TECHONOLOGY: A Blessing or a Curse?

Written by Andrew Arbeeny and Libby Coleman

Technology has found its place alongside food, shelter, clothing, and other survival needs. People admit they cannot function without their daily dose of YouTube, or constant text-messages on the popular BlackBerry (often called the “CrackBerry”). Ipods, computers, and most recently touch-screen phones are increasingly perceived as necessities by teenagers. This wave of change has not gone unnoticed by SHS administrators; new technologies have been implemented in the hopes of enhancing the classroom experience and student learning.

In some SHS classrooms, blackboards have been replaced by SMART Boards and overhead projectors by ELMOs. Surveillance cameras have become the modern hall monitors, television screens, home to the absent teacher board, keep students riveted in hope and expectation every morning, and turnitin.com has eased the burden of checking student writing for plagiarism.

While some technologies make the lives of students and teachers at SHS better and easier, they are not perfect and carry numerous drawbacks. From the invasive eye of the camera to the hefty price of SMART Boards, the balance between the costs and benefits of technology is likely to be an important issue as school expenditures receive more attention.

The current economic crisis provides plenty of evidence that SHS is not impervious to the economic downturn. On February 27, the Scarsdale Inquirer reported a potential $500,000 cut in the school budget, including “$111,000 worth of nonstaffing and nonprogramming cuts.”

Are the educational benefits of these technologies worth the cost in financially perilous times? A comparison of recent innovations suggests the answer is far from clear.

Turnitin.com

Like any high school, the internet plays an integral role in the lives of a high school student. When faced with a tedious English assignment, and access to one of the largest databases in the world, many students struggle with their conscience.

Turnitin.com, a relatively new technology at SHS, can help students avoid the dark side. Turnitin is a tool used to identify plagiarism in essays by collecting student work and comparing it to a large, nationwide database, and ultimately determining a “match percentage” which many English and social studies use to judge the originality of an essay. While SHS has a relatively cheap annual subscription to the site, many students, and even teachers, question the effectiveness of the site.

It gets students to think about academic integrity.

While turnitin is meant to eliminate the temptation of plagiarism, it is unrealistic to believe it will solve all issues. With a method of combating plagiarism, students inevitably look for methods to get around the system. Students still find it easy to avoid generating a high match percentage. “I think [turnitin is] useful in that it stop kids from copy and pasting from Sparknotes, but kids are going to get around that anyway because they’ll read Sparknotes and… just reword it,” said senior Aarón Kransdorf .

While a student can get away with rephrasing a certain idea, there have been occasions where a student’s original work comes up with a high match percentage. “I just got an essay in on the Ramayana. When someone has ten percent of someone else’s paper in his paper and we look at the actual things that are highlighted, we see five or eight percent are things like ‘Rama said.’ Those are things that are common and therefore not plagiarized at all,” said English teacher Stephen Mounkhall.

Junior Steven Getselevich suffered a similar situation while writing a history research paper. “My teacher confronted me and told me 35% of my essay was unoriginal work. I cited my sources like I’m supposed to do in a research paper,” said Getselevich. “I had to rewrite a large portion of the essay after I thought I was done. It was awful.”

While these instances are unfortunate, Principal John Klemme believes turnitin is a part of the learning process “that has allowed kids to get feedback about how their documentation of sources is proceeding, and if they are citing correctly,” said Klemme. “It encourages kids to look closer at the sources and attributions.”

While turnitin serves primarily as a means to deter people from plagiarism, some students feel submitting to the site is a symbol of distrust in the student-teacher relationship. In turning in a research paper for history class, sophomore Karan Aditya observed a slight disturbance in the class’ reaction. “While most students were cooperative, some students thought it was unfair and that the teacher should trust them,” said Aditya. Aditya ultimately found the site to be helpful. “It encourages people to be honest,” he said. “The use was positive because our teacher was able to ensure that there was no cheating in our class, and in turn, we were able to show we are capable of doing our own work.”

Other students take a different view. “I think it just causes a lot of unnecessary stress. In addition to freaking out about writing a paper, you have to be worried about turning it in online at a specific time,” said junior Julianna Haubner.

Teachers always find some students who have trouble submitting their papers. “It’s hard enough as it is to get them to turn a hard copy in to me and then they have to hand in a digital copy to turnitin.com,” said Mounkhall. “You need two copies to be handed in, which adds an extra layer of complexity.”

Unfortunately, the use of the internet has led to increased frequency of plagiarism. This change, in turn, has led to the use of turnitin in the English department. “The good thing about turnitin.com is that it gets students to think about academic integrity and they come to me to find out more about plagiarism and how to avoid it,” said Mounkhall.

Security Cameras

The installation of 37 security cameras around the school shows that technological changes have not been limited to SHS classrooms.

Following multiple bomb threats and an act of arson in the North Wing, school security became one of the administration’s main priorities. While the school has not yet resorted to situating security guards and metal detectors in the entrances, the effects of the cameras have been clear. “We haven’t had a repetition of that kind of incident. The cameras are a very powerful deterrent,” said Klemme.

At first, the administration was reluctant to install the cameras. “I thought [the cameras] were kind of Orwellian in the sense that it was an invasion of a student’s private progress throughout the building,” said Klemme. “I didn’t like that idea, but the security issues that arose really resuscitated it.”

