Watching students take calls in the middle of class, math teacher Patricia Blake decided to discipline her distracted students. However, Blake still sees technology causing a distraction. She says it’s a problem that has gotten out of control.

“Cellphones, chromebooks, it doesn’t matter what (the students) are supposed to be doing,” Blake said. “If they’re smiling, you know that they’re watching a video or playing a game, not looking at geometry.”

Blake is not alone in her view that technology is an easy distraction, however other teachers do find it beneficial in helping students learn. Their differing opinions raise a question: How much technology is appropriate in the classroom?

Blake says she sees technology in the classroom as part of “the world we live in.” Although she would rather use paper and pencil, she incorporates it into her class by using the smart board daily and allowing her students to listen to music when studying. To her, the biggest benefit is that technology provides every student with an online textbook.
Using online resources provided by teachers is one of the ways students, like sophomore Jade Germann, can utilize classroom technology. The accessibility technology provides makes her prefer more of it in the classroom than less.
“I have all of this access (to files and) I can go to my teacher’s website and look at the homework answers while I’m doing my homework to check (my work),” Germann said.

While some teachers maintain websites for students, social studies teacher Dan Jones holds a YouTube channel. He also uses chromebooks to promote independent learning, which he says helps students learn more responsibility and accountability, while still giving them the freedom to “pursue their learning in the way that makes the most sense to them.” For him, contrary to Blake, students being distracted by technology hasn’t been a problem.

“(Technology) is most distracting when students use it for the wrong reasons, but my view on that is if I make class interesting enough, the vast majority of them won’t even desire or even think about pursuing alternatives on their chromebooks,” Jones said.