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Opener - Jeff
I. Intro a. Computers don't hurt kids. Educators with Computers hurt kids... II. Example: Describe observation of 5th Grade Computer Lab Lesson. a. PowerPoint Presentations about explorers b. Images, Text, Animations, Sounds c. Post-Conference Discussion...Why do we learn about exploration? d. How could lesson/project been better designed so that technology enhanced learning? e. Computer skills aren't hard to learn. Developing deep understanding of concepts is (requires quality instruction) II. Summarize Our 3 Points a. Jenn-First Hand Experiences b. Kim-Health Concerns c. Colleen-Curtailing Developmental landmarks (imaginative play, social interaction.) III Closing a. Naive to say computers don't belong in school. b. Resources need to be spent on better integration of technology than just the technology itself.

Arguments - Colleen, Kim & Jenn
Jenn's Argument - Not sure if I overlap Colleen too much?? Perhaps we should go back to back and let Kim go first or third??
 * The Need for First Hand Experiences **

We can recall from our technology class assignment, the budgetary dollars spent on technology in a school district. Over the past decade, and more recently in times of budgetary uncertainty, scholars and school boards have questioned the amount of budgetary funds being devoted to technology. While we are not denying the fact that students need to learn to use technology, little evidence exists to prove that increased use and availability of technology leads to increased student achievement. Even less research is available to support the link between computer use and availability and improving test scores.I do not deny that computers are a valuable asset in the classroom, the bigger question should be what is their role in the learning process.

Computers and computer assisted learning are but two-dimensional, sight and sound, and neglect the first hand experiences provided through hands on exploration. There is a huge difference between leaning about something (knowledge acquisition) and learning from something, which requires feelings and associations.For years we have been encouraged to utilize a VAKT approach to learning and to consider the learning styles of our students, trying to incorporate each style in lessons in order to accommodate the variety of learners. Computers cater to the visual and auditory learners but what about the hands-on learners who learn by doing? Rousseau pointed out that a child's first and most important teacher is his hands! Computers require little more than passive participation in the learning process. "Children need to first sink their hands deeply into what is real... take the time to develop their own inner voice...we must first teach our children how to use the incredible powers that lie deep within themselves."

Furthermore, Marshal McLuhan describes the amplify / amputate phenomenon of technology. Computers encourage students to use the spell checker instead of learning to spell and enable learners to use a calculator instead of learning to compute. When's the last time you handed the cashier a bill and they could make your change without looking at the register? We've encouraging external power over the basic skills required to be successful in daily life. I'm not proposing all student be super spellers or exceptional mathematicians, but they do need to know if their responses at least make sense! Monke,warns, o ur attempts to remediate and accelerate learning through computers has sacrificed the growth of our children's inner resources. In his article //Human Touch//, he states "We may deliver children into the world with tremendous technical power, but it is rarely with a well developed sense of human purpose to guide its use."

We know first hand from our experiences in Dr. Morgan's class that technology can cause information overload. We've been told that digital natives can find the answer to any question in seconds. The problem comes when their search yields 5,000,000 + results. What is quality? What is truth and what is someone's opinion?We need to connect all this abstract information with concrete experiences to make learning meaningful. Monke encourages us to honor the natural development of childhood. "Computer learning should grow out of years of concrete experience and a fundamental appreciation for the world apart from the machine..." Wiles & Bondi propose that students will master technological fluency because they use technology every day outside school. What our students need are lifetime skills such as problem solving, collaboration, technical learning and the ability to make value judgements.

Argument #2? Kim - promoting adolescent obesity

Adolescence represents a sensitive period in the development of obesity, and obesity in adolescence is known to track into adulthood and be associated with several health problems. As responsible educators, we need to be aware of this risk and model and instill in students behaviors that will assist them in preventing obesity and other associated health problems.

Current epidemiological trends in the United States indicate that the prevalence of childhood obesity has reached the level of a public health crisis. Rates of obesity among children and adolescents have experienced a dramatic increase, with the latest Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey showing that almost 25% of high school females (grades 9 to 12) can be classified as either overweight or at-risk-for-overweight. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 16 percent of American children (over 9 million) 6 to 19 years old are overweight or obese. This statistic becomes alarming because this number has tripled since 1980. Over the past three decades the childhood obesity rate has more than doubled for adolescents 12 to 19 years and it has more than tripled for children aged 6 to 11 years. These numbers are of considerable concern because of the many negative health consequences associated with obesity in youth, including sleep apnea, gallbladder disease, elevated blood pressure, etc.

