Episode 38: Technology in the Classroom – Friend or Foe?

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Welcome to another episode of K12 Education Untangled. My name is Dr. Kim Fields, former corporate manager turned educational researcher and advocate, and I'm the host of this podcast. I got into this space after dealing with some frustrating interactions with school administrators and educators, as well as the micro discriminations that I faced as an African American mom raising my two kids who were in the public school system. I really wanted to understand how teachers were trained and what the research provided about the challenges of the public education system. If you're looking to find out more about current topics in education that could affect you or your children, then you're in the right place. On today's episode, I'll be discussing the latest technological trends that are being utilized in the classroom. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Utilizing technology in the classroom is commonplace these days. Both teachers and students use it to perform various tasks. These technologies include learning management systems, video conferencing applications, online quizzes, and artificial intelligence apps. While technology does have benefits, there are also downsides to it, and it's important to be aware of what those are. I'll address the advantages and disadvantages of technology from the teacher perspective, the student perspective, and the parent perspective. Tech tools that were used during the pandemic seem to be here to stay. These tools include video conferencing platforms such as Zoom and Google Hangout or Google Meet being among the most popular. A much smaller percentage of school districts also use Microsoft Teams for video conferencing. The tools were used for not only staff meetings and professional development, as well as for parent teacher conferences, school board meetings, online tutoring programs, and for remote teaching of science, which was used about 65% of the time. English language arts was taught virtually through online tutoring programs 63% and math was taught online through tutoring programs 57% of the time. Video conferencing is a tool that's gained popularity because it allows teachers to interact with parents for parent teacher meetings as well as to review Individualized education programs or IEPs. Video conferencing programs also allow teachers to provide their lessons on video, and they can complement this by putting materials in Google classroom. School districts also invested in technology that supported social emotional learning for students, purchasing tools such as software from Panorama Education and Rhythm, which is an app that invites students to report how they're feeling via emojis and then provide them with customized videos or activities that help them to develop traits like mindfulness and focus. The key is that students are taught key skills such as empathy, perspective taking, and self management. Technology influences a child's social emotional development because for young people, they live in an environment where they move seamlessly from digital world to the physical world and back. In this hybrid environment, children are developing their identities because building relationships, learning to regulate their emotions and actions, as well as navigating through a lot of false information. Social emotional learning is about being self aware and being able to manage emotions and given that there is a lot of emotional content on social media that can entice children to click first and think later, they need to employ the social emotional skills in order to slow down and understand what they are reading. This also involves self management, which is a key strength that is needed in the digital space. Social emotional learning as it relates to technology also involves understanding the long term consequences of actions and the importance of what is said and shared. Online math seems to be a key subject area that translates well in the virtual environment. As many as 45% of educators said that the online math resource Khan Academy was part of their learning loss recovery strategy. Learn and play instructional software that includes tools that allow students to work together in pairs or in small groups, digitally show their work, and share their problem solving strategies with classmates and teachers are also growing in popularity. The tools that allow for this type of sharing include Google Workspace or Microsoft Teams. Another technology that's utilized in the classroom is learning management systems. Learning management systems are software applications utilized by educators to create, manage, organize, and deliver online learning materials for students. The use of learning management systems increased dramatically in 2020 and 2021, when the pandemic was in full bloom. The main reason for this was because many school districts had to scramble to find tools that would help their students learn virtually and help their teachers deliver online instruction as well as give students easy access to instruction materials while they were at home learning. Interestingly, roughly 40% of educators said that they were neutral on using their learning management system, or LMS. 11% said it made teaching harder. 52% of educators said that the learning management system that their district used was made instruction easier. Between 2013 and 2022, the year 2020 provided the highest number of new implementations of the learning management system technology in school districts or schools across the United States and Canada. Some of the more popular learning management systems in K12 districts in the US were Canvas, Schoology, and Google Classroom. There was a big learning curve in the beginning of the learning management system implementations because of the way that it was thrust upon teachers due to the mandated virtual learning environment. Now that teachers have had more than a year to acclimate to using their learning management systems, 53% of educators surveyed by the Ed Week Research center indicated that they would describe themselves as very or extremely proficient, 34% said somewhat proficient, and 13% said they were a complete beginner or minimally proficient. At the same time, many teachers said that the transition to using learning management system would have been easier had the district provided hands on professional development instead of learning how to use the system. Virtually only 15% of educators said the professional development they received on learning how to use the LMS was very effective, 48% said it was somewhat effective, 17% said that it was somewhat ineffective, and 6% said that it was very ineffective. Some educators mentioned that they've seen how learning management systems can make learning more accessible and allows for students who had to miss classes because of illness or other circumstances and then can still be on the same page as other students in the class. The student who is not there will still know everything that's going on in the class and have all the documents and things that are required. These educators felt that the first priority of the learning management system was to make learning accessible for all students regardless of whether they were at school or or at home. Online quizzes are another type of technology used in the classroom. These have become popular tool for technology use in the classroom with about 69% of educators saying that they use this feature almost daily. The quizzes can be completed outside the classroom, which allows more time for teaching. Another software tool that's gaining prominence is software for remedial lessons that help students catch up and programs that help personalize learning for students as well as those programs that accelerate learning.

