Challenges of Technology in the Classroom

Challenges of Technology in the Classroom

Danny Mora Howard 
Elective Story 2
4/20/2015

Teaching U.S. Government at the college level is a challenge itself, but according to Scott Crosby, professor of U.S. Government at Valencia College, technology has become a distracting issue for students attending college. 

"Everyone's trying to grapple with it in their best way" said Professor Crosby concerning how college teachers have to handle phone-addicted students. 

"I have actually tried both extremes: Doing nothing about it, just kind of having an open policy of you know, if your in class using your phone um that's your business, I'm going to assume your taking notes or something on it. But I've also gone the opposite direction where I've said I don't want any electronic devices out for any reason unless I say." 

He continues: "I can tell you both extremes don't work very well, so there's got to be a happy medium, but I don't think anyone here, and I mean anyone that I've ever met here, has actually figured out the magic bullet to that."

Clearly handling the increased use of technology by students is a campus-wide issue for any professor because students constantly have the urge to check their phones for any update from social media or from the person they may have been texting prior to class. 

"It's what I call the power of distraction, and of course you know, there's going to be a lot of people 
who are in education who are going to say the reason why they're distracted is because they're not finding the class challenging or interesting or motivating them. And my answer to that is that is a big oversimplification of the issue."

Professor Crosby says it comes down to the student and how hard they're willing to work in a challenging course. "It takes two to tango in teaching. Your kind of like a stand up comedian or an 
actor in the sense that your only as good as your audience. If you go into to do a play or you go in to do a stand up comedy routine and the audience is distracted or disinterested in 
anything you had to say, then you're going to react the same way where you're going to lose interest and it starts to get into a tension."

Technology is the popular distraction that can occupy a student's attention during class, but Professor Crosby has other ways of keeping his audience focused.

"You know my class, I don't just lecture all day. I give you things to do, I have you work on problems, I try to put something in there where your actually working on something than just sitting there listening to me the whole time."

"But even then, the technology can be very distracting."