As the prevalence of childhood and adolescence obesity has increased in most parts of the world, we need to consider factors behind this development. Along with the increasing rise of obesity in adolescents there has been a dramatic increase in technology. In simple terms, obesity results from an imbalance between the intake and the expenditure of energy. Information and communication technology influences this imbalance. Using computers is a low-energy activity. In addition, it competes for the same time resource as physical activity and other non-sedentary activities.

Advances in technology have increased the time spent in sedentary pursuits among children. These advances in technology have reduced the need for physical activity in daily life. A low level of physical activity coupled with a low daily energy requirement and will cause obesity unless food intake is limited accordingly. In a study done on ninth-grade African American girls, their use of the Internet was over nine hours per week. Another study showed that male adolescents preferred to engage in technology-related activities such as using Internet and chat rooms rather than participating in physical activity. The authors argue that participants would go on the Internet to check their e-mail and then start searching around the world wide web and before the adolescents knew it, the time spent on the Internet turned out to be three to four hours instead of a half an hour checking their e- mail. The authors found that the same male adolescents liked the ability to talk to others on the Internet and the ability to find good information surfing the net rather than going outside and playing sports.

Time spent in sedentary technology use displaces time that would otherwise be spent engaged in physically active pursuits. Since adolescences are spending more time working with technology, they are spending less time being active. After school fitness activities such as ping-pong, football, basketball, soccer and other physical activities are being taken over by technology in the likes of computer/video games and the Internet. Students have cut down their usage of playing active games such as ping-pong, basketball and other activities just to sit and watch other students play computer games. According to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, these new developments in technology that are attracting today’s adolescents away from being physically active are contributing to the adolescents’ inactive lifestyle.

The physically inactive lifestyle of adolescents has produced a generation of kids who are at high risk for obesity-associated medical conditions. The major health threat is the early development of Type 2 diabetes. Doctors are reporting a surge in young adolescents developing Type 2 diabetes which can lead to heart disease, high blood pressure, kidney disease, stroke, limb amputations, and blindness. People who develop diabetes in adolescence face a diminished quality of life and shortened life span, particularly if the disease progresses untreated. It's a scary prospect for our children but, in many cases, obesity and diabetes are preventable.

Adolescence is a critical period in which the risk for obesity onset is high and adult lifestyle takes shape. Today’s schools are more than simply places where students learn academics such as math, history, and reading; they have also become a venue for educating youth on strategies and life-long habits that foster social, emotional, and physical well-being. When schools focus too heavily on incorporating computer usage in classrooms throughout the school day, they are only instilling in students the importance of technology and, in turn, promoting the additional use of computers outside of school hours. In essence, schools are sending a message to students that sedentary behavior is acceptable while it is clear that computer usage is a hazard that is impacting the health and well-being of children.

Argument #? Debate #3 Colleen Hovanec

While it is important to examine the relationship between technology and learning that debate often devolves into a tit-for-tat of dueling studies and anecdotes. The problem with framing the issue merely as a question of whether technology boosts test scores is that it fails to address the interaction between technology and the values learned in school. In short, we need to ask what kind of learning tends to take place with the computer and what kind gets left out. With the increasing importance of technology in education and the workplace in America, the ability to effectively use a computer has become as fundamental to a person’s academic and occupational success as reading, writing and math.

Some experts contend that computer use by very young children has harmful effects on their physical, cognitive and social-emotional development.

Imaginative play is a valuable aspect of development. Preschool and kindergarten children between the ages of three and six may begin to engage in imaginative play together, and create vivid scenarios using their relatively new verbal skills. Kids will assume all sorts of magical identities and roles at this stage, from action heroes to kings and queens. Pretend play can help a child understand important events in his or her life. Pretend play can help a child feel in control of their own world. In real life, parents decide when a child should eat, bathe and go to bed. A child who engages in pretend play is the master of his own destiny, whether he’s an action hero or a cowboy. Children make their own decisions when they pretend. The use of technology can stifle the imaginative play in our very young children as they are exposed to and engage in games and simulations that “step” them through activities and levels to mastery.

