Daniel Andrade
Technology in Schools
HOST INTRO: Most grade schools in the United States have returned to in person learning, returning students to a classroom and back to a social environment. Many schools, however, are keeping technology a large part of students’ learning curriculum, using many different platforms such as Zoom, Teams, and Google Classroom. Daniel Andrade has the story.
AMBI: 4th grade Children’s classroom
TRACK: In a fourth grade classroom of Mission Kids Elementary, students are running amuck, playing games and excited to be surrounded by their peers. I am here with Jennifer Pandolfo, a mother of five and the Director of Mission Kids Elementary, who believes that while this increase of technology is necessary for the students, it may start doing more harm than good.
ACT: JENNIFER PANDOLFO: Everything is put on Google Classroom. We are able to use smartboards and have video-based curriculums, and that helps people who aren’t as good at teaching a lesson. Over the last couple years, they had to use their computers, that was all they had initially. It is not going away. So, I think it’s necessary for our children to learn it, but we have to be aware that maybe there is a point where it’s too much.
AMBI: Silence
TRACK: While for college students, using technology to this extent would be beneficial in their professional careers, grade school students are now seeing this new expectation put on them. COVID seems to be the source of this boost in technological use, and middle school students have been the center of this new increase in technology.
AMBI: Computers Typing in classroom
ACT: ETHAN BRITO: Everything was on paper. Nothing was really on a computer. They taught us about it in 3rd grade, but I was like, “I’m never gonna use this”. And then COVID happened, and everything was on the computer… it never really made a transition back.
ACT: CARLOS MONATNEZ: When COVID hit, we started to use zoom, we used that for practically all our year of 2020. One of my teachers likes to call the kids from 2020, “COVID kids”. That’s all they know. All they know is Zoom and all that. They’re not used to the fact that we’re in school.
AMBI: Silence
TRACK: We return to Jennifer Pandolfo, who is also a mother of five, to speak on how she manages her children’s technological usage.
ACT: JENNIFER PANDOLFO: They don’t even know how to write down assignments. They come home, they probably use the computer most of the day at school and then they come home and sit right in front of the computer.
TRACK: She says they have to be very intentional about getting the students away from screens—however, for some students- especially those with special needs, it can be an especially great tool.
ACT: My second grader has a disability, and so technology has become a huge part, not necessarily any different than it would be, but I am happy for the technology that is available to her. For example, it is very difficult for her to write. And everybody says, “Oh, we’re just going to be using a computer” and it is true, she can navigate plucking letters on a computer easier than she can write a letter.
TRACK: Technology will not be going away. And while students do need to learn to increase their technological literacy, we need to be careful that we do not over saturate students and have them know more than looking at a computer screen. With The Baruch Times, this is Daniel Andrade.