Is Technology Hurting or Helping our Students?

The internet has become an integrated part of most of our lives. Many students use the web to help them succeed in today’s world. With this access to the internet students today can get more done than ever before. What would take a student weeks to do a project can take a day. The internet gets a bad reputation in the world of college students for being a distraction among them but it’s not always the case. I believe it has more positives then negatives in the world of education especially college students. Talking about just phones for example the average student will use the internet for 34.4 minutes a day. It may not always be a constructive 34 minutes but at times it is and I plan to show that this new age of technology is a good age. Not only do they use the internet to be productive but also to keep in touch with family and friends and this connection helps student get through college. With all this in mind I went around my campus to see how students used this technology and if they found it more helpful than it’s thought to be.

Communication

Most students are far from home and loved ones. They will most likely make friends on campus but they still want to talk to people who are in their home town, the people that they have known for years. According to the Huffington Post about 99.8 percent of college students have a cellphone at their disposal to use. That cell phone is their connection to the outside world in a sense. Many Professors frown upon such devices in the classroom which makes sense to a degree. These student were born into this new era of communication, instant messaging has always been there way to communicate when far from someone. How does this relate to college kids doing well in school? I asked a few student on campus and they all said something similar, that their cellphone was their “life line”. They all said it was how they kept in contact with everyone which makes sense but when I asked what would happen if you were not able to message and communicate with others and they all respond with another similar answer to one another. They would be worried, stressed they don’t know what’s going one and lonely. Students already go through a lot and if they did not have this communication it could be a lot worse. Nick Josephs, a freshman at SVC, video calls his family once a week. He says, “It makes me feel at home for a moment, I get to know what’s going on at home” This simple methods of talking to people help students stay focused. Getting a Facebook message could help a student get their work done because they know they can talk to anyone, anywhere in a moment and this could make them feel a lot less stressed.

Helpful Sites

When I was in high school and you missed a math or physics class you knew you might be in trouble. Missing one section could ruin the whole chapter and make it very difficult to get caught up and result in failing a test but you could always see your teacher for help after school. Students in college who miss or struggle in the class room can’t always get the help they need like in high school and so they look for help elsewhere and this is where the internet becomes helpful. Sites like Kahn Academy end up helping and saving these students from bad grades. Kahn Academy came around in 2006 and has been helping student ever since it became public. As of 2012 Kahn Academy has over 10 million students who view their instructional videos and take their online quizzes. Similar sites and YouTube channels followed their setup since then. Crash Course for example is a YouTube channel that has short, educational videos that are easy for students to mentally digest. Since it came out in 2006 they have accumulated over 3.6 million subscribers and 297 million views as of June 2015. Both these channels help student with everything from history to mathematics. They have short instructional videos that students can view and get the gist of and so they don’t fall behind in class. Kahn Academy mostly focus on math while Crash Course is history but they both overlap with biology, astrology, and English lessons. These sites are often used my students in all grades but when you can’t always see your professor in college sites like this end up helping them and those number don’t lie.

The Students

In the end all of the students found technology to be more helpful to the students. Even though all of them said they used sites like Facebook and Snap chat they also used the internet to help them when they are stuck. If they could not answer a question they googled it got what they need. All of them have also used the schools ProQuest data base to help them with research papers and topics. Without the web they would have never been able to get all the scholarly articles they have. They would have been limited to what their texts books had. Out of the ten student I interviewed all of them have heard of Kahn Academy but one 2 of them have used it. Some of them heard about it in high school while other heard about it in college. The thing is they all know it exist if they need help with something. Only one of the students have heard of Crash Course in high school and says their teacher used it as an aid in the classroom. They student said it was helpful to an extent but the teacher was able to fill in the blanks for her. 

Links to Sources:

https://www.baylor.edu/mediacommunications/news.php?action=story&story=145864

http://vidstatsx.com/CrashCourse/youtube-channel

http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelnoer/2012/11/02/one-man-one-computer-10-million-students-how-khan-academy-is-reinventing-education/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/28/998-of-college-students-h_n_628161.html

These photos were taken in the woods around Southern Vermont College at the base of Mt. Anthony. There's a lot to find in the woods around the school but its also really dark with all the trees and overcast. The first photo is a bird house I found a few hundred feet away from the school and it was off the trail. It appears to have had a bee hive on it at one point but no longer. The second photo is of a foam block that is floating in a little pool of water. The pool is connected to an irrigation system of some sort and the block is tired to a hose. In the water there were a bunch of tadpoles and lizards swimming around. If you go near the water they all swim out from the algae which is cool. It also seemed to be really deep for such a small pool of water. There were strands of algae on the bottom which reached the top of the water and looked to be over 3 feet in length. I am curious how deep the pool actually is and whats at the bottom. Lastly is a picture of the old walk way behind the mansion. The bricks start in the middle of the walk way and then start to go down hill which suggest that it has been eroding for quite some time. As you go farther down the walkway bricks start to disappear and then it just becomes all dirt. Can't wait for it all to be snow.

Tractor on Campus

On the first day of school I saw this old tractor and immediately my eyes were drawn to it. It was just sitting there in the field with all these bails of grass around it and you could just tell it has been sitting there awhile. I walk past it everyday to class and it just reminds me of a simpler time for some reason. I do not know why I think of that when I see it but I do and the day they remove it from the field I will be a little upset. Its just such a standard thing to see one single, old tractor out in a field in the middle of nowhere. You like to think it was used not too long ago but you know it was just abandoned there till next season or until they get a truck to remove it from the land. Maybe it broke down, maybe it still works, I have no idea but if you have ever been to the country side you know what I am talking about.

Little Town called Winsted

This is part of main street in a little town called Winsted located in the Northwest corner of Connecticut. Many people drive through the town but know nothing about it or the few times the town is in the news its because they ran out of money. Just like any town Winsted has its problems, more than others unfortunately. It maybe a broken little town that trucks drive through to get to places like Torrington or Hartford which is the capital of CT. If one takes the time to explore the town and around it there are many interesting things to see but just like some of my other photos you have to go off the trail. More will be posted with the stories on the side but for now this is it. 
A photo of main street mid day during a random and unseen storm which lasted a few minutes but presented this beautiful shot of the town. I was soaked but it was worth it, at least I think so. 

Block Island Ferries

The Block Island ferry is one of the few ways to get to the island but is by far the most popular. The regular or car and passenger ferry shown in the first three photos is the most common way to travel across. The very last photo is the high speed ferry from New London, CT. Both ferry's take about an hour to travel from the mainland to the island. Both have an open top which is were I prefer to sit even during a heavy rain or storm, just be prepared to get thrown around and soaked. The second to last photo is one of the many fishing vessels that roam the Atlantic ocean. This one was sitting in port at Point Judith and had no crew on it at the time the photo was taken. This fishing vessel is smaller than both the ferries but its brothers are much larger.

Block Island Life

These photos were taken at Block Island which is located just off the coast of Point Judith, Rhode Island. Its a beautiful little island with a lot to see for such a small place. Just recently in the past few year more people have been visiting but compared to most other vacation spots its still a small and unknown place. The key to enjoying the island is willing to go out on adventure. Almost all photos posted about the island were not easy to get to, some easier than others. When you do go off the beaten trail and to a place where many do not venture you can find some amazing things that many miss.

Southern Vermont College

These two photos were taken on Southern Vermont College campus. The lower field just below the mansion where classes take place is full of the large bails of grass. Above the mansion is another field but this time nothing is mowed except one little trail to the woods. Along the trail is nothing but naturally occurring flowers and milk weeds.