Our computer-driven society demands that our children develop the ability to operate a technological environment, young children and adolescents are becoming extremely computer literate and almost anything seems to be easily accessible on the Internet. Some psychological reports indicated that, children who use the computer often reported spending less time talking with their families, experiencing more daily stress, and feeling more lonely and depressed. This may sometimes come at the expense of other healthy activities such as homework or normal social interchanges. You could add the fact that children typically spend nearly half their waking life outside of school (I am sure there's a stat for this!) sitting in front of screens, here! - Jenn :) Some studies were conducted in the United States which showed that children will be more aggressive, stressed, and lonely and will have other problems like computer and internet addiction.  Thomas Fuchs, co-author of the previously mentioned study, has speculated that young children are the ones most likely to be damaged by excessive computer use. Using computers often reduces pupil-teacher interaction, and this could have a negative impact on literacy, since learning to read requires extensive interaction between students and teachers.  Another important aspect of a child’s education is the ability to problem solve, work cooperatively and think critically. At a practical level, students often work with more than one student on projects, assignments and experiments. Having a student sit at a computer does not foster or promote cooperative learning skills as the student is working at their own level on a series of tasks or activities that have been determined by the computer based program and classroom teacher. Students are missing out on the opportunity to hear multiple perspectives or engage in the rich conversation necessary to help build background knowledge that help to solidify specific content skills and concepts. Vygotsky argues that all higher psychological functions (e.g. perception, voluntary attention) have social origins. Specifically, he claims that adults and more capable peers mediate a child's experiences. Many of the successful problem solving training studies have been influenced by the Vygotskian notion of guided learning within a learner's zone of proximal development - a distance between what a child can do working alone and what he or she can accomplish with aid. An important implication from Vygotsky's argument is that within a computer learning environment, there needs to be an increase of interaction between the teacher and the learner, as well as between learners.

Let’s take a look at higher education. At a large university in New York, the dropout rate among freshmen newcomers rose dramatically as their investment in computers and Internet access increased. The reason? Administrators learned that 43% of the dropouts were staying up all night on the Internet. In response to a college listserv survey regarding the effect of technology on interpersonal relationships and communication, by far the most frequently mentioned potential problem dealt with electronic communication in the forms of email, discussion groups, and chat rooms. Many respondents spoke of the sense of isolation inherent in this medium and the lack of face to face contact as a contributing factor to feelings of alienation and loneliness.

This deluge of shapeless heaps of data caused the late social critic Marshall McLuhan to conclude that schools would have to become “recognized as civil defense against media fallout.” McLuhan understood that the consumption and manipulation of symbolic, abstract information is not an adequate substitute for concrete, firsthand involvement with objects, people, nature, and community, for it ignores the child’s primary educational need–to make meaning out of experience.

Closer - Dan

 * 1) Computers are part of schools, the extent and use is the question.
 * 2) From health problems to experiential learning
 * 3) Teaching is a human experience,”
 * 4) “Technology is a distraction when we need literacy, numeracy and critical thinking.” Stated Paul Thomas, an associate professor of education at Furman University and former teacher
 * 5) “Engagement is about human contact, the contact with the teacher, the contact with their peers,” Pierre Laurent, formerly of Intel and Microsoft and now at a high-tech start-up
 * 6) “The idea that an app on an [|iPad] can better teach my kids to read or do arithmetic, that’s ridiculous.” Allan Eagle works in executive communications at Google, he has written speeches, Eric E. Schmidt chairman of Google
 * 7) How simple it is to pick up technology
 * 8) “It’s supereasy. It’s like learning to use toothpaste,”
 * 9) “At Google and all these places, we make technology as brain-dead easy to use as possible. There’s no reason why kids can’t figure it out when they get older.”
 * 10) Human cost
 * 11) Aurad Kamkar, 11, said he recently went to visit cousins and found himself sitting around with five of them playing with their gadgets, not paying attention to him or each other. He started waving his arms at them: “I said: ‘Hello guys, I’m here.’ ”
 * 12) Date at Denny’s
 * 13) Colleague Jeff, across the table: Good Teaching
 * 14) Cathy Waheed - teacher “For three weeks, we ate our way through fractions,” she said. “When I made enough fractional pieces of cake to feed everyone, do you think I had their attention?”

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