Digital Learning: As Cost Effective as it Seems?

Hello everyone. This is an article that describes one of the possible problems with digital devices in education, primarily, that they are not as cost effective a teaching method as their old-fashion counterparts. You can read the article for yourself here.

The article describes how the new buzzwords in education like 'personalized learning experience' and 'personalized learning' may seem like they are the new way toward education, but they may hurt the bottom line of educating students and the pocket books of some school districts. The article then states how researchers looked at two different types of education: online-only, and blended-education, where digital devices were blended into regular instruction. The results were interesting. Online-only classes had no to a slight negative impact on student achievement, while blended-education was harder to examine. However, when the achievement was improved with blended education, the money it took to get the technology outweighed the benefits.

Overall, I am torn on what this article describes, assuming the results were clear in the first place. On the one hand, this article seems to say that digital technologies are no better than the older teaching methods, but, on the other hand, many of the ways that they are used in the classroom create unclear results regarding their effectiveness in the learning process. I believe that this is a debate that has gone on for some time and will continue to do so in the future. While I can understand that a school district would be hesitant to allocate funds for technology that may or may not be used, I also believe that schools have a responsibility to get students ready for the world outside of school, and that includes using electronics as well.

Yet, I can see school districts eventually falling behind in the technology curve, such as was the case when I was in school. Back when I was in high school, from 2007 to 2011, there was, arguably, a digital revolution. With the arrival of smartphones and g mail, and Google Docs, our technology policy alone was hopelessly outdated, much less the methods used to teach technology to us. The only class that we had to teach us this was a class in online learning were we learned things like how to type without looking, and how to shop online...as one can guess, this did very little to prepare me for the tech of today. We also used school laptops that were very thick and heavy and took about fifteen minutes to start up. I could easily see this being repeated in today's schools or even schools of the future, where kids are griping about having to use the original iPads, and not letting their iPone 10's do the latest trick to get their work done.

But all of this comes down to if digital technology is effective in education given its cost, and I say only time will tell. Admittedly, there is no way to tell a school district if the piece of tech will be relevant in a year or if it will be a humongous flop. Money must go to certain things in a budget every year and buying the latest tablet may seem like an expense that is not needed. However, this train of though leads me to ask the question: is the rate of technological expansion decreasing? Do we need to buy the latest smartphone in order to be digitally current? I remember one of my friends excitedly telling me that the iPhone six was coming out, when I asked him what it did better than the iPhone 5, he said, "You, know what? I don't really know." Personally, I think this is a sign of more than just an uninformed friend. Perhaps the need and requirement for the latest technology in our lives is decreasing and we can make due with something that is not the latest and greatest, and this could apply to schools as well. What are your thoughts?