Education has always been one of the significant activities that we engage in throughout much of the early stages of our lives. Through this process, proper manners and unique hands-on skills are impacted on our young minds. Furthermore, through education, young people are trained to think critically and come up with practical solutions for any problems they face.
Even if they think: “I need to write my paper online on my own”, it will despair them as they need to deal with theory to look through it while analyzing the material.
Traditionally, education has always been largely theoretical. This means that students had to sit in class and listen to a teacher’s lectures to learn. The theoretical nature of traditional learning has made it hard for students to study effectively as they usually find these lectures monotonous and hard to understand.
Luckily, technology has shaken up the modern learning process and has created creative and more effective teaching styles. One of the most popular teaching styles being implemented today is edutainment.
This is the combination of entertainment and teaching to make the learning process livelier for the students. Studies have shown that students find lessons more intriguing whenever the teacher incorporates some form of entertainment into the teaching process. It means that where entertainment is part and process of the teaching structure, students are more attentive. This, in turn, results in increased understanding as well as retention of what they are taught.
However, even though much hype has been given concerning the positive impact of edutainment, it has its drawbacks. This blog will highlight some of the adverse effects of integrating entertainment and education. Some of the most common shortcoming of edutainment include;
Easy Access to Misguiding/Misleading Information
Edutainment will always entail the use of computers and other technological devices to enhance a student’s learning experience. Unfortunately, it is elementary for students to access misleading information through these devices and take it to be correct.
Traditionally, the teacher has always been the source of information in classroom settings. Since teachers are qualified professionals, they can conduct their research and determine the most relevant information to provide students as part of the lesson. This results in the provision of high-quality learning material.
On the other hand, since not all websites are regulated, they can easily post misguiding information, which may mislead any student who reads the data in the end. Technological devices also provide students with cheating avenues when it comes to attending to their assignments. This is primarily because the internet allows any student worldwide to access the services of essay writers easily.
Various online companies such as grademiners.com specialize in providing students with professional writing services. Unfortunately, while writing help is sometimes necessary on the students’ part, it has a vast potential of being abused. However, on the flip side, there are also numerous blog posts, such as laweekly.com, that provide students with helpful information on their studies.
Curbing Social Interaction
As human beings, we always feel the need to interact with other people. This is because we are all social beings in nature. However, through edutainment, kids will be more likely to interact with their tech devices than with their peers.
This will eventually harm their future lives. Remember, the business world will always expect them to work harmoniously with their fellow workers. But, on the other hand, one of the best ways to lead a happy and peaceful life is to have a good social support network. Therefore, where social interaction is not encouraged as a kid grows, it will be tough for them to make friends act as their emotional support mechanism.
Can Be a Destructive
It is easy to see that entertainment will always seem more attractive to kids compared to studying. Therefore, while edutainment may play the role of spicing up the lesson, it can also work the other way round.
Where kids are given a few minutes to engage in some games before the lesson continues, you will find them more reluctant to continue with the lessons as they find games more entertaining. Therefore, where a teacher incorporates entertainment into the learning process, they need to be careful not to go overboard and focus more on entertaining the students rather than teaching them.
It is no secret that edutainment, as a teaching system, has lots of advantages. However, it is to shine a light on its disadvantages. This will make us vigilant when determining the extent to which edutainment should be incorporated into the education system. The primary purpose of this blog has been to point out the most common shortcomings of combining entertainment in education, which the aim of reaching the mentioned goal.