The darker side of classroom tech.

While volumes have been pontificated on the benefits of tech learning. Little seems to be written about the mismanagement of cell and Internet influence on classroom behavior. In addition the impact of the profiling engines of applications like Google, Facebook and Snapchat is for the most part ignored. It is time to take an honest look at the negative impacts on class management and the experience on online and classroom learning.

The behavior of students in US / western classrooms can be quite different from those of developing countries. Entitled school youth with unlimited data plans, rarely use the Internet strictly for educational purposes. In US public schools, it is a constant struggle keeping students on-task once the computers, and cells, are out. The teacher must instruct from the back of the classroom watching for kids gaming in one tab and doing work in another. Teachers that allow listening to music while studying are continually asking students to get off of texting, Snapchat, drawing, gaming and sharing photos. Yes, Advanced Placement classes are a bit different with classroom tech because they are in a category that recognizes information is power. To the elite content is used as leverage, to compete and succeed. A very different paradigm than labor’s use of content to entertain.

Before stating the problematic issues of class tech, please note that I am a proponent of its use and an instructional designer by trade. PBL, Flat Classrooms, Maker Rooms, and collaborative learning are wonderful learning experiences. These are all examples of well managed digital tech. Unfortunately teachers who are trained and enabled with these tools are the exception rather than the rule. The issues discussed this paper are meant to start a frank dialog on Internet content invades the dynamics of todays students.

Yes, western children like to share however the content is often entertainment, rumors, games and often vulgar material. When in class handheld devices in US classrooms should be to facilitate learning while all to often they are a distration. In contrast, AP classes cell use is more likely to be driven by future goals of college, and competitive lives. The sad issue is the middle and bottom of the bell curve are too often not using Internet technology to enrich the learning process; they are using cell phones to be distracted from the pain and drudgery of the learning process. For those in the trauma of western poverty it can become a self-administer addictive distraction. In many ways, cognitive nonsense is competing with relevance, and the result is time wasted and very frustrated faculty. In our day, the kids in the back of the room would drive us nuts horsing around, they still through paper balls and pencils. Today the kids in the rear of the room keep hiding cell phones in hoodies, pockets, and backpacks often doing no classwork. This common behavior is not an exaggeration. University faculty and curriculum developers are out of touch with the real classroom. Date education material is releasing new teachers who are not only not prepared for the emotional trauma in the school; they are ill prepared for digital class management. Perhaps education professors should be required to spend time as substitutes and talk with teachers in public school faculty rooms.

Case in point on the abuse of classroom tech. Because expensive textbooks scaffold concepts faster than students can absorb the material teachers lean on for worksheet drills that are downloadable from the Internet. A student armed with the same technology will look up the worksheet’s answer page or use cloud answer applications and copy it down at the end of class. First-period students sometimes take pics of completed worksheets and share them with days following periods. In oppositional behavioral courses, troubled students playing catch up with online courses keep the course in one browser and the answer applications in another browser. There are many more tricks to cheating. Many Florida school isolate disruptive and failing students into classrooms with online lessons. I have watched student zip through lengthy math and history courses using the two-browser method with proctors checking off the completed courses enabling graduation. Welcome to the real world of entitlement technology. No more writing answers on your sleeve, they are in your pocket or a click away. Again keep in that personal cell phones bypass school filters. When calling a student on cheating, they simply tap the calculator app as the instructor approaches.

While the advances in developing nation are significant, the Internet connect time is still too costly for much of the world. In developing countries students-faculty must be careful not to waste time/money on non-essential Internet time. In developing nations, a data plan is a privilege, in the US it is an entitlement right. In talking with educators in environments such as African’s NGOs, Internet-equipped classroom faculty has to pay close attention to student drifting into costly Internet media madness. I call this drift the Pinocchio Syndrome. Pinocchio gets taken to an island (island of Boobies in the original book) of no rules or consequences resulting in the puppet’s transformation into a donkey sold for cruel labor. Island-cloud, what’s the difference?

Our failure is in not recognizing that the digital classroom also requires digital class management methods. On a similar note, while US school filters block porn, they do not block YouTube content such as Sausage Movie or violent rap. Filters also do not prevent the cheating techniques mentioned above. 

