Recently I saw a very interesting video on CNN. A public school district in Maine is supplying each kindergartner with an iPad. The costs are estimated to be two hundred thousand dollars. It is stated that forty percent of kindergartners in a particular school from this district are not meeting reading standards for their grade. The school believes that the iPad will help improve these results and help compensate for the number of kids in the class. A teacher states that she is unable to give her students the attention they need due to the size of the class. The iPad's interactive programs are supposed to make up for that. Psychologists believe that the iPads will negatively affect students for a variety of reasons. For example, too much screen time can take students away from reality.
Though the school district states that they will be aware of that, I find it hard that they will succeed. Just by what I've seen, technology such as the iPad, X-box, and a variety of others has become a barrier between reality and the user. Is this a sign that technology is starting to be incorporated into our education? Is this beneficial? I do not believe so. A part of learning is developing social skills and being able to interact with others well. There is more to life than exceptional grades. Success is correlated with social skills and academics. Both of those can only be learned in a class room setting, not an iPad. What is your opinion?
Here is the link to the video:
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/tech/2011/09/12/cohen-kindergarten-ipad.cnn?hpt=hp_c2
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