Educators Change Minds About Screen Time For Students.

The debate is far from over, but more and more education professionals and college professors are changing their minds about the distractions of mobile devices in the classrooms. In other words, many educators are beginning to think that smartphones, tablets, and laptops may not be the irritating bugaboo that they once thought they were. That’s because it’s becoming clearer that when used strategically and under some kind of structured control, these devices help students with autism, dyslexia, and those whose first language is not English, to engage at a higher level and retain more information for longer periods of time. Test score results in classrooms where disciplined screen time is a regular feature show a steady climb above classrooms where there is little or no permissible screen time. This, in turn, is encouraging educators to explore further uses of online media to keep students on the fast track as they get ready to face the real world of jobs, relationships, and emotional and physical fitness.  

Professional educators, for the most part, now realize that while students rarely, if ever, would look something up in the dictionary or encyclopedia back in the analog era, today they are quick to go online to look up words, formulas, and even brief histories.