For today's students, high tech is second nature - Hi-Desert Star

MORONGO BASIN â€" The No. 2 pencil still exists, but it’s quickly being overshadowed by the touch screen.

Across the Morongo Basin, students have become accustomed to using smart technology: Smart Boards in classrooms and e-readers, iPods and smartphones at home.

Smart Boards allow students to view documents and take part in activities on a large screen, similar to a TV monitor that can be written on with a stylus. Smart Boards are the white board for the digital age.

Smart Boards are often accompanied by overhead projectors called ELMOs, and responders, which students use to key in test answers.

“Instead of an overhead projector where you would have to make copies of transparencies, you can just put any image or document under the ELMO and project that,” Jennifer Smith, a third grade teacher at Friendly Hills Elementary School, explained. “Students can actually interact with their lessons. When I’m teaching cursive, I will write the cursive letter on the Smart Board and then a student will come up and write that exact same cursive letter next to mine. It’s interactive, it’s hands-on and it’s a touch screen. Because they can physically touch and draw a letter with their finger, they think it’s so much cooler than sitting at their desks with a piece of paper.”

At home, Internet-capable smartphones and iPods aren’t just for music, chatting and social networking. Some students use dictionary applications and mobile Internet on smart devices to complete homework assignments and do research.

“I use my iPod and sometimes I use my sister’s Nook,” eighth grader EJ Hale said. The La Contenta Middle School student said small devices with Internet capability are handy tools, come homework time.

“You can go on the Internet with an iPod touch,” he said. “Everything you can do on the computer, you can do on the iPod.”

If they’re not using a device with a screen at home, students are using computers and Smart Board screens for lessons in the classroom.

Katherine Palanuik, a kindergarten teacher at Joshua Tree Elementary School, said her students learn to read on the computer.

“I have 11 computers in my kindergarten classroom. Most of my students come in with computer skills,” Palanuik noted. “Within a few weeks, they will be fully able to maneuver around Starfall, which is a phonics program.”

The new gadgets and teaching methods indicate children are much more reliant on technology today than they were 10 years ago. Palanuik said the digital shift in learning makes sense, because that’s what children are used to.

“You have to teach them in a way that they’re familiar with. They’re familiar with video games and TV and their parents’ iPhones,” she said.

According to data from the Pew Research Center, 95 percent of all teens, ages 12-17, are now online and 80 percent of that group uses social media sites. The same research shows that as of July 2011, 77 percent of teens had a cell phone, with 23 percent of them having a smartphone.

Young people are also finding ways to do more with their devices. When Apple manufactured the iPod Touch, it was meant to be an Internet-capable iPod. Some users, like Hale, have found ways to make their gadgets multi-functional, by using applications to make calls on an iPod Touch, via the Internet.

Textbooks in classrooms haven’t gone away yet, but tablets and e-readers are easy replacements.

Hale’s mother said when her son had to spend a few weeks out of school last year due to an injury, he was able to complete all of his assignments without his text books, thanks to downloadable books on the family’s Nook device.

When asked whether he prefers to complete assignments digitally or with a pencil and paper, Hale’s answer was quick and put a finger on why technology has become a triumph in academia.

“I would rather do it through a computer,” Hale said. “It’s quicker.”