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Schools are beginning to trim the number of tech tools that they use. One of the reasons for this is that most school districts around the country have only one more school year to spend the bulk of its federal Covid relief dollars, which were partly to be used to help schools improve their digital capacity. Even though software vendors were happy to provide free samples the wide array of products that different teachers and schools use complicate professional development as well as parent outreach, and it also forced students to master different products as they go from class to class. There's also the very real concern of cybersecurity and student data privacy issues. Every district tends to have its own particular set of policies and procedures for providing which edtech products that the teachers will be allowed to use, which EdTech products the district will buy district wide licenses for, and which products will be prohibited. Entirely realistically, most districts don't require teachers and principals to choose from an approved list of products in order to use them. That could be a problem One of the hardest technology tools that's currently getting traction is chatgpt. This is an artificial intelligence tool that can pretty much write anything with just a single prompt. The chatbot works for students as well as teachers. ChatGPT is a publicly available tool that can generate fairly convincing approximations of text that is written, usually by humans from many corners of society, including legal contract writing, search engine optimization, and Alzheimer's research. The GPT stands for Generative Pre Trained Transformer. It was released in November of 2022. What ChatGPT does is scan the Internet, especially during its initial implementation. It scanned the Internet in 2020 and 2021 in order to write tweets, provide points, essays, and even computer programs with a single prompt. It was developed by OpenAI, which is a San Francisco based research laboratory that consists of a for profit company and its non profit parent. Some of the biggest ongoing donors include Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and technology companies like Microsoft. Teachers use ChatGPT to construct lesson plans, put together rubrics, offer student feedback on assignment, respond to parent emails and write letters of recommendations as well as other tasks. This has the potential to save the teachers hours of work. And while some teachers think that this AI tool will save them a lot of work, others are concerned that using artificial intelligence will strip away some of the creativity necessary for their jobs. One of the main flaws with ChatGPT is that it can't be tailored to a lesson or to a specific class or even to a specific individual student like a teacher can. It can be a helpful tool for an experienced teacher, but it may not be the best tool for an inexperienced teacher who lacks in depth knowledge about teaching and classroom management. As well as lesson planning, ChatGPT can be used to offer feedback on student work. However, it often lacks the personalized feedback that a teacher can provide. Chatbots can also be used to create email, although these emails tend to run more like mass emails sent to parents, such as announcements about upcoming school events, etc. Most teachers balk at using AI for sending individual email messages. Some school districts, like New York City, have begun to block the use of the AI tool on school devices and networks in order to prevent student cheating, which could make it harder for teachers to use it as well. Overall, there are a lot of repetitive functions that teachers typically perform, and ChatGPT could be an opportunity for teachers to offload some of those more rote tasks. Students use ChatGPT to write essays and other written assignments. The problem with that is the issue of plagiarism. It may be hard for teachers to distinguish student essays from those written by an actual student and Those written by ChatGPT. Even if some school districts like New York City block access to ChatGPT, it doesn't really matter if the student still has access to a tablet or a laptop outside of the class or the school. The only practical response to this, according to writer Rick Hess in Education Week in January of this year, is to bring back writing into the classroom, where teachers can observe the writing process of each student on assignment. The teacher will require students to write essays or any other written assignment at their desk under close supervision. The teachers may also require students to demonstrate various stages of the writing process, like constructing outlines and developing notes. Students may also be required to do an oral presentation on any piece of substantive writing. Interestingly, ChatGPT may actually require more work to be done in order for educators to ensure students are learning what they're supposed to be learning and not just outsourcing for writing to AI. Some experts believe that if other school districts around the country follow New York City Public Schools lead in restricting student access to to ChatGPT, they may be making a huge mistake. The New York City School District in January of this year blocked the app on school devices and networks. Their reasoning was that the platform was a new technology that wasn't part of the standards that had already been established. The district was also concerned about negative impacts on student learning, as well as concerns about safety and accuracy of the content. The app can be troubling for some educators who are worried about a new kind of high tech plagiarism. Additionally, the tool doesn't build critical thinking and problem solving skills, both of which are essential for academic and lifelong success. It's yet unknown whether the district's plan to or already have followed New York City School District's lead. Even if the app remains banned, students will still have access to