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Would you believe it: a teacher and her students say their reading ability soared after banning tech in the classroom.
Maureen Mulvaney, an AP Literature and English teacher at Washburn High School in Minneapolis, started the low tech experiment last year after becoming frustrated with plagiarism, distracted students, and plunging literacy rates.
And so, with the enthusiastic support of parents, she banned phones and laptops, requiring all coursework to be done with pencil and paper. The turnaround was quick and resounding, and despite some initial resistance from students, they quickly fell in love with the old, analog ways of doing things.
In September, before the experiment started, just 46 percent of Mulvaney’s students said they felt confident about their reading ability. By February, that share shot up to 95 percent.
“We’re having a lot of trouble in education and I think what my kids told us was that there is a solution and the solution is to go low-tech. Go back to the old ways of doing things,” Mulvaney told local TV news station KARE 11. “Remove all the distractions and we can get our kids back.”
Mulvaney let her students ease into a tech free environment. First, they started with just ten minutes of silent reading and writing by hand. Still, the first day was “rough,” she wrote in an essay in The Minnesota Star Tribune. Most students quit after just half a page of longhand composition.
“I told the kids this is like lifting weights,” she told KARE 11. “You don’t go in and you don’t start with 80 pounds.”
By February, most students could write at least two pages, and some were cranking out five or six pages. A striking 79 percent of the students said it was easier to write and organize their thoughts on paper than on a screen.
“It was honestly really fun,” one student, Rue Falbo, told KARE 11. “I enjoyed not being on tech and I think that everyone connected a little bit more.”
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