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Chalkboards, pens and pencils fade into history
Jan 02, 2010 (The Daily Item - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --
How much has technology changed the world of education and students' social interaction in the past decade? Just ask Tiffani Hoffman, a 2000 Shikellamy High School graduate who didn't have nearly the gizmos and gadgets at hand that Milton Area High senior Kathy Jacobs does.
No more note taking?
In the classroom, 17-year-old Jacobs said teachers expect students to have a computer at home to do work. Programs on the Internet allow Jacobs and her classmates to receive grades, have a calendar with assignments and provide homework answers.
"They expect you to have a computer and get it all done," she said.
Luckily Jacobs and her family have two computers at her Milton home -- a laptop and a desktop -- that she uses often for school work. She said they got their first computer when she was really young that she used to play games like PacMan, but it did not have Internet access.
Hoffman, 28, said she had a computer her senior year that used the Internet but instead of the current AOL Instant Messenger or social networking sites, she used a different chat program -- ICQ -- or found Web sites for school-related projects. She bought her first laptop to take to college.
"Anything could be put on the Web and you didn't know if it was true or not," Hoffman said. "It wasn't necessarily the right information."
While she began using computers in elementary school, she also took a computer class in high school which taught typing and general knowledge about the machines.
During classes, Hoffman also hand-wrote her notes from lectures of teachers.
"I had a teacher that would grade our notes," she remembered. "If they weren't good notes, we got a deduction on our grade. It really prepared us for college."
Today, Jacobs said there are computers in almost every class. She also uses Smartboards in her classrooms -- a touch sensitive white board that provides interactive teaching. Students and teachers don't need to use chalkboards or computers when using the Smartboards.
"It's helpful," Jacobs said. "I forget when we used to not have them, we use them so much."
Almost all of her classes use PowerPoint handouts for notes rather than writing and copying things throughout the entire period.
Keeping in touch
While both women use social networking sites now, Hoffman said she doesn't think she would have joined one of the sites when she was in high school.
"I only got on the Internet briefly in high school because not everyone had it," she said. "If someone did, it was like, 'let's go to their house!'aEUR%"
Today she uses Facebook and MySpace to keep in touch with her mother and sister who live across the country. Not only do they communicate through instant messaging and e-mail, but they're able to use video chats to actually see each other and talk, which is one way Hoffman said she's seen her new nephew.
Jacobs uses the sites too, and said e-mail comes in handy to contact colleges and schools of interest with questions she has.
"I do a lot of scheduling online and through their Web sites," she said. "I ask questions through e-mail. I don't have to talk to them by phone at all if I don't want to."
Applications to colleges are all done online as well, which Jacobs has found to make the process much easier. She's applied to four colleges, all through the Internet, and said it is even cheaper.
Hoffman remembers writing out each application by hand, including student loan forms. Many often required essays, too.
Not just for talking
Cell phones for the two women are also very different between their senior years in high school.
"I got my first cell phone on my 18th birthday. It was black and white, had no games, no Internet, no texting, no camera, and it dropped calls all the time," Hoffman laughed.
Jacobs said she got hers when she was 15. It was a regular flip phone with a camera. Now, her new phone has a touch screen, flip-out keyboard for texting, Internet and a camera.
Hoffman's current phone has everything from the camera and Internet to a Weatherbug application that gives alerts.
Though kids these days seem to be getting phones younger and younger, she said her seven-year-old daughter, Amelia, will not get one until high school. If any earlier, it will be a tracker phone -- where minutes are bought as needed -- for emergencies.
"Technology is going too fast, there's no way to escape it," Hoffman said. "We're constantly connected to everything and everyone. Kids are sitting in the same room texting each other. What happened to the art of conversation? We're losing that interaction."
The future
Hoffman, who is attending school for education, said her students will be taking notes the old-fashioned way -- by writing.
"There's something about putting it on paper with your own hands that makes you memorize it better," she said. "If you write it out, everything goes to your memory."
With the way technology has been moving, cell phones and computers will continue to evolve and it's hard to imagine where technology could be within the next 10 years.
"In 2020, I could see kids schooled by virtual classrooms," Hoffman said. "Kids would download curriculum and study at home."
To see more of The Daily Item or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to
http://www.dailyitem.com/. Copyright (c) 2010, The Daily Item, Sunbury, Pa.
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