My school became an iPad school this year. What does that mean? It means that every student is checked out an iPad like a textbook and most teachers are conducting lessons using the tools available to them on the iPads like Canvas, Notability, Pages, and many other subject-specific APPs. One English teacher told me she was thrilled because now she could have her students submit all their papers through Turn-It-In, an APP which helps prevent plagiarism. It really has changed education at our school overnight. But...I've noticed some really sad side effects of the iPads and their widespread usage.
- Fewer kids are checking out books, even ibooks. More kids than ever are coming to the library as just another place to hang-out with their friends and to even play video games together. Fewer students are reading or looking at the books. We are part of a statistic which is happening everywhere high tech is integrated. As kids embrace the technology, the less they read. The less they read, the less they can read. Sad.
- Every year since our library opened eleven years ago we have dedicated one table to jigsaw puzzles. The puzzle table has become a place for kids to spend a few minutes at lunch being quiet or working in concert with someone else to finish a task. It has been a very popular spot, up until this year. Now no one, or very few students, bother with the jigsaw puzzles I dutifully put out for them. The puzzle table is a victim of the ipads, I fear. Low tech (jigsaw puzzles) cannot compete with high-tech iPads.
- Remember when your kids were little, say two years old and you would plop them on the floor next to another two year old? What would happen? The kids would play next to each other, not with each other. I think it is called simultaneous play. Anyway it is part of their development. Kids have to learn how to play together and they don't do it at first. With the introduction of iPads, it is as if we have kicked kids backwards in development. They sit next to each other and play on their iPads, not interacting with each other. It is as if they are back to the simultaneous play stage of their lives.
- One day while walking through the cafeteria where kids gather before school, I noted a whole lot of kids playing video games on their iPads and no one reading, Not one person. I remarked about this to an administrator who was supervising the room. Without missing a beat she said, "That is why kids bring guns to school." What? I was pretty shook up by her comment and very surprised. I was thinking reading, and she was thinking guns. Ugh. She went on to explain that kids don't talk to each other these day and don't know how to work out their problems. So if there is a conflict what do they do? They bring guns to school. Hey, what do you do in video games? You shoot everything, right? Scary!
I really worry about us as a society if we never have time for low-tech (or no-tech) activities. What are your thoughts on this subject?
