A recently released survey has claimed the increased use of phones and the internet is undermining students’ ability to study and is the cause of poor grammar amongst many of today’s school children.
The Cranfield School of Management has produced the report which blames children’s use of mobile phones and the internet for falling standards in pupils study, research and written communication skills.
The study found that 90 per cent of students did most research on the internet, which is double the percentage who did their research with books. It also found that 6 out of 10 pupils have admitted to copying work from the internet without spending time reading or understanding it, with a staggering 25% thinking it is an acceptable practice. English skills have also been seen to suffer with 3 in 10 admit using text shortcuts in essay and exams.
Andrew Kakabadse, professor of international management development at Cranfield, said: “Our research shows that technology obsession hinders spelling skills, implicitly encourages plagiarism, and disrupts classroom learning.”
The Report has also found that mobile phones particularly had a negative effect upon school discipline seeing pupils often ignoring rules on mobile phones at School. One third of pupils admitted to using their mobiles in class, Andrew Kakabadse also said “Despite school policies restricting mobile phone usage, students use the phone frequently, with the majority making calls from the toilets. The mobile phone continues to be a prime channel of social communication during the school day.”
The report also shows additional patterns of behaviour that it find of concern; many pupils spend one or two hours per a day on social networking sites. Many pupils had access to a computer by 8, had used the internet by 10 (with some doing so as young as 5), and used social networking sites between 11 and 13. One in ten (9%) students have said they spend more than six hours a day online.
Due to the tone of the paper one wonders, if the writers expect education, learning and society at large to remain static? As technology changes education will change and adapt in response, as it does too many other social stimuli. Some of these changes will be positive others will be negative. The circulated highlights of this report seem only to focus on the negative aspects of this technological induced change, and is prone to ignore the vast potential for learning and communication technology offers today’s students
DECT Phones, mobiles. Cordless phones and other devices have been blamed for a fall instandards, but what we are seeing is sea change in the way people search for, deal with and store information.