Education and technology are in a relationship of mutual interests each other. As our society went through a great development of technology, education could be improved a lot and became more diverse with various technological tools such as tablets and laptops. With the tools, many creative systems were invented and they helped educators and students to have good opportunities to have a better quality of education. In reverse, technology received help from education. As more creative and clever technological tools were developed, people also became creative and clever. Those people who were educated well, being assisted from the great technology again creates other skills and technology. Technology made the society more diverse and different and the development of technology surely will keep improving as time goes. That means society will be a lot more different. Many people have perceptions and stereotypes that technology will always bring positive effects and foster our society. It is true that technology is good for our better society, but it is not necessary. In old days, people have lived good quality of lives without a great improvement of technology as we have nowadays. Improvement of educational technology will bring many advantages to our education and society. However, it will bring lots of drawbacks more than advantages such as a health problem, communication problem and social inequity. When it comes to assessing the relative benefits of computers in their children's lives, parents don't have it easy. The signals are decidedly mixed. As computer manufacturers and software companies promote computers as indispensable educational tools, educators agree, but certain scholars and technology skeptics denounce the reliance on the machine. Sorting through the arguments is no small task. (Hafner, 1)  In discussions of educational technology, one controversial issue has been whether the development of technology will affect society in a positive way or in a negative way. On one hand, people who work as a scientist or have technology related job argue the development of technology will bring positive effects and improve education more. On the other hand, less people contend educational technology will affect education in a negative way and cause lots of problems. Others even maintain educational technology will cause many problems on society. My own view is there are many disadvantages of educational technology on not only education but also on our whole society. 

Development of technology maximizes a problem of social inequity because the opportunities to enjoy it will be varied by people. Access to higher quality education definitely does not exist for everyone. Some people get a chance to be educated well with diverse technological sources but some people get less chance or cannot get a chance at all. Inequality of access to educational institutions includes early education and higher education. In an elementary school, students spend most of their time doing various educational activities in class. This happens since those activities are very good to make elementary students understand what they learn. For various activities, teachers should be very creative to think of diverse activities. For them, technology must be a big help. For middle and high school students, development of technology when studying could help them finding sources online more conveniently at school and could help them. Students would use twitters for their projects or they would listen to podcasts with their laptops and receive feedback via their applications. As time goes, more schools start to make students rely on technological tools, not physical books. However, as technology is used frequently like this, there must be students who are suffered. Many students who do not have abilities to afford lots of tools such as ipads or laptops are suffered. The tragedy of social inequity first starts from when children are only elementary students. Some schools require the tools when they take classes and further when they take tests or exams. It is true that those schools allow students to borrow the equipments. However, teenagers, who are extensively sensitive, often can become diffident and lose their nerves. They would feel it is unfair.  This feeling of inequality comes from one student in a micro level but it comes from difference in school, country, and race. People each have different circumstances and situation so they have different possible access to educational opportunities. A challenge is that students —those that serve a predominantly low-income, minority population—lack access to high-quality curricular opportunities. Classic studies in the sociology of education have indicated significant curricular differences by social class and race, both between schools and within schools (Anyon 1981; Rist 1970) (Tawfix, 601) Although we have seen significant improvements in rates of high school graduation for low-income and Black and Hispanic students over the past decade, these students still trail behind their socioeconomically advantaged, white peers (Grusky, Varner, Mattingly, Poulin, and Chou 2014)1 Some people might say that it is not a big problem for some people to have less opportunities to be educated depending on their abilities and circumstances since most of nations are capitalism. However, our society definitely should not discriminate people by education because everyone has a right to be educated equally. 

In addition to the first disadvantage, development of educational technology brings social interaction problems. When students use technology in a classroom, they usually talk less. You must have felt that there is a big difference between the students who write notes on their notebook and those who take notes on their laptops. It is not generalized but most of students who bring their laptops in their classrooms often do not talk a lot and are busy with doing something on their laptops. We still do not know whether they are really writing notes or finding resources on their technology tools or doing something irrelevant to their subjects. In today’s society, there are lots of social network services such as Facebook and Instagram and students know a bunch of different interesting websites as network developed. Therefore, they spend lots of time doing Facebook and surfing the Internet when they are at home. Instead of talking with parents and siblings, they shut the doors and go into the Internet right after they come back to home. However, as educational technology develops, students use the Internet not only at home but also in class. The biggest function of schools is to help students to learn. However, besides that, schools also should be responsible for students’ overall growth and development including their physical, mental, and social growth. For that, students need to be taught about the ways to communicate with each other. For their growth to be good adults in the future, they should understand humanity and school activities and lots of discussions make students to understand each other through talking one another. Instead of discussions and talking in a classroom, only the sound of keyboard comes out of many classrooms nowadays. Technology definitely creates a gap between parents and children. (Bunn, 1:50) 

