IN-CLASS ONLINE LESSON #11

“Technology: Pro or Con to students?”

Good afternoon Mr. Lundberg. This afternoon, I am going to talk about a rather general topic regarding students in Singapore, whether technology has become a pro or con to the students.

As we all, in Hwa Chong, we had adopted this program known as the future school. This allows students to use the aid of the technology, to help them improve their knowledge, outside the book and certainly, there are pros and cons about technology, which includes laptops, smart phones etc. for students.

Let me share with you one statistic before starting the argument, from the Pew Research Center it is found in 2009 that 99% of boys and 94% of girls play that video games. Game playing experiences are diverse, with the most popular games falling into the racing, puzzle, sports, action and adventure categories. Other than games, there are different types of how students can use technology, one include social media, which are programs like “Facebook” or “Twitter” or the recent one “Stomp”. “This is great and would not cause any detrimental impact on my studies.” I might say as point of view as a student, but when it comes to gaming and social media, there are bound to be problems that will arise. Gaming, which mostly contains of violence when it falls into the category of action, would cause students to develop thinking that violence is acceptable. Though statistic stated that the amount of violent deaths in school dropped from 270 from 1992-3 to a quarter of that in 1999-2000, but violence could still happen with lesser or no reports made by students. Some of the violence done by students would include bullying, which is a punch in the stomach or fights happening between students. Slaps or punches might not be very serious to the students, but little did they know, that is a form of violence. One example would be in school life, but to protect the piracy of the people, I would not name them, but friendly fights do happen in class so often after school, messing up the whole class, which are signs of violence. And I repeat, serious violence. They get hurt but do not mention it to anyone, but suffer themselves. Social media would also cause a problem, because of cyber bullying. Students might make comments, accidentally or purposely to cause hurt or embarrassment to the victim. Me myself, got bullied socially before, and the hurt done to me couldn’t be described at that time, feeling lost and there is nothing much I could do. These are cons of technology to students nowadays. Academics might also be affected because of the distraction caused by the computer. Smart phones also made games, application, easily accessible, which is why technology might be a con to students.

Certainly there are pros too, but pros would definitely not help the students more than it would hurt them. With the distraction and problems done to students, they might not know how to prioritize their work between gaming and academics, thus I feel that technology, that includes computers, social media and smart phones, are more of a con than a pro to most students. Thank you.