Technology in Schools
Hi, my name is Smriti Shyam, I’m a grade 11 student at Stephen Lewis Secondary School and these are my thoughts on the use of technology in schools. It’s the year 2015, and diversity in technology has expanded incredibly, 99.9% of our questions can be answered within 2 minutes or less. Our lives have been easier than ever yet some schools don’t seem to be taking advantage of this. From my years in high school, I’ve realized that without Google I wouldn’t have been able to pass academic math or science. My device has been a second teacher to me. It’s helped me figure out hard math problems and cram for a test I have the next day that I should’ve been studying for since last week.
Without a device of my own I don’t think I would be able to survive my high school experience.
I remember when I came into school after the summer break just finding out that there was Wi-Fi all around the school and I didn’t have to go to the cafeteria to search up what “cognitive psychology’’ was. I was thrilled to know that now instead of using up my minutes I can easy call my parents/friends through Viber or Messenger. However my excitement crumbled the minute I walked into class and my teacher told me to turn off my phone. She said that phones are a distraction to you and everyone around you, I thought differently but I wasn’t going to be the one to question her and then get a detention on the first day.
At the end of the semester I noticed that I was struggling to get above a 60% in that course, however in all my other courses where my teachers allowed me to use my device and search things during class I was getting 80’s and even 90’s. I pulled through and got a straight 60% in that course and blamed my teacher after because she never let us use our phone to search things up. During that course I would see so many words that I’ve never heard off and by the time I would get home to search it on Google I would forget what the word was, and writing it down didn’t seem quite efficient at the time. The next year more of my teachers allowed students to use their devices, and started up the MyClass Office365 website which was extremely helpful. Speaking as a student, I felt like I was in a safe and monitored environment and I didn’t hesitate even once to ask a question to my peers online.
It was like Facebook but ten times safer and friendlier.
Students helping each other in a MyClass site newsfeed.
We worked together in an Office365 wiki to create our species pages. http://bit.ly/1Jt427Q
Believe it or not, technology has a big role in every student’s life, it’s a release for anyone that has been having a hard day, or for someone who’s in desperate need of some resources. It’s helped me so much throughout my years in high school. I feel like students are stressed enough, from having 2 hours of homework from each of their 4 classes’ every day, to finishing their volunteer hours, to getting a job, as teens we think our reality is school. As a wise person once told me “We think school is our reality, we think education, getting a good job, getting 90% on our exams is our reality, but it’s not.” We can make our reality anything we want it to be, we can be an astronaut or a makeup artist, or even an actor if we want. I think teenagers tend to forget that, and I feel like we all need our release once in a while and our devices are our release. It’s our therapy and our educator. Teachers should encourage technology in the classroom, it will make our lives stress free and way easier than it is. I mean it is the 21st century right?
Making meiosis stop motion animations
Adding data to a class spreadsheet
-Smriti
Peel21st Project 188 