Yes, an anecdote is not data, but this story about how learning in a high school improved after it returned to pencil and paper sounds like it might mean something.
Would you believe it: a teacher and her students say their reading ability soared after banning tech in the classroom.
Maureen Mulvaney, an AP Literature and English teacher at Washburn High School in Minneapolis, started the low tech experiment last year after becoming frustrated with plagiarism, distracted students, and plunging literacy rates.
And so, with the enthusiastic support of parents, she banned phones and laptops, requiring all coursework to be done with pencil and paper. The turnaround was quick and resounding, and despite some initial resistance from students, they quickly fell in love with the old, analog ways of doing things.
In September, before the experiment started, just 46 percent of Mulvaney’s students said they felt confident about their reading ability. By February, that share shot up to 95 percent.
“We’re having a lot of trouble in education and I think what my kids told us was that there is a solution and the solution is to go low-tech. Go back to the old ways of doing things,” Mulvaney told local TV news station KARE 11. “Remove all the distractions and we can get our kids back.”
To be fair, if I had to write everything long hand, it would probably kill me. (I do use pen and paper for note taking though)
I have been using a keyboard, starting with a powder blue Smith Corona typewriter, when I was 15, but it does seem to me that many of the computer aids in current education seem to be a cure worse than the disease.
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