Our education has a flaw, a big in your face flaw. Technology. Shocking I know, what could go wrong when you give a high school student an Ipad or Chromebook. But like the children’s story When You Give a Mouse a Cookie the student will inevitably want more whether it be in gadgets or apps, it begins to get out of hand. The technology we used to study and do school work on has now become nothing but a distraction or a way to cheat on a test.

So what’s the big deal? When students walk into class we usually have our phone in hand checking which ever app is relevant at that point. Once class starts the teacher will ask the students to put away our phones if we have them out, we then proceed to slowly slide said phone under our hand or sleeve, sneaky right? Fact of the matter is students will continue to check the relevant apps on the Ipad or Chromebook that the school has issued us. Most students would rather play a game than listen to a lecture or do a worksheet that closely resemble previous ones that already been completed.

Daily Mail recently reported that writing by hand is more effective than typing things out, and writing is thought to aid children’s learning ability. Writing also has no pop up ads and won’t crash right before you click save. While I understand that it takes longer to write something out rather than typing something it allows us to absorb the information much better then we do if we type something.

At Dominican University of California a study found that taking notes helped students with recalling information and academic studies, and helped with learning a new language. Lifehacker published an article briefing the biology behind writing. “Writing stimulates a bunch of cells at the base of the brain called the reticular activating system (RAS),” they wrote, “The RAS acts as a filter for everything your brain needs to process.”

Another study made by Dr. Virginia Berninger, a Professor at University of Washington showed that children who used the pen and paper were able to create longer essays with more complete sentences than the children who used the keyboard. Berninger stated that the keyboard doesn’t allow the children to connect with the individual letters and words.

So what needs to happen? I think students should be given more opportunities to take handwritten notes and have worksheets be actual sheets of paper. I know that we’re killing trees by using paper but to be honest we’ve already damaged this earth beyond repair.