Should Education Dive into the new Technological Age?
Travisray Salyers tsalyers@g.emporia.edu (620) 605-2922
1200 Commercial St. NTT 817 Emporia, KS 66801
Freshmen
Ms. Kenzie Templeton, Box 4019
EG 101 C
1 November 2013

Should Education Dive into the new Technological Age? “Class, lets open our textbooks to page 394! We are going to learn about the Cold War.” Remember listening to our teachers start off lessons like that? That way of teaching will soon be a thing of the past. In the world of education, a big debate topic on hand is whether or not schools should teach using textbooks or tablets as the learning medium. Many schools should advance the way they present the learning materials from textbooks to 21st century tablets because it will enhance the learning of the students in the classroom. Tablets are a valuable asset to the learning process because they increase test scores, provide interactive lessons, lessons are customizable and students can use apps and online materials for further exploration. Switching to tablets opens up a variety of different resources that teachers, parents and students can use. Tablets give access to e-textbooks (that have interactive features, assessments, and customizable learning), apps, and online material (Cennamo p.24). The tablet market is not as old as people think. The first tablet was produced by Apple in April of 2010 by the name of the iPad (Brown p.9). After the second generation of iPad came out, more and more possibilities started arising on what these “flat computers” could do. Ever since then educators and publishing companies alike have been trying to find new ways to use this technology in the classroom. Companies like Pearson, McGraw Hill, and Houlton Mifflin Harcourt understand that to stay in business they must have the most updated information and current trends or academic institutions will not adopt their textbooks. The “big three” textbook companies know that schools will want more technology, so they are vigorously creating resources and texts to be used on tablets to keep the schools satisfied with their products. Technology based instruction time can reduce the time students take to reach a learning objective by up to 80 percent. Today’s students live in a technology run world, where everything they want to do, practically can be done using some form of technology. They do not have much experience interacting with books and the “old” style of learning with paper and pencil. In a recent study by McGraw Hill textbook company, students that learned the same information from tablets and textbooks, but the students with tablets scored 20 percent higher than the students who learned from the textbooks on a standardized assessment (“The Future of Education”). Now, most standardized tests are being switched over to an online version, so students must be able to cope with the changes, and using online practice given on tablets will substantially help the student perform their best on these tests (Lavin). For anyone that’s had to purchase a textbook, you know that they are not a cheap item to buy. Textbook prices can range from $40-$200 for schools to buy for the classroom (Smaldino p.21). If you estimate a class size of 20 students with four different class sections that equals to be about 80 students to purchase books for; the money starts to add up quickly. E-textbooks prices are substantially cheaper than the normal print textbooks. Price range for an e-textbook is $20-$50, but once the textbook is purchased the school owns it and when an update comes for the text it will automatically be updated in the book with no extra cost (Reiss). When schools spend money on e-textbooks, it is for a lifetime because the books will always be up to date. Every student learns differently than the student sitting right next to them. It has been problem for teachers to individually customize assignments to everyone’s learning ability. With tablets, teachers can use tools to