the site outside of school. And if this technology loses its glimmer, there's certainly going to be a new, shiny AI powered cheating tool that will shortly emerge. One way to spot ChatGpt cheaters is that the app rarely includes physical citations from where the information is coming, which opens up an opportunity for teachers to talk to students about where they found their information and the importance of using citations and sources credibly in their work. This may force educators to rethink how they are teaching and what they're doing in the classroom. Access to this app is also an equity issue because students who are unable to access the platform outside of school are those students who more than likely come from disadvantaged families who can't afford devices or Internet connectivity. Pretty much as soon as ChatGPT was released publicly in November 2022, software developers began creating tools to detect writing that was generated by artificial intelligence. These tools come with their own potential problems. For one thing, online cheating or plagiarism detectors often make mistakes. Examples of online cheating or plagiarism detectors include gtlr, Pack Back, and Turnitin, which is developing its own version of an AI detection software in time for the 20232024 school year. The reality is that developing these types of programs is an ongoing process because they typically work with the current version of an app like ChatGPT. When a new version of the AI tool comes out, then educators and software developers of cheating on plagiarism detectors are back to square one. Professor Joshua Rosenberg, an assistant professor of STEM education at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, stated that educators will just ultimately have to figure out how to teach writing in a way that incorporates tools like ChatGPT. His position is that educators may be coming to a place where where asking students to write without consulting AI is likening it to asking students not to use a calculator when completing math problems. He thinks this is where it's going. Teachers should not rely too heavily on these online cheating or plagiarism detectors. When a discrepancy is noted in the student's work, then it's up to the teacher to have a conversation with the student about the writing or or the citation of sources. If the student's essay is flagged by an AI detector, then this is a prime opportunity for the teacher to have a conversation with the student, all the while understanding that the tool might be incorrect. The bottom line is if a computer can figure out how to write an essay, for example, then perhaps the issue is more about how educators teach writing and and what areas of writing can be explored to re examine bias, plagiarism and copyright to understand how to develop voice and fluency as well as how to develop organizational thoughts and understand the entire writing process. Although technology is a great resource in the classroom that has elevated learning, it does have some negative effects on student learning. Research indicates that using modern technology could affect changes in basic psychomotor and fine motor skills as well as cognitive skills in children. Some studies have indicated the negative effects that social media has on a child's writing skills. There are just some benefits to writing by hand in order for students to do more active thinking, synthesizing, and editing. With an over reliance on technology, students may not be prepared to solve real world problems that don't necessarily include the use of technology. Technology does help students conduct research more quickly and easily as well as work collaboratively to complete assignments. When students are motivated to learn something new, the more likely that student will remain interested and engaged with the material. In many cases, using technology in the classroom can make the classroom stronger. Students just seem to be more interested in learning when technology is involved. If the situation occurs where the technology is unavailable, students still need to be familiar enough with other research and learning methods in order to still accomplish an assignment. Technology can give students more information at a quicker pace, but but there's also a lot of information that's incorrect and not appropriate for school. This can make it difficult for teachers to monitor. Another reality is that technology may not always be available. For example, WI fi may be intermittent. Additionally, some educators feel that the use of technology becomes a classroom management issue because of the time that it takes to log in and log out of the system and students become distracted or they end up doing things such as random Google searches during work time. One final drawback as far as the negative effects of technology is the availability of the teacher to provide guidance with the technology when the students are unsure of how to use it. The more time that the teacher spends on technology related issues, the less time they have for instruction throughout the day. In any case, 79.3% of teachers believe that students definitely rely heavily on technology and as reported by researchers Karsten and others in the Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology In January of 2021, in the end, there just seem to be more positive impacts of technology than negative ones. A challenge with the various technologies in the classroom is student engagement and how to balance the use of technology in the classroom with the amount of resources and media and other distractions that now exist. Coming from a technology background and considering all the technology that's now being employed in the classroom and the data associated with that technology. I would be remiss in not mentioning about data privacy, which I discussed in a previous episode of this podcast. Check out episode 19 for more details. I'll be mentioning a little bit about data privacy and the vulnerability of school districts