Articles

Smartphone use among adolescents has surged globally, reshaping communication and learning patterns, especially in developing countries. However, the implications of such digital habits on students in rural or under-resourced areas remain underexplored. This study aims to examine the patterns of smartphone usage and its effects on learning among high school students in Tarutung, a developing region of North Sumatra, Indonesia. Utilizing a quantitative descriptive approach, data were collected from 358 students using structured questionnaires. The results show that 96.05% of students own personal smartphones regardless of socioeconomic background, with an average daily usage of 4 hours and 45 minutes. While 91.81% believe smartphones support their learning, 25.99% report declining academic performance. Alarmingly, 20.62% of students admitted involvement in cyberbullying activities, highlighting a critical digital risk impacting the school environment and student well-being. The study concludes that although smartphones offer educational benefits, their misuse can lead to negative academic, social, and psychological outcomes. This study recommends digital literacy curricula and structured cooperation between parents and educators to prevent risks while optimizing educational opportunities in smartphone use.

Making students efficiently and flexibly understand and master the knowledge of biological/biomedical sciences by prompting active learning and critical thinking and making biomedical science courses form an integrated system are critical for more successful and effective student education, future and career. However, the current biological/biomedical education system worldwide tends to produce graduates best suited for postdoctoral training, and academic careers, in highly specialized areas. Many institutions worldwide currently favor densely packed curricula with fast-paced instruction focused on detailed subject matter, with little room left for skill training in both active learning and critical thinking, creative problem solving, professional skills, putting what was learned into a larger context that creates meaning, and teaching students with different learning styles, despite their significance. In this article, we will discuss the current defects in biological/biomedical science education and the need to reform biomedical science teaching and education. We will also describe some suggestions and approaches to improve biological/biomedical science learning and education, including the establishment of a more effective learning/teaching repository.

This article seeks to relate (trans)generational issues with the phenomenon of sociodromology and education in the COVID-19 pandemic period that began globally in the first months of 2020 and 2021. To make such crossings possible, we will initially present under which aspects we are addressing the term generation, and its respective phenomenological development, transgenerationality. Once these concepts have been properly presented it is also necessary to relate those information with the generations that are currently living within educational environments, especially schools. After such an exposition, we will present the theory that contemplates the vector of acceleration and its respective consequence for humanity. Sociodromology emerges as a theoretical instrument that makes it possible to critically glimpse how the speed of machines has dictated our lives, having a perverse facet of exclusion that determines which groups may be able or unfit at their pace. Finally the text concludes its reflection on the current educational context using the critical tools of socio-pedagogy, which views the subjects who are involved in the educational process as representatives of an even greater order in the world, which transcends schools. In this perspective, education as a pillar of knowledge acquisition should be revised in addition to its pre-determined role in society and should form individuals who could change the world and their communities.