Study says high-tech gadgets may hurt learning

While new technologies can make learning more interesting, an Iowa State University study finds high-tech gadgetry can actually -hurt- learning. Michael Clough. an I-S-U professor of curriculum and instruction, co-authored the report. He says the web is looking more like television, something that’s not an accident. Clough says too often technology is used as a form of entertainment and teachers are only babysitting students, not letting them learn. Students might use a calculator to get a right answer but a teacher doesn’t know how they got the answer or the thinking that went into solving it. Another example is where students use computers to do dissections, viewing slices of animal bodies that someone else has prepared and put on the Internet, instead of doing the work themselves. Clough says that practice is good, in that it isn’t destroying any more creatures.Clough says technology in the classroom often circumvents critical requirements of learning and can hide or even inhibit students’ thinking. He says too many teachers are being urged to turn their classrooms into more of a TV game show.