to cyber attacks given the use of technology in the classroom. A survey by the Consortium for School Networking in January and February of 2020 concluded that cybersecurity is a top priority for US K12 technology leaders, although many seemed to underestimate the risk of attack to their districts. The survey found that only 21% of school districts in the US have a staff member dedicated to cybersecurity. Another 21% of the districts outsource the management of network security to private providers or public entities. The survey further found that only half of the district surveyed indicated that they required cybersecurity training for teachers and other staff. Nearly one third of the district indicated that they didn't have any training requirements for any staff members, which is quite alarming. One final alarming finding from the study was that 51% of the district tech leaders indicated that they didn't have enough staff to provide support to students and families. Technological Devices at Home there's been a noticeable increase in cyber attacks on K12 schools. These cyber criminal gangs will hack into a district's network and then demand hundreds of thousands of dollars in ransom payments and and make threats of terrible consequences if the schools don't agree to hand over the money. The increasing number of attacks, as well as the complexity of these attacks have serious implications for teaching and school budgets, parent communication and the protection of sensitive personal information about students and employees. The reason that hackers go after schools is that K12 schools make tempting targets because of the amounts of data that their systems contain. What complicates matters is that districts have become more reliant on technology, especially since the pandemic when they handed out millions of digital devices for remote learning, setting up WI fi hotspots around communities for students to access, and the increased use of online programs and applications for instructions. All these things have opened the doors much wider for hackers to infiltrate districts computer networks. All it takes is for one teacher, one student, or one parent to click on a phishing email, for example, that was created by cybercriminal and ransomware attack could be underway. In January 2022, nearly 5,000 schools and colleges were saw their websites go dark when they were hit with a ransomware attack that specifically targeted Final site, which is a private company that provides web hosting and other communication services. The common types of cyber attacks include data breaches, which make up approximately 36% of all reported cyber attacks on schools. Ransomware denial of service, where cyber attackers inundate a district's network by flooding it with unnecessary and meaningless requests until the network crashes. These make up about 5% of reported incidences in K12 schools in 2020 and other types of attacks, including zoom bombing, where an unauthorized person jumps into an online class doing things like espousing hate speech or shouting threats and hacktivism, which is when the district may get hacked in protest of its stance on a certain issue like curriculum changes. There are a couple of impacts from these attacks. Sometimes the schools close during a cyber attack until the district can get up and going again. The financial impact of one day's loss of school is worth thousands to millions of dollars depending on the size of the district. There is also the cost of insurance for the school district to have cybersecurity insurance, and the premium costs for those are starting to skyrocket. There's really no way to eliminate the risk of a cyber attack. The district can only mitigate it. The best strategy is to have a risk assessment conducted and have technology and communication strategy in place for how the district would respond to a cyber attack. As part of that strategy, it's certainly worth having an automated backup system off site in place. It would also be worthwhile for districts to implement multi factor authentication so that employees, staffers, and students would need more than just a username and password to access their systems. This concern has even reached the agenda of federal and state policymakers. Lawmakers in Congress in 2021 introduced at least 19 cybersecurity bills. Additionally, in October of 2021, President Biden signed the K12 Cybersecurity act, which basically calls for the federal cybersecurity agency to make recommendations about how to help school systems better protect themselves. Looking at technology from the parent perspective is important as parents are key stakeholders in the educational process. A parent's views about technology often shape the perceptions of his or her children about technology. Parents also influence how the child values the classroom activities. The researchers of Maxwell, Camp and Cullen in spring of 2021 conducted a qualitative study with open ended questions to seek answers to how parents feel about using technology tools for learning and education, how parents manage technology in their own homes, and what parents expect from schools. There were 101 participants in the study, 78% who were white, 9% were black or African American, 7% were Native American or indigenous 5% were Hispanic and 1% were Asian. The parents also had two or three children, were middle class, and had a bachelor's degree as their highest level of education. Overall, the findings from the study indicated that parents were in support of using technology in schools. These parents also tended to prefer textbooks over E textbooks because they felt that textbooks provided better information retention, reading comprehension, and penmanship. The parents in the survey also engaged parents who blocked inappropriate sites, watched their child's Internet use, and limited the amount of time that the child spent online. Extending this, parents were interested in knowing how schools limited online content viewed by their students. They