I had an interesting conversation with one of my moms friends who taught for many years, retiring before the age of cell phone mass adoption. It was an interesting conversation. Technology drives a lot of my instruction. For her, it was much more compartmentalized, although this was similar to my first years as a teacher in the mid 2000’s. It makes for an interesting comparison.

Pretty much everything that I do now has a tech component to it. I rarely hand out papers for things, make copies, or have days where kids are not doing something on a computer. I just have a spiral notebook that they have to turn in twice a semester with class notes, warm-up activities and whatever odds and ends assignments come up. There are a few projects that do not use the computer, as well as reading days when I leave them charging in the Chrome-book cart, but that is about it. All the tests, quizzes, games, and other assignments are on the computer. This is how most classrooms these days are.

Old School versus New School

My mother’s friend Kathy was shocked to hear this, because to her, the computers were somewhere you took the class for a computer “lab”. She had experience working on the Apple IIC computers and prior models. These lessons took a ton of prep time, loading floppy disks, frequent tech issues, and limited knowledge bases available to help. Computers were used for learning games and word processing primarily. I remember this era well because it was when I was a student.

My Student Experience

As a student, I remember these models of computers well because I was fascinated by them. I loved playing “Where in the World is Carmen San Diego” and “Wizard Type” when I got the chance, as did most of my peers. When I was younger if your family had a TV and a VCR, you had it made. Tapes were replacing eight tracks. CD’s were a cutting edge technology. Phones pretty much all had wires, unless you had a fancy handheld model.

My Experiences Teaching With Technology

When I started teaching, cell phones were not super widely adopted yet, and we still had computer labs that had to be signed up for. Over time, first students phones became powerful enough to run technology based lessons in and then we started getting Chromebook carts in some rooms, which gradually became all rooms. Most of us thought this was great, some were not so optimistic about it insisting that the computers were more a distraction than a benefit most of the time. Low and behold we are coming full circle.

Technology in Classrooms 2024

Fast-forward to 2024, now teachers are doing more to limit what technology is used for. Cell phones in most of my school’s classes are collected daily. Cell phones for teens are so addictive due to social media, constant texting, group chats, and games. It is very difficult to keep them focused in class while the cell phones are out. Paper tests have made a major comeback in most subjects, as have in class essays due to the proliferation of artificial intelligence. Schools and even entire countries are banning cell phones at school because of all the distraction they cause.

What Will The Future Hold?

This is the scary question for us all. Technology continues to rapidly accelerate change in education. As our society continues towards a more tech centered one, will education and learning go back to more traditional methods, or accelerate along with the technological change in step?