Essay on Technology & Elementary Education: An Exploring of Effects & Counselors' Role

Introduction

The technological development of the current touches many circles of life including elementary education sector. The different technological development include cellphone and the internet. In elementary education, the excessive use of the technology by learner make it necessary for the intervention of counselors. Any approach to using technology generates a stream of effects, both positive and negative. This paper explores how technology impacts the elementary learners, and how counselors help in combating negative effects.

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Impacts on the Life of Elementary School Learners

Positive Effects of Cellphones

Cellphones have several positives to the learners. Leung and Lee (2012) admits that spending time with devices like phones, accessing internet and playing computer games increases ones innovativeness. Phones have applications that contribute to the academic development of the learners. Using these applications, children enhance their learning process. They watch educative videos using the programs.

Since cellphones offer the fastest way of communication, they are useful in case of emergencies in schools. The phones facilitate communication between the schools' management with guardians, increasing the effectiveness of the necessary assistance. The phone can aid in the location of stray students using geographical positioning system (Goolsbee & Guryan, 2006). Students who possess cellphones that access the internet can continue with their learning process even when they are out of class.

Positive Effects Internet

The internet connects people, shares information, and acts as a source of knowledge for the students. It serves as a virtual teacher to students and tutors by offering a platform for information dissemination and research. Its users get relevant study material from multiple sites, which enhances their understanding of specific topics (Zhang, & Duke, 2011). This benefit is not only reflected in the classroom setting, but also social interactions. Peers can study different researches that strengthen their knowledge, understanding, and exposure to various study areas.

Leung and Lee (2012) say that through platforms like WhatsApp and Telegrams, learner adopts internet as a mode of communication between their tutors and between themselves. The platforms enhance sharing information regarding classwork, and other activities like co-curriculum activities and helps them air their concerns, worries, or needs to the respective respondents (Goolsbee & Guryan, 2006). The platforms, therefore, enhances the learning environment.

Other Technologies

Technology influences the schools' systems due to their versatility and ease of use. Its resourcefulness in a classroom setting, especially the use of videos in teaching, affects students' and teachers' work processes (Pontes, Szabo & Griffiths, 2015). Its application simplifies studies, making the schools embrace it. The wave of technology also improves students' understanding. It provides a range of information, knowledge, and educational resources, enhancing studying even beyond the classroom. The use of good storage technologies that hard disks not only allow teachers to preserve students' entertainment materials, but only improves research as they keep research information for long (Zhang, & Duke, 2011). Through the use of online articles, teachers prepare lessons for teaching, including videos and power points. Technology offers interactive support between the teachers and the learners.

Negative Effects Cellphones

Elementary learners record much screen time with cell phones having cartoons (Jessica, 2018). Cellphones, thus, take a significant share of the effects on expertise on the students. Analysis of the impact indicates more disadvantages than benefits. Firstly, during class sessions, Cellphones interfere with the process both on the side of the teacher and the students. In Jessica (2018) work, a study on the effects of the phones on human behavior reveals that despite the phones reduce the overall attention of learners, in the long-term, they also lower the memory of students.

A survey by Li et al. (2014) indicate that elementary schools take the stage in life where the children are developing their brain. The learners thus require conditions that facilitate their brain development. Interfering with the stage negatively affects their mental growth. Li et al. (2014) add that the connection between cognitive psychology, attentiveness, and good memory of what the brains captured earlier is essential in the development process of young learners. The scholar recommends the process not to get interference at any cost. Therefore, loss of attention at the learners' early-stage retards their brain development (Jessica, 2018, Li et al., 2014).

Jessica (2018) also indicates that elementary school learners fancy playing cellphone sounds like ringtones and videos. The devices take much of their attention, which they would put on homework. Focusing on the phones also confines them indoors, denying them time for physical exercise, and interaction with their peers (Zhang & Duke, 2011). The kids focus on phones, always browsing the internet, watching videos, and playing games. This physical inactiveness pauses significant challenges to physical fitness and can cause physical abnormalities and lifestyle diseases like obesity in the children (Leung & Lee, 2012).