Unlimited access and data plans create unmonitored Internet class management issues. Youth always need monitoring; this includes digital monitoring. US students using online courses, both home and school, open a second window next to the course with a site like answers.com. In one of my Florida classes, the online course students then copy the entire multiple choice question into Google’s search engine; Google then will serve up the community person who has posted the completed the question with formulas. A savvy student can roar through the material, ace the test, without learning a thing. What this also means is that state and academic officials are declaring high completion rate that is based on outcomes of delusionary results. However, this is a great administrative trick when you want to pass students through graduation to meet fund standards. School filters efforts to block these sites is of no use because the student cell phone data will bypass the school network and at home students are unmonitored. Perhaps the charter school rule of zero cell phones for any reason is the right approach.

Academia and Google have turned a blind eye to the topic of student character development as a result of the relation in adopting Internet media. While Carol Black’s documentary “Schooling the Globe” focused on the sanitization of culture from curriculum, it did not dig deeper on how Internet through profile based search engine contribute reinforcing subculture values they be quite destructive to cultural values.  A student can learn math and radicalized terrorism at the same time. It is double edge sword because global content can uplift and profile intelligent content at the same time. However, the youth must decide to consciously break free from the digital influences being pushed on them. For many, the cultural motivators for learning have also shifted from being a family provider into the instant gratification that entertainment provides. More importantly, the current economic trends splitting the classes exacerbate the splitting of having and have-nots.  While NGO focused on the issues being digital access, the issues of altering student moral/cultural growth are to often ignored. Paulo Frieri warned us in the "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" on how oppressors and oppressed stay trapped by reinforcing their beliefs, and this is what we see search engines do today. One group may be stuck on YouTube conspiracy theories, or gang rap, while another is trading stocks. While business and academics see this as a digital divide in access, however, the school shows us that cell usage is also and economic-cultural gap. One watches PBS and Nature while the other reinforces poverty by watching Family Guy or violent programming filled with revenge. What was not uncovered in the FaceBook scandal, is how Google’s search and Facebook marketing engines create targeted artificial bubbles of related content around each one of us. People who are into conspiracy theory and assault weapons are fed more of like media, which also means they are also denied media that is more objective or morally enriching. Perhaps Google is creating a more divided society than mass cable media possible could. The point is that all these intense media is in cognitive completion with efforts of frustrated teacher across the world. 

Somehow it is has slipped through educations theorist how technology profiling of search/marketing engines are molding youth’s character development and access to future opportunities. This represents a field day for education cognitive theorists. Then again for those who have bought into Harvard Perry’s Relativeness theories none of this matters.

With developing nations lowering the cost of Internet access, the patterns of oppressors and oppressed defined in Frieri’s "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" are revealing itself on the Internet. Poor and middle class may adopt content that reinforces wasted entertainment time while wealth uses global access to increase personal opportunity and corporate profit. Look at the difference between Facebook (social network) and Linkedin for a business opportunity for profits. These social networks represent such cultural rifts and the different content bubbles we live in.

These intrusive media forces are all at play into the days’ lessons. So for textbook and curriculum developers to go their merry way ignoring media’s impact on internet-classroom learning represents an arrogant gap between the teacher in a classroom and the academic developer. In the same way, classroom behavior needs to be managed so does the access to media in the classroom have to be maintained. When the cat is out the mice will play. 

Social media can have cognitive competitive clashes with lesson time. In one of my classes, a girl burst into tears because her boyfriend broke up with her over Snapchat. With the entire class pulls out a cell phone to see what happened, he broadcasted his breakup with the school. 

It is important for leaders to understand the question is no longer about access or One Laptop Per Child. The current and future issues are about the profiling of content and how Internet engines are reshaping youth’s content during and between classtime.

My recommendation is for academic, administrators, text developers and parents to step back from the ivory school theories and pretty textbooks to take over a classroom for a couple of days as a substitute. Invest some time in teacher’s lunchrooms in listening to how they work around curriculums and manage classroom technology. Surprising the average US high school is right out of a scene from “To Sir With Love” except with cell phones. "Put away the cell." Yells Sir. "I am texting my mother." The girl states him mockingly while chewing gum and sticking out her tongue.

The point is, digital learning is not only about access, but it is also about content management and student development.