were concerned that the technology would distract students or that their students would be able to access inappropriate content, whether that was at home or at school. The children could be easily distracted with YouTube or clicking on an ad while working on the computer at school. Because these parents supervised their children's use of technology at home, they expected similar supervision at schools. They wanted their children's technology used to be monitored both directly and indirectly in the classroom and that they would only be using technology for educational purposes. They were also concerned about technology being used just to fill in time insofar as taking away from other educational goals like information retention and developing social relationships such as the loss of skills for having face to face conversations. To this point, parents in the survey may not have been aware that there is a provision in the Child Internet Protection act, which was passed in 2000, that protects students from inappropriate sites. In addition, some school districts have implemented specialized software that's installed on each device that can monitor and filter content. Other school districts control access to sites using Internet routers that filter student access before the information even gets to the device. Finally, the parents wanted the teachers to balance the use of technology with other types of activities and to be aware of the amount of time that students spent on screens. Since technology integration is beginning earlier and earlier for most school districts, many parents feared that young children are being exposed to technology too early. Given the responses of the parents in this survey to the questions in the prompts provided, there are additional questions that remain and are worth considering for you. For example, what kind of information are you getting from the classroom teachers and school leadership about technology use? Were you trained in the technology that your children are using? Were you aware of the school's policies regarding technology use? And finally, how is the classroom teacher sharing with you about any of the projects that their students are working on using technology? Here are this episode's takeaways. There are both positive and negatives for the use of technology in the classroom. Teachers use technologies such as online quizzes and learning management systems in order to handle repetitive tasks and to allow more time in the classroom for teaching. It's a tough job for school districts to be able to manage all the technology that's available and that's being utilized by teachers and other district employees as well as students. Research has shown that school districts are insufficiently staffed to provide adequate support and training for educators, administrators, students, and parents. This is an alarming fact. Parents are concerned about the use of technology in schools and its efficacy on student learning. They want to be apprised as to the amount of time that their children spend on screens versus participating in the educational process with more manual and social activities. The rise of ChatGPT has been met with angst and with an attitude of surrender, so to speak. Even as school districts banned the use of the AI tool Chat GPT, students will still have access to it when they are away from school. This particular AI tool seems to go against the grain of actually learning how to be successful in the writing process. The bottom line is if a computer can figure out how to write an essay, for example, then the issue perhaps is more about how educators teach writing and what areas of writing can be explored more thoroughly, like bias, plagiarism, and copywriting, as well as how students can actually develop their voice and fluency and how to organize their thoughts during creation in the writing process. A challenge with the various technologies in the classroom is student engagement and how to balance the use of technology in the classroom with the amount of resources and media and other distractions that now exist. Another challenge is ensuring that the social emotional skills of students using technology are still being considered and reinforced. Access to technology, whether it's an AI tool like ChatGPT or a tool that promotes social emotional learning, is also an equity issue because students who are unable to access the platform outside of school are those students who are more than likely coming from disadvantaged families who can't even afford devices or Internet security and connectivity. Classroom technology is certainly here to stay. Let's make sure that it's used effectively and equitably for all students. If this is the type of subject matter and discussion that resonates with you, please subscribe to my podcast on whatever service you're listening to this Also, I'd love to hear from you, so please leave me a rating, a review, view, or a comment and share this episode with anyone that you think would find it valuable. Be sure to tell your friends, family, and community about my podcast. I really appreciate it if you would recommend my podcast to a friend directly on Twitter and to mention my show in your tweet. Additionally, you can connect with me on Instagram and Facebook with the handle kimjfields. Thanks for listening today. I hope you'll come back for more K12 educational discussions with even more exciting topics to untangle. By the way, if you have a burning question about a current situation at your child's school or a specific topic that you'd like for me to discuss, shoot me a quick email@kimiberationthrougheducation.com to let me know what your question is. Anyone whose question is selected to be discussed on one podcast episode will receive a $25Amazon gift card. Be sure to stay tuned. On the next episode of my podcast, I'll be discussing the impact of climate change on schools. Until next time, aim to learn something new every.

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