Negative Impacts of Internet

Misuse of the Internet, like the learner accessing the websites with rights out of their age bracket, corrupts their reasoning (Pontes, Szabo & Griffiths, 2015). The sites may contain content not suitable for the children under the elementary school. For instance, access to websites classified as having adult content, pornographic films affects the conduct of the students. The students may share some information that catches the attention of others, disrupting their attention (Goolsbee & Guryan, 2006; Zhang, & Duke, 2011). This move disrupts the link between the learners and their teachers and between the students themselves. Sharing malicious information sends wrong impressions to all the group participants and can even lead to panic. Students under such an environment usually perform both socially and academically.

Other Technologies

Although the technology used has proved to be beneficial to learning, it also has several undesirable effects on the quality of life and development of elementary students. Different techniques affect the performance of elementary students in a unique way. Li et al. (2014) indicate that the overuse of technology reduces the concentration and lowers the thinking capacity of young students. Constant exposure of the students to social sites supports their attempts to make virtual friends through the online platform (Pontes, Szabo & Griffiths, 2015). Such friends usually instill contrary reasoning, making the students' rogue.

Psychological therapists associate most of the unexplainable characters in elementary school children with the abuse of technology. The emergence of online gaming technologies has led to installations of computer play stations that usually consumes much of the elementary students' time, and inhibits their mental and cognitive development (Pontes, Szabo & Griffiths, 2015). In some cases, it leads to severe medical or psychological conditions s necessitates health checks. For those students who receive early exposure to technologies like calculators, the tools hamper their creativity. When they encounter numerical challenges, they quickly engage the machines instead of trying themselves out.

Identifying the Extend of the Effects

Li et al. (2014) proposes the use of surveys as an effective way of gaging the extent to which technology affects the learners both in schools and while at home. The simplest survey approach is asking the learners how they spend their time at home. Counselors give the learner specially designed questionnaires where they write the time they started playing with their parents phones until when they stop. Counselors also carry out a survey on guardians. The guardians who indicate the excessive results with

How Counselors Tackle the Negative Effects of Technology

The rising negative contributions of technology calls for measures of elementary schools counselors to combat them. The most effective approach employed is assemblies with the learners. Since the effects of technology prove addictive, Leung and Lee (2012) qualify assemblies as the most effective way of handling the issue. Counselors engage in conversations with the learners, here from the learners and identity an appropriate way of reducing the effects. The counselors' advice the learners to spend utilize the time they have phones and the internet to access educative materials and resources like academic websites, and record educative audios and videos in the phones. The counselors occasionally invite guardians who also serve as a channel of advising the learners (Leung & Lee, 2012). The guardians also serve as a ways of passing the advice to the guardians.

Conclusion

Technology, internet, and cellphone have both positive and negative effects on the academic performance, social and physical life of elementary student. Although the overuse of technology derails learners' academic, social, and psychological progress, its proper use supplements both students and teachers work. Having a curriculum that moderates and guide the students on how to use technology improves their elementary students' school and social life.

References

Goolsbee, A., & Guryan, J. (2006). The impact of Internet subsidies in public schools. The Review of Economics and Statistics, 88(2), 336-347. https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/rest.88.2.336

Jessica S.Mendoza, B. C. (2018). The effect of cellphones on attention and learning: The influences of time, distraction, and nomophobia. Computers in Human Behavior, 52-60. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563218301912

Leung, L., & Lee, P. S. (2012). Impact of internet literacy, internet addiction symptoms, and internet activities on academic performance. Social Science Computer Review, 30(4), 403-418. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0894439311435217

Li, Y., Zhang, X., Lu, F., Zhang, Q., & Wang, Y. (2014). Internet addiction among elementary and middle school students in China: A nationally representative sample study. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 17(2), 111-116. https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/cyber.2012.0482

Pontes, H. M., Szabo, A., & Griffiths, M. D. (2015). The impact of Internet-based specific activities on the perceptions of Internet addiction, quality of life, and excessive usage: A cross-sectional study. Addictive Behaviors Reports, 1, 19-25. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352853215000061

Zhang, S., & Duke, N. K. (2011). The impact of instruction in the WWWDOT framework on students' disposition and ability to evaluate web sites as sources of information. The Elementary School Journal, 112(1), 132-154. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/660687