Arizona students are losing foundational literacy skills as technology takes over

Class assignments used to mean pulling out a pen and paper, but now, kids are using laptops to complete schoolwork, which in turn is taking away core literacy skills from the next generation.

Minh-Triet Dao is an English language teacher at Geneva Epps Mosley Middle School in Tempe. He said his students use Chromebooks for most of their classroom work because the curriculum requires it, but that comes with challenges.

“There is an advantage when they’re typing it out. They have built-in spell check, they have built in Grammarly… [but they’re] forgetting how to spell certain words when we’ve talked about it multiple times,” he said.

Terri Clark, Arizona Literacy Director with Read on Arizona, said science backs up Dao’s observations.

“There’s a lot of research that suggests that learning cursive and using handwriting strengthens the connections your brain is making related to language, to memory, and it really helps develop fine motor skills. All of those are important to building basically foundational literacy skills,” she said.

Skills developed while learning cursive writing can fade

Currently, Arizona requires cursive writing to be taught in schools, but once it is taught, teachers can begin using computers.

Clark said that even though students do learn those skills while writing in cursive, they can lose them just as fast.

“There are absolute benefits to typing, which is more speed and efficiency. But what you give up when you’re not using the physical active handwriting or cursive is deep learning and deep cognitive engagement,” she said.

Dao said technology is making it difficult for teachers to keep boosting their students’ literacy skills, but it’s a challenge he’s taking on.

“Back when we were in school, when we used PowerPoint, we had to do everything ourselves. Whereas nowadays, if [I use] Google Slides, I can just type in a prompt and then AI will generate the whole slide for me, right? And so, I’m trying to figure out different ways to circumvent that to go around that,” he said.

Funding for this journalism is made possible by the Arizona Local News Foundation.

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