Chapter 2 REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE AND STUDIES

This chapter presents the literature and studies related to the effects of electronic gadgets to

students.

History of Electronic Gadget

The discovery of the electron in 1897 set the stage for electronics to develop over the ensuing

century. Most of the first half of the 20th century was devoted to controlling electrons in a vacuum with

electric and magnetic fields to make amplifiers, oscillators, and switches. These gave us, among other

things, radio, television, radar, and the first computers. The last half of the century saw the rise of solid-

state electronics, beginning with the invention of the transistor in 1947. I arrived on the scene in 1956 to

join William Shockley, one of the inventors of the transistor, who was establishing the Shockley

Semiconductor Laboratory to develop a commercial silicon transistor. By then the advantages of

transistors over vacuum tubes were apparent for many applications; it was only necessary to make

transistors reliable and cheap. But Shockley changed his original goal, turning his focus to another

semiconductor device he had invented while at Bell Labs—a four-layer diode possibly useful in telephone

switches but not much else. A group of us (the Fairchild 8) went off to found a new company, Fairchild

Semiconductor, to continue to pursue the silicon transistor. Fortunately we at Fairchild were on the right

track technologically when Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments demonstrated a complete circuit made of

semiconductor materials. My colleague Bob Noyce saw how the Fairchild technology could be extended

to make it practical to manufacture a complete circuit, rather than just individual transistors. Shortly

after Bob's inventions he was promoted to general manager and I was left to oversee development of

the technology extensions that ultimately led to the computer chips we are all familiar with today. The

new integrated devices did not find a ready market. Users were concerned because the individual

transistors, resistors, and other electronic circuit components could not be tested individually to ensure
their reliability. Also, early integrated circuits were expensive, and they impinged on the turf that

traditionally belonged to the circuit designers at the customer's company. Again, Bob Noyce made a

seminal contribution. He offered to sell the complete circuits for less than the customer could purchase

individual components to build them. (It was also significantly less than it was costing us to build them!)

This step opened the market and helped develop the manufacturing volumes necessary to reduce

manufacturing costs to competitive levels. To this day the cost reductions resulting from economies of

scale and newer high-density technology are passed on to the user—often before they are actually

realized by the circuit manufacturer. As a result, we all know that the high-performance electronic

gadget of today will be replaced with one of higher performance and lower cost tomorrow. The

integrated circuit completely changed the economics of electronics. Initially we looked forward to the

time when an individual transistor might sell for a dollar. Today that dollar can buy tens of millions of

transistors as part of a complex circuit. This cost reduction has made the technology ubiquitous—nearly

any application that processes information today can be done most economically electronically. No other

technology that I can identify has undergone such a dramatic decrease in cost, let alone the improved

performance that comes from making things smaller and smaller. The technology has advanced so fast

that I am amazed we can design and manufacture the products in common use today. It is a classic case

of lifting ourselves up by our bootstraps—only with today's increasingly powerful computers can we

design tomorrow's chips (SURAZ, 2010).

Electronic gadgets in our daily life influence a lot in our different times and part of

life. They can affect us physically, mentally and in many ways we never had thought

about it. As you know, everything has its positive and negative impacts. Over-use of

technology, though, especially such gadgets as cell phones, iPods and video games,

presents a whole range of problems which may interfere with a student's ability to learn

and attend to lessons. It is easy to become addicted to gaming, texting, talking on the
phone or socializing online. Some students may attempt to use their gadgets, which

disrupts their learning, and at home it detracts from study time. Children who spend long

hours staring on screens usually complain less concentration on studies. The excess

use of electronics and gadgets should be and can be controlled by parents and parents

should adopt good strategies on handling their children.

Related Literature

Gadgets

A gadget is a small tool or device with a specific useful purpose and function. Gadgets tend to be

more unusual or cleverly designed than normal technology. In today’s life, tasks are maximized with the

use of modern gadgets. It is easier to accomplish daily tasks and people are also able to do work with

efficiency. "One cannot even dare to imagine life without smart phones, cellphones, laptops, tablets,

iPods and so on" (Tech Crates, 2012). Today’s gadgets are one of the ways to make life more comfortable

and easier. Shy (2010) says that no one can deny the fact that gadgets have not only simplified the lives

of people but also made them more comfortable and luxurious. Indeed, these gadgets really made a

huge impact in people’s lives and became part of it.

Gadgets used in Learning

According to Gammuac (2013), today’s classrooms are equipped with the latest technology to

enhance instruction. Smartphone use in the classroom is still somewhat controversial, but the Calgary

Board of Education actually encourages it as a learning tool. In an interview with CTV, Queen’s University

National Scholar and Associate Professor Sidneyeve Matrix compared the situation to when calculators

were first used by students in the classroom. “We had a whole new level of computational skill, and now
we’re going to have a whole new level of mobile digital skills when we turn to mobile learning on the

handhelds.”

