With the digital tools available nowadays, the use of technology in the classroom should already be commonplace. However, recent STEM education news revealed that the opposite it true.
According to The Journal, a new report from AdvancED, a nonprofit, non-partisan organization, revealed that technology is still not being used a lot in schools. The results were collected from nearly 147,000 direct classroom observations of 20 minutes or more in K-12 schools in the U.S. and other countries.
"There are still relatively few classrooms in which students' use of digital tools and technology is a regular part of the school experience," AdvancED's report stated.
Apparently, about 52.7 percent of classrooms show no evidence that students are "using technology to gather, evaluate or use information for learning." Two-thirds, or about 63 percent, of classrooms showed no proof that students were using technology to solve problems, conduct research, or to work collaboratively.
"Student use of digitals tools and other technology to support learning in our K-12 systems continues to be sporadic and often not observed despite the proliferation of their use outside of school," Mark Elgart, president and chief executive officer of the organization, said. "We can facilitate a transformational shift toward a learner-centric classroom by observing and making improvements in instruction to more effectively leverage technology for learning."
Ludwig van Broekhuizen, the one who conducted the study, noted that increasing student engagement would be a more powerful tool in learning than technology. "It is when students lose themselves in their learning that we have accomplished what we set out to do for them in the first place," he wrote.
Moreover, teachers should be provided support and training to help them learn how to integrate technology into their classrooms. This would result to a student-centric environment.
WNDU.com reported that teachers at Penn High School got tips on how to use tech to support the learning process in every subject. 350 educators from the region came for the conference held last week.
