Tech and the Student in 2025

Bitmoji cartoon of a brunette-with-grey
woman wearing a doubtful expression
with the caption "ummmm..."

I participated in a Facebook post this morning about how the more tech we have in schools, the less well students perform. 

I had a few thoughts. 

More than a few, actually, and it got so long I thought it would make a decent-length blog post, refreshingly not (primarily) about the horrific things my government and their lackeys are doing. I'm pretty pro-tech, having worked in the industry, and I also believe that content is more important than time spent. Not to mention the irony inherent in complaining about technology on Facebook, of all platforms.

So here goes (expanded somewhat from the initial response).

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I suspect (from observation as a former student, current parent of a high school senior and a college senior, techie, all-around geek, intercultural communications graduate (online, no less), and McKinney-Vento driver for my school district) that it's several things.

• The tech: sure. It came very fast, and it's very engaging/distracting. It has its good points, like easy access to information or the ability to communicate in ways we haven't before or spell check, and its bad points, like easy access to misinformation, internet bot trolls, and Grammarly nagging me about sounding more professional on my personal blog 🙄. Most of the other bad and/or inappropriate stuff is blocked on school devices by district IT departments. And also the tech was aided and abetted by...
• The pandemic: yep. The surge to techify wasn't out of nowhere; if we wanted them to have school at all, it was through this medium. We required teachers and students to do it the technological way, and then when it was (mostly) safe to come back into the buildings, we expected everything - including the kids - to revert seamlessly. Even those kids who started school over Zoom. And also...
• The performance: this too. If we're expecting identical performance output when the method of input has changed, that's highly unlikely to happen (case in point: the loss of cursive in much of GenZ and Gen Alpha), as well as...
• The disconnect: the way it's traditionally been done does not work for everyone, and yet here we are, refusing to change with the times. The tech is here. We can't just stuff it back into Pandora's Box at this point.

So here's the thing. I believe the tech is here to stay, and we can try to go back to the old ways all we want to; it may work in small pockets, but it's not the be-all and end-all. There's a difference between tradition and stagnation. How many people, even in my generation (X), were ever required to, say, diagram a sentence? The only time I've seen that was in literature set in the 19th century or earlier. We have regained some older skills, and let others slide, and that's... well, it's evolution, really. Progression. 

It's not intrinsically bad. Like most things, it's the way in which it's used.