Technology users are moving towards being more mobile, and teachers and students are a

significant part of that trend. On 2013, Lenovo, the world’s top PC vendor reported that they sold more

smartphones and tablets than PCs for the first time ever. Calgary-based SMART Technologies’ SMART

Boards are popular with both teachers and students. Teachers can project presentations onto the SMART

Boards and they can write, touch and interact with their content. Document cameras are also a fun way

for teachers to show students new and interesting ways of looking at objects. Whether they are zooming

in on the smaller details of a 3D object, or observing science experiments, students can share an equal

view of the lesson without crowding the teacher’s desk. Whether a student is listening to his own music

while studying, or a teacher is playing an audio book to her students, mp3 players are an increasingly

common sight in schools. Both teachers and students can make full use of mp3 players in their school

activities (Gammuac, 2013).

Perceived Effects of Electronic Gadget

Foreign

Computer games and Video games and considered and can be listed as a gadget which mostly

influenced the youth. "Several researches indicate that these games can have a positive effect on the

youth's mind". But sometimes it has a negative effects, it may cause terrible changes in bahaviors. It was

seen that playing video games or computer games actually help the young people in concentrating much

better. There are games which require you to use your brains and those games may indeed prove to be

helpful. Also it was seen that it has a very good impact on the motor skills and spatial skills of today's

youth. However these games may also result in the child getting absolutely isolated from the society.

There is a tendency to get engrossed in the games, and forget everything else. Also there are chances
that they might tend to confuse between the virtual world and real world. "When you are using a gadget

like a video game it is important to remember that whatever you are doing is going on in the virtual

world" (Kevin Lee, 2011).

Local

Because of gadgets/electronic gadgets students achieved low academic grades. Although gatgets

are invented to make life easier and better we can't deny the fact that gadgets has negative effects

especially upon the academic performance of students/pupils."As they go home ,they don’t open their

books , they don’t do their homeworks and projects, they play games using computers , these games

have effects on the learning experiences of the pupils". It shows that students become obsessive and

because of this, students might neglect everything else, like their social life, their families and friends. "It

is not a bad thing to have a computer, but is a bad thing to spend all your life in front of it pretending

that everything else doesn’t exist(Chona Capulong, 2018).

Related Studies

Foreign

New media technologies and a number of important studies were conducted in the 2000’s on the

impact of children’s intellectual development, and various aspects of using such technologies. Many

researches were conducted aimed to organize understanding the change that took place by using these

technologies, and to explore the conversion in children’s behavior and focused to discover-what extent

children feel aggression, and how they react by using these modern technologies e.g. video games,

mobile phones with various applications embedded using via Internet with Wi-Fi connections video

games consoles and internet.

 Providing computers to schools increases the technology skills of teachers and students in both the

developed and the developing world. Laptop programs increase students' engagement with academic

work and school, improve technology skills, and have positive effects on students' writing. Research in

many nations suggests that laptop programs will be most successful as part of comprehensive initiatives

that also address changes in education goals, curricula, teacher training, and assessment (Zucker & Light

2009).

An analysis of effective technology use for at-risk students found that simply replacing teachers

with computer-based instruction typically yields no learning benefits. Rather, blending leads to higher

engagement and learning gains (Darling-Hammond et al., 2014).

Gross (2009) described in his article that people are very frequent in use of media and modern

technologies in communication at home or at work and feel hard to survive in the absence of modern

means of communications. With the advent rapid new technologies; digital societies are shaping all

across and people are relying mainly on these resources from information, education, and entertainment

to social interaction.

The same are shaping social attitude in dealing with each other. The reformed digital cultures and

multi resources of communications have severe effects on human beings especially on children; who

have the immediate capacity of learning. Technologies usability among youngsters and adolescent such

as TV, Internet, mobile phones are common particularly in developed countries (Gross, 2009).

Technology enhanced learning (TEL) aims to design, develop and test socio-technical innovations

that will support and enhance learning practices of both individuals and organizations. It is therefore an

application domain that generally covers technologies that support all forms of teaching and learning

activities. Since information retrieval (in terms of searching for relevant learning resources to support

teachers or learners) is a pivotal activity in TEL, the deployment of recommender systems has attracted
increased interest. This chapter attempts to provide an introduction to recommender systems for TEL

settings, as well as to highlight their particularities compared to recommender systems for other

application domains (Koper et al., 2010).

One study that was conducted to determine whether Wiki technology would improve students’

writing skills in a college English as a foreign language writing class showed benefits to using Wiki

technology. Students were invited to join a Wiki page where they would write and 5 post passages and

then read and respond to the passages of their fellow classmates. Students participating in the study

reported that their receiving immediate feedback from the instructor was a benefit of using this form of

technology. Students in the study also reported learning vocabulary, spelling, and sentence structure by

reading the work of their classmates (Lin & Yang, 2011).

