The Benefits of Technology in the Classroom by Isabella

The Benefits of Technology in the Classroom by Isabella - January 2020 Scholarship Essay

In Horry County, every high school student receives a Dell Latitude for the academic school year. This piece of technology assists both teachers and students in that it makes for a more efficient, environmentally-friendly classroom. Instead of turning in essays and assignments on paper, we are able to submit them online through several programs including Pages, Word, and Google Documents. While this makes for easier submission and grading on the side of instructors, it also decreases the amount of paper consumed in our county. Students use from 1,000 to 1,800 pieces of paper each year for school. Multiplied by the average amount of students per school in the United States, this is about 75 trees every year per school! While 75 does not sound like a large number, there are nearly 100,000 schools in the United States, meaning almost 7,500,000 trees are cut down just for the American school system. This shows just how serious the problem is. When schools (or in my case, counties) go paperless, this saves both time and the environment.

These laptops are so beneficial to my personal classroom experience that I feel that they deserve two paragraphs. As I mentioned, the Latitudes are also far more effective and efficient than paper or traditional learning tools. The textbooks we use can be downloaded, resulting in a lighter backpack and a healthier back. We also have access to far more resources online which assist in our studying. Websites like Khan Academy, No Red Ink, Alek's, and Wikipedia are full of information, and some even offer studying and tutoring techniques. (On this note, I would like to assure the reader that Wikipedia is useful when utilized responsibly. While it has a negative reputation in the classroom due to the ability of readers to edit information, there is a significant process behind the edits and any errors are quickly reported. Therefore, most information on this site is reliable, especially when other websites are used to back up the facts collected.) Even further, the Internet is useful in encouraging creativity during presentations and other projects. There is a bounty of images and designs online which can be used to hone the arts, and this is very helpful in a school system which occasionally dismisses the arts as lesser.

More specific to my school experience, I also use technology in my Pre-Medicine major at my high school. When we learned about the correct form for CPR and intubation, we were able to practice on realistic 'dummies' which even were capable of making sounds and speaking depending on the effectiveness of our care. This advanced piece of technology significantly prepared us for the medical field, and when we interned at local hospitals for our Clinical Studies class, the shock of hearing the sounds of the hurt and dying was less since we had been practicing already. If we were unable to practice these medical skills with the technology we had available, the time we spent in the actual medical field would have been full of un-preparation and chaos.

Lastly, technology is a very broad topic. Most of the tools we use as a developing generation are, in fact, a variant of a piece of tech. As such, the classroom would not be the same if we did not take advantage of the tools given to us, and my class especially is very lucky to have the opportunities we were given. While the same lessons could have been taught without computers and medical advancements, it would have been more difficult, and more time would have been used. Ultimately, the development of the technologies mentioned made for a better, faster, more effective classroom experience.