Within the last ten years, the school systems across the United States have drastically changed in terms of technology. Teachers no longer record check marks and the letter "A" for absent students in their attendance books with a red pen. Students rarely complete hand written assignments, and parents of students no longer meet with teachers in person to discuss their child's progress in the classroom. Everything involves technology. Communication is now based on e-mail, assignments are graded through online programs, and attendance is done through a computer system. Do you remember when you misbehaved in class in kindergarten, and your teacher sent a written letter home to your mother? Or when every test that you took was done with pencil and paper...no scantrons, no online quizzes, no tutorials. Almost everything educational based has switched to technology, and it has promoted better learning habits for students. But, one could argue that the use of technology has limited the personal interactions between students, parents and teachers. The Miami-Dade County Public Schools has recently created a Web-based portal that can be accessed by anyone in the community to increase communication speed, provide teachers with better resources, and keep parents informed.
Miami-Dade County Public Schools is the fourth largest school district in the United States, and they have created a network that does not only benefit the students, but the parents and teachers as well. MDCPS published a Comprehensive IT Blueprint that provided a framework and plan of action for using technology to help provide the highest-quality education for students. This advancement in technology was put into effect in order for students to manage their own learning, provide parents with the opportunity to participate in their child's education, and to give teachers the tools they need to increase effectiveness in the classroom. "A Web portal would allow us to push relevant information to all users through one communication channel, rather than having users navigate a maze of stand-alone resources to find what they need".
The web portal is in fact more efficient and less time consuming, however our society is losing its personal touch because of the excessive uses in technology. How many times do you check your e-mail per day? How much time do you spend chatting on social networks with your friends? There seems to be no need to "discuss it over lunch" anymore. People seem to be too busy with their hectic lives and the pressures of society to actually meet in person or to even take a phone call.
But, for Miami-Dade County Public Schools, this may be their only option in attempts to communicate. In the district alone, there are 367 public schools and 345,000 students. That's a whole lot of attendance sheets and a whole lot of parent teacher conferences. Maybe its because I grew up in a small town, where a portal such as this did not exist, nor did we have the need for it, but I believe the competition between industries has exploded and gone a little too far.
But, the truth of the matter is, this portal has increased the student's ability to learn. Students can now access their personal grades online. Parents can view their child's grades, and teachers can view the student's current performance and see whether it is improving or decreasing. It is easier to keep track of each individual in this way. This portal has in fact spurred the student's intellectual curiosity. Parents have been able to engage more in their children's schoolwork, and teachers have become more effective and organized, where they no longer have to navigate through a maze of resources to find what they need . Time has been reduced, but so has the personal connection.
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2 comments:
While I agree with the author of this blog on the fact that technology has, in a sense, limited the personal connections between people, the impact that the Web-Based Portal has had on the Miami-Dade County Public School has been extremely positive. I also grew up in a relatively small community where the Web-Based technology was not quite as prevalent, however, it seems that in these larger communities this new technology is creating a better learning environment. Students are more intellectually curious, teachers are more organized, and parents are more involved. Perhaps this new technology is not so bad after all, despite the lack of personal connections.
I believe that while the author of this blog makes valuable points about our society becoming too impersonal, in an academic setting information technology can prove to be nothing but beneficial. Look at how many more learning tools our generation has than our parents. Our college education is one that is much more practical than those which our parents and even grandparent's most likely received. In business we learn not only how the internet works, but why it works. We are able to logically form beliefs and our beliefs can be proven with the internet, a world of information, that is at our fingertips in a timely fashion. Programs such as blackboard enable us to know exactly where we stand with grades at any particular moment, instead of having to guess. It also enables our parents to take a more active role in the educations which they are more times than not, paying for. I believe these are all good things. However, when these programs begin to take over our lives, that is when the real injustice occurs. When people would prefer to discuss topics online instead of in person, that is when technology becomes too good for its own use, literally. Finally I hold that technology is a great tool, it is up to us to decide whether we use it or allow it to use us.
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