Another study found that integrating technology and peer-led discussions of literature can

produce increased student engagement and motivation. Technology used in these small group

discussions of literature includes wikis, online literature circles, and online book clubs. With these

technologies, students were able to connect with readers from other schools, states, and even other

countries. This type of technology is an assessable and motivational way to expose students to other

ideas and cultures. These online literature discussions have the ability to create a sense of community

and foster positive social interaction (Coffey, 2012).

The use of technology in education has significantly aided students in performing their school-

related tasks. Clegg and Bailey (2008) assert that with the utilization of mobile devices such as laptops

and tablet computers, the learning process for the students become more fun and conducive due to the

user-interactivity and appealing visuals present in these learning tools. Additionally, a vast collection of

learning games and applications exist for these mobile devices, and as a matter of fact, there are about

96,000 educational applications available (App Store Metrics, 2013). The data collected by Apps in
Education (2012) confirmed that the subject areas covered by these applications include Mathematics,

Sciences, Grammar and Spelling and Arts and Humanities (Clegg & Bailey, 2008).

Text shortcut such as "ur" instead of "youre" is commonly used through cell phone texting.

However, a recent study shows that kids and teens are actually letting these obscure abbreviation seep

into their normal writing. A recent study by Pew Internet in 2008 revealed that 50 percent of the

students use text shortcuts in their assignments. Furthermore, 38 percent admit they have used

abbreviation like "LOL" which stands for "Laugh Out Loud". Additionally, 25 percent say that they use

emoticons such as "smiley faces" in formal writing. The problem has become so apparent that some U.S.

politicians are concerned that English language and sentence structure is being twisted, negatively

affecting students learning (studymoose.com, 2016).

Another study shows the relationship between the use of electronic devices and the development

of musculoskeletal symptoms. This study was jointly conducted by The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

and the Hong Kong Physiotheraphy Association. "Bow head tribe", are the people who's obsessed staring

at their devices and playing electronic games with their heads bowed. Lack of exercise and maintaining a

prolonged static postures will surely increase the risk of developing musculoskeletal symptoms in

different parts of the body. In the study conducted, it shows that students that are overly obsessed in

electronic games may suffer a long term adverse health effetct which they become accustomed to poor

postures such as forward head or "poking-chin" posture, a kyphotic back and rounded shoulders, these

may become fixed postural habits that would be difficult to correct when they turn adults. In addition,

studies have shown that in some cases, due to excessive texting with mobile phones, inflammation of

tendons and articular degeneration in the thumb joint and index fingers have been reported. The latest

smartphones and tablet computers tend to involve the index finger or the thumb to perform the touch

functions. Even though the physical actions are very light, frequent repetitive actions last for long hours
could lead to excessive strains in the finger joints and the tendons (The Hong Kong Polytechnic

University, 2013).

Local

In the Philippines, President Benigno Aquino announced during the launch of the country’s K-12

curriculum that the government eyes the use of tablet computers in public schools in lieu of traditional

textbooks (Enterprise Innovation, 2012). Furthermore, there exist various programs by the government,

non-government organizations and private corporations in the Philippines that aim to provide one laptop

computer per child. With the presence of laptops in the classrooms, students become more engaged and

involved in school-related activities (Oquias, 2011).

A study shows that excessive use of electronic gadgets such as mobile phone, tablets, and

computer desktops can cause physical and mental damage to children, some of this are develop seizure,

becomes overweight and can have vision problems. National Nutrition Council(NNC) reported that 3% of

the children in Central Visayas are considered as obese and overweight (World Vision, n.d).

In addition, a research was conducted with 23,139 participants from the fifth grade of primary

school up to the third year of high school, at 771 public schools nationwide. It showed, for instance, that

53.5 percent of junior high students who said they use a mobile phone for more than four hours a day to

talk, send email or surf the Net, habitually do not get to sleep until after midnight. That ratio was much

lower, at 14.9 percent, for those who don’t use mobile phones at all. "Excessive use of mobile phones

causes students to fare poorly in elementary, junior high and high school, not only because it makes

them lose their concentration due to a lack of sleep, but also because it apparently compromises what

they have studied". It is found that overusing mobile phones affects the quality of student's sleep and

study. Students that are awake up late in using their gadgets such as mobile phones and smart phones

are the students who spend several hours using and staring into their mobile phones, smart phones or
tablets. Because of this excessive use of gadgets, students have lack of sleep and this will affect their

school performance (The Manila Times, 2015).

FRAMEWORK

BEHAVIOR

STUDIES/
HEALTH LEARNING

EFFECTS OF
ELECTRONIC
GADGETS

HABIT SOCIAL LIFE