How Important is Technology In the Classroom

With the first two days of this week being “low tech usage” days at Arrowhead, it has students at Arrowhead reflecting on the importance of technology in the classroom.

The no tech days were an attempt to keep school in session despite the loss of wireless internet. Unfortunately many students found that these no tech days were about as productive as a day off of school.

An Arrowhead senior, Lauren Henzlik says, “I left early on Tuesday, because Monday proved to be nearly pointless. Almost all of my classes rely on Canvas, Quizlet, Google Classroom, and Google Drive to function. So when the wifi was shut down we couldn’t access any of our important class materials. So most classes we just played learning games, watched movies, or went outside.”

With Canvas being the endorsed online learning management system for Arrowhead High School, many courses run online quizzes, homework assignments, and syllabuses from Canvas. This allows students to have a place to turn in all work, and also take a view for what is to come in a given course.

However, the most frequently used online application at Arrowhead is Google Drive. Google Drive is virtually an online flashdrive program which allows students to create and store documents, presentations, photos, and even drawings.

Sophomore Taylor Tomich says, “I use Google Drive at least 5 times a day. It’s where all of my school documents are, and I can always get access to my Drive from any computer.”

Teachers use Google Drive to often share instructions, rubrics, student examples, and other helpful class resources. Teachers can also make suggestions, edits, and leave comments on student’s work. Students use Google Drive as an online platform to write essays, create presentations, and work on group projects.

Google Drive gives students the ability to work on group projects from separate locations using the “share” option. A group is able to work on a document or presentations simultaneously and all together.

A close relative to Google Drive is Google Classroom, which was very common for teachers to use until just this year.

Google Classroom is a place for teachers to post assignments, as well as collect assignments. This year, the school heavily encouraged the use of Canvas over Google Classroom, due to the fact that the school pays a subscription fee for Canvas.

As many Arrowhead students learned this past Monday and Tuesday, at this point in time technology is necessary for education. The “no-tech” days presented students and teachers with a challenge.