Schools Advance Technology

Opinion
By Mckenna Sweeney
Husky Herald Reporter

  When times change, technology changes. Although that is an obvious statement, it holds very true.

  Changes in technology have happened in slew of different areas of today’s society, prominently in schools. Here, at Port Huron Northern, a select few of my teachers have changed their curriculum from paperwork to mainly computer work.

  Online work could be using programs such as Google Classroom or McGraw Hill Connect. Overall, I have found that I like working with pencil and paper much better than working online, though some teachers use a mixture of both, which I have found works the best.

“In my ELA class we mostly do things the way we’ve always done things and not using computers, but for certain things we use Google Classroom to turn in our work,” Sammy Ziarko (‘16) said. “I don’t really like how teachers make us do work online, it just makes everything harder.”

  Google Classroom is a better program but still inferior to the classic paper work, in my opinion. By using Google Classroom, teachers can make an online assignment, but are still able to grade it them themselves, instead of letting the program doing it for them. That is a lot better because then students wouldn’t get answers wrong that were actually correct.

  In McGraw Hill Connect, teachers can create assignments, similarly to Google Classroom. Once the student is finished with a problem there is a “Check my work” button, then they can turn the assignment in for points, which are scored automatically.

  I think McGraw Hill Connect makes classwork a bit more difficult. Even though there is a “Check my Work” button, if the content you type in as your answer is not exactly what the program has as correct, it marks your answer as incorrect. For me, this adds more stress in trying to figure out exactly what the computer wants, rather than what your teacher wants.     

  “I prefer to not use computers as our class work,” said Nicole Truscott (‘16), “Computers have too many difficulties. They shut down in the middle of doing assignments, and sometimes they don’t connect [to the internet], which makes me stress out if a paper is due on a certain day.”

  Computers are better for transferring documents from students to teachers, such as in an email, but when there is a specific assignment where you must answer specific questions, paper and pencil work the best.

  “Where I live, my internet is really patchy,” Connor Friedle (‘16) said, “When  I’m in the middle of doing my work I'll lose connection, then lose all the work I’d just done. I think it's better to not use computers for work.”

  Although there are good and bad points to both sides of the argument, overall using pencil and paper for schoolwork is the most effective way to go.