“I should be able to leave the locker-room feeling my [belongings] are safe in my bag.”

Though there have been clear benefits of the cameras, many students still identify with Klemme’s original concerns. Though the cameras have been installed for the last three years, many students still claim to feel uncomfortable under the eye of the camera. “Even though I’ve got nothing to hide, I still feel like I’m doing something wrong. For every little misstep, I’ll have to live knowing it’s in the schools files of recorded history,” said Getselevich.

Sophomore Andres Zambrano shared a similar sentiment. “I don’t like the thought of people watching me. It’s really very creepy,” he said.

While the large-scale problems were the tipping point for the cameras’ installation, frequent complaints of thefts and smaller infractions contributed to the decision to install the cameras. Since their placement, several perpetrators have been caught and brought to justice with the help of the cameras. However, while crimes in certain sections of the building have decreased, it is unknown whether the amount of theft has decreased overall. Many crimes have shifted to areas unseen by the cameras.

“The reality is that most of the thefts that occur in this building occur in the locker room. For obvious reasons, we can’t have cameras in there. Thieves are aware of that,” said Assistant Principal Fred Goldberg.

Senior Michael Zullo feels that the theft is still too common. In the last three years, Zullo has repeatedly fallen victim to theft. “Both my $200 calculator and my cell phone have been stolen within the last 2 months, and I found gym shorts missing last year,” he said. “I should be able to leave the locker-room feeling my [belongings] are safe in my bag.”

Though theft remains, and will continue to remain a part of the high school, Zullo does feel the thefts were, in part, due to his own clumsiness. “The gym teachers do tell us to put locks on our lockers, which is my fault for not listening,” said Zullo.

SMART Boards

For over 200 years, blackboards have been traditional fixtures in the American classroom, but clapping chalk out of erasers after school is now likely a thing of the past. In 28 SHS classrooms, blackboards have been replaced by SMART Boards, which cost over $3,000 apiece.

While the SMART Board retains the basic functions of a chalkboard, it adds multiple important features. “Chalkboards don’t save. Once you erase, it’s gone,” said head computer director, Barbara Bierbauer. “The SMART Board allows you to preplan lessons very well.”

Since the implementation of his SMART Board five years ago, technology guru and math teacher Doug Vermes uses his board daily. “It has completely changed the way I teach,” said Vermes.

Vermes has expanded his horizons beyond the SMART Board and uses an upgraded form of an e-board called Moodle. He submits his daily lessons to the website, where class members can review the material.

This ability to review lessons is meant to allow students to focus less on copying notes. “For students who are visual learners, this is a very good way to get the lessons across,” said Bierbauer. “[Students can] attend and understand more to what’s going on since they can be played back.”

Junior Charlie Schwartz, a member of Vermes’ computer science class, uses his website almost daily. “It’s really helpful since I don’t have to be afraid of forgetting to copy something down in class. It also really helps us review for tests,” said Schwartz.

While Vermes has been hailed as an exceptional user of his SMART Board, other teachers find this new technology difficult to use. Instead of acting as a catalyst for learning, the SMART Boards seem to slow down the dissemination of information for some teachers.

“Students seem to know how to use the SMART Boards better than the teachers do. In my class, when the SMART Board stops working, the entire class stops, and the teachers have to explain what to do. Everything takes a lot longer, and because it’s new technology, it messes up sometimes,” said sophomore Caroline Salis.

Some students feel teachers sometimes rely too heavily on the SMART Board. “One of my teachers only uses the SMART Board in the classroom. I think he overuses it. Sometimes, some of the things we do on the board can be done better if we practice problems for ourselves,” said freshman Jim Wheeler.

While in some cases, the overuse of the SMART Board slows down class processes, some students find an even greater flaw in leaving them idle. “One of the teachers hasn’t used the SMART Board in over a month and a half now. It’s a shame to see it just sitting in our room, unused,” said Zambrano.

Some veteran teachers are unsure of how they would incorporate the new technology into their plans.

“How I would use it, for instance in a 10H class, I don’t really know,” said French teacher Mary Liz Mace, who does not have a SMART Board in her classroom.

The SMART Board also lacks some of the benefits of a traditional chalkboard. “With a chalkboard, I can have five different students putting up problems at the same time, but I can’t do that with a SMART Board,” said Vermes. Another negative is their hard-to-use pens. “It’s so hard to write on the SMARTBoard, and even erasing is tough,” said Salis.

New Demands, Uncertain Future

At SHS, some technologies are necessities and are not being addressed. “We really need to buy functioning copy machines. They never work,” said Kransdorf. Another item that students think the money could have been spent on are “significant things like new books,” said Salis.

Today, many Scarsdale families are cutting back on luxuries and buying only necessities; the Scarsdale School system owes the community a similar response to hard times. Although most teachers are loath to question the wisdom of generous expenditures, some are willing to admit that the new technologies are not necessities.“I don’t think the technology is something I actually have to have or needed,“ said math teacher Bruce Henry. In times of unlimited resources, the new technologies would probably be a worthwhile experiment, but in these current tough times, the new technologies must be painstakingly scrutinized to make sure that they are enhancing classroom learning.