Have we gone too far in expecting technology to educate our students and is the answer a back-to-basics regime in the classroom? Niall Gormley looks at the evidence.
In December 2024 the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle aired a news report from a classroom in Sweden. The children were 9-10 years old and the first class of the day was maths.
After collecting all the kids’ smartphones and locking them in a cabinet, the teacher proceeded to distribute new maths books to the students.
So what, you may ask? Well, this was the first time in four years at school that the children had got their hands on actual paper books. Before then all their work had taken place on laptops and tablets. One child said he was going to have to learn to write out the maths work, which he found difficult.
Only five years earlier the Swedish Department of Education had issued guidance recommending digital teaching aids based on laptops and apps.
Sweden’s minister for schools, Lotta Edholm increased the budget for books in schools and she believes that students, particularly younger children, should not be taught using edtech.
Later on in the report the pupils do get out classroom laptops to do interactive lessons in geography.
Are we panicking?
There is a general backlash against the impact of technology in children’s lives. Many harms have been associated with social media and tech from online bullying and exploitation, to fall-off in concentration and reading skills.
Is this all just a panic like we have seen before with newspapers, radio, television and cinema? Is it all in the minds of grumpy old reactionaries who don’t like change anyway?
The OECD has just released a working paper entitled ‘The impact of digital technologies on students’ learning: Results from a literature review’ which aims to sum up the huge amount of research and data gathering going on in this area.
When the report begins with: “The integration of digital technologies in primary and secondary education holds significant potential for enhancing teaching and learning processes, fostering student engagement, collaboration and self regulated learning” you feel there’s a very big ‘but’ coming.
However, the evidence and conclusions is balanced: sometimes edtech is better and sometimes it isn’t.
The report says that tools alone do not transform education and says that effective education still depends on teachers being able to guide learning in their students. It speaks of ‘choices’ when it comes to edtech, to decide when, and with whom, it is appropriate.
Reading
So, what about some of the specific findings? What about reading on a screen as opposed to reading on paper?
The study finds that digital reading may not support the same depth of comprehension as reading on paper, particularly for complex texts. Norwegian students scored an average of 0.80 on paper tests compared to 0.74 on digital tests and students omitted more answers on paper-based tests, especially for multiple-choice questions.
The study concluded that teachers should prioritize paper-based reading for complex texts to support comprehension and found that digital reading encourages skimming, leading to superficial engagement.
Writing
Combining digital and traditional writing instruction enhances writing fluency, especially for students with learning disabilities the study concludes. Technology-based writing instruction showed a small positive effect size on overall writing performance. Students with learning disabilities benefited significantly more.
When it comes to writing, transcription fluency is key. This is the ability of students to write down their thoughts either by handwriting or by keyboarding. A study carried out in Portugal set about analysing the speed and accuracy that students were able to compose text. The aim was to see how transcription fluency affected outcome for both handwriting and keyboarding.
What the study found is that transcription fluency was a significant factor but that it had a stronger effect in keyboard-based tasks. This shows that assuming that all kids are good on keyboards is a mistake and that children benefit both from being taught how to write with a pen, but also good keyboarding skills, because that affects the outcome in written work. Children come from a wide variety of homes with widely varying access to keyboards.
Digital storytelling
Many, if not most, classrooms now have audio-visual projectors and access to apps and video resources. This is referred to as digital storytelling, where a teacher may well stand at the top of a classroom and speak, but also intersperses their teaching with audio, picture or video elements.
The study is more forceful on digital storytelling – it works. “Digital storytelling showed a strong positive impact on academic achievement (g = 1.081),” it says, where the figure indicates the ratio of improved performance over the normal. It is particularly impactful on maths and science but it also significantly improves literacy skills in language learning.
Social Media
Collaboration is very useful in getting students to share knowledge and key pieces of information. So, just like talking and listening, social media platforms such as WhatsApp, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram help kids to share their learning.
The big drawback is distraction as students won’t just share their studies. Watching cat videos, celebrities and influencers is not that educational. There’s also cyberbullying to contend with. The study shows that social media can be beneficial but needs to be age appropriate. Also, there’s the problem of the digital divide where children don’t have equal access to technology or good broadband.
What to do?
It is obvious that educational technology is useful – a 10-minute video on lions is always going to be more interesting for children than a ten minute lecture. The idea of simply banning anything electrical from the classroom is not a good idea and there is lots of evidence to prove it.
At the same time, cognitive overload and peace of mind are major factors in the lives of young people. They do need to disconnect from the outside world in order to get the best from a teacher or from a book at home.
The Department of Education has just released ‘Guidance on Artificial Intelligence in Schools’, so we’re on to the next thing before we’ve gotten to grips with the arrival of edtech. However, on the very first page there is a “Commitment to ongoing review” and this is an indication that we are learning to learn.
Change is coming but we have the ability to choose what is useful and what is harmful. Whatever your opinion on the ban on under 16’s using social media in Australia, it does indicate that we are finally getting around to the realisation that we don’t have accept what the tech industry throws at us and that we have some ability to decide what is good for our children.
Education technology can help children learn and we should use it when its value outweighs its drawbacks.
