David S's Senior Project Blog

Project Title: Effect of tablets in middle schools science classes BASIS Advisor: Ms. Ainslie Internship Location: BASIS Peoria Onsite Mentor: Leslee Briggs

Project Abstract

Technology, ranging from a tablet to a smartphone, has evolved over the past decades and even in recent years. Consequently, the classroom feels the indirect and direct impacts of students over-utilizing their technology. The effects of technology overuse must be studied to create ways for students to learn efficiently. Rather than using technology in ways that harm students, for example, using AI to complete assignments and essays, further research on technology can be done to shed light on ways through which it can be implemented in classrooms. One of the many ways of technology implementation for teachers in their classrooms is by handing out materials, lectures, and interactive activities to their students to keep them attentive. However, issues arise on both the teacher’s and student’s ends. Teachers often receive insufficient training to properly integrate technology into their curriculum, while students frequently misuse technology, being seen as a prevalent issue in classrooms across America. As a result, my experiment focuses on studying the effects of technology on middle school science students. The reason I picked middle school science students relies on the fact that elementary school students rarely use tablets, and middle school is a crucial time for students to develop their critical thinking skills and application. Of course, such topics have been studied heavily, so I decided to shift my focus to science classes as literature glosses over this niche subtopic. Data gathered from my research will highlight what distractors play a big role in classrooms and how technology ties in with them to reduce student attention in class.