This problem gets bigger when everything about school is done via technology and it is already happened though. Students use their technology tools not only at school but also at home to do assignments, check their schedules and do e learning. Some people might say that students rather spend their time doing schoolwork than talking with family even if they do not study with computers. However, when everything is done by computers, it is usually very hard for students to concentrate just on their work. There are many obstacles on the Internet that keep students from focusing on their studying. In practice, students rather use their time doing other things with technology than studying. According to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey, The average kid spends over 7 and half hours a day using technology gadgets equaling 2 and half hours of music, almost 5 hours of tv and movies, three hours of internet and video games, and only 38 minutes of old fashioned reading.3

When we learn something, communication is very important for effective learning because students’ learning is strongly affected by social cues such as tone or attitude of a teacher. There was one study conducted by David and his coworkers to investigate the importance of social cues playing in learning from technology. The study was conducted with 4 to 7 years old children from schools in Boston. The children listened to a story read by a robot that looked like a cute plush creature with an animated face that allowed for emotional expressions and eye and mouth movements. For half the children, the robot made use of these capabilities, responding to events in the story and to the children’s answers to its questions in a manner that expressed typical social and emotional cues. For the other children, the robot was “flat”. It told the same story, but did not emit or respond with the typically expected cues. As the children listened to the story, they measured children’s engagement and attention using automated software to track facial, head and eye movement. To gauge their understanding and use of the new vocabulary words embedded in the story, they had the children retell the story to a puppet both immediately afterward and again after four-to –six week delay. Among those children who recalled and correctly used at least one of the target vocabulary words during the immediate retelling of the story, the total number used was greater for those who listened to the expressive robot that for those who listened to the flat one. Moreover, children who interacted with the expressive robot showed greater levels of concentration and engagement during the listening task. (Desteno, 8th paragraph)  As the study shows, compared to the children who were taught by a flat robot that did not have any social cues, children who were with more lively and social robot showed a greater level of memory, concentration and engagement. Some people might say that as the technology develops, there are lots of good programs on the Internet that can have a good quality of interaction with students. Therefore, they would say students could be fully assisted by many great programs that have a sociable and interactive responder online. However, when students take classes online, even though a real figure of a teacher comes on the screen, they would be easily bored. They know that teachers are not able to get to know what they are doing in front of the screen and they know teachers cannot scold them for sleeping or not concentrating on their work. Since there is no interaction between teachers and students while having classes, students often slack. Also, even though the interaction between teachers and students could be solved clearly, there is no communication between classmates. One of big advantages of studying in a classroom is that students have lots of opportunities to communicate with their friends. By talking each other, they develop a bond together and get to know how to communicate with others. When talking each other, they also become to know about social cues. They are able to figure out what others behave and how they express in each certain specific situation. That is really important ability in life because when students become adults, they should have a good ability of socialize with others when working at a job. 

Health problem is one of disadvantages from the development of educational technology. Some opponents could say that there is no relationship between educational technology and health problems. However, once my paper said, as educational technology developed, students became to be used to be in a technology world. Today, we can see many parents who are eager to educate their young children even though they are young. For them, lots of educational television programs and applications are very good ones to use. According to a research study by Common Sense Media published in October 2011, “computer use is pervasive among very young children, with half (53%) of all 2 to 4 year olds having ever used a computer, and nine out of 10 (90%) 5 to 8 year olds having done so.” Not just from elementary to high school students, even very young children from 2 years old are adapted to use technology. When people are exposed to electromagnetic waves since they are young, it is really dangerous for their brains. Being exposed to the waves for a long lifetime would cause disorder of the circulation of blood, scoliosis and epilepsy. One of the biggest health problems that can be caused is obesity. According to the study from Stanford University, students consume 20% of their daily calorie intake while watching television, which usually includes unhealthy snacks due to the convenience and availability of food. (Newnam, 3rd paragraph)3 Everyone has a right to live their lives in a healthy state to lead a good quality of lives. Therefore, any barriers that disturb unhealthy life should be removed from other organizations, governments, etc. Technology is also one of those barriers. Government has a responsibility to remove the danger of children being exposed to technology at school as much as they can. 

The number of devices and uses for technology in the classroom has been steadily increasing over the years. According to a recent survey of 2,500 educators, 60% of teachers expect to use more technology in the classroom than in the past this current school year. Three out of four say they use some sort of technology each day in class, with as many as 80% reporting that technology is a positive in the classroom. (Jones, 1st paragraph) From chromebooks to smartboards, diverse tools are used to help students learning. Regardless of many benefits students and teachers can gain with the development of educational technology, there are some heavy disadvantages of it, which is also the reasons why the development should be paused and slow down. The first reason is educational technology creates a great gap between each person. It makes a social inequality since the opportunity to be taught by good educational tools doesn’t go to every student. By each person’s situation, some people cannot get the opportunities. When those people who got the chances and those who couldn’t get the chances of educational technology become adults, it makes a bigger gap and social inequity. In addition, educational technology promotes a communication problem. Students became to be exposed to network and technology too much at school and at home and that led them not to talk with their friends and family. As this will keep going, a serious problem of communication will be caused. Lastly, lots of health problems will be caused because of educational technology. Students started to be disclosed by electromagnetic waves from technology and it will cause many different diseases from deteriorating their eyesight to epilepsy. Educational technology has so many side effects to human. Before the age of human being controlled by educational technology, the development of it should be stopped. 
