and author of Be Excellent At Anything, metaphorically saying that the process looks like this: “It’s like having water poured into a glass continuously all day long, so whatever was there at the top has to spill out as the new water comes down. We’re constantly losing the information that’s just come in – we’re constantly replacing it, and there’s no place to hold what you’ve already gotten’.
2. Devices have made us lazy in remembering. With respect to another study, we can confidently render the opinion of many scientists that whenever a person relies on his or her gadget to ‘remember’ things for them, it hinders their memory. Indeed, what we have to do to make the brain work if the smartphone does it for us? You might have experienced this effect in your life when writing a shopping list or leaving a note during a lecture and then forgetting that you had any duties at all!
3. Technologies simply distract us. Zaldy S. Tan, director of the Memory Disorders Clinic at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center said: ‘Forgetting… is a sign of how busy we are’. The point is that we are very often busy with unnecessary things like checking out Instagram during seminars or playing games instead of getting down to studies.No attention – no memorization, that is how simple it is.
In What Cases is Technology Okay to Use?
The line between the healthy use of devices and the overuse of it is very thin. Surely, all of us need to draw this line for ourselves, filtering what is destroying us as learners and leaving what makes life simpler. Of course, we cannot become a new generation of ‘cavemen’ who are hiding from every impact of technology.
Sometimes technology can save us from using technology. Didn’t get it? Let us explain.
For instance, using a good academic essay writing company can save you from sitting for over 96 hours at your laptop trying to do the academic task on your own. In this way, trusting your assignment to SmartWritingService with proven 400+ professionals who get salaries for what they do, you can lessen the impact of technological devices on your eyes, brain, spine, memory, and attention span.
In such a way, we hope that it is clearer now how technology is influencing students, and you will decide, in what situations you will reduce its usage and in what cases you will go for technology.