9 ms·

I gave my students iPads – then wished I could take them back

72 points by e15ctr0n 11y ago

michaelmcdonald 11y ago
Change is hard. When computers were first introduced to schools there were similar arguments and complaints. When calculators were brought in instead of the slide rule we heard it would be the end of actually "knowing" math. Teachers who are great find ways to use technology and tools available to inspire their students and create engaging lessons. This teacher just sounds resistant to change.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  But calculators actually did negatively impact basic arithmetic skills. The number of people that can't do 9x14 without reaching for a calculator is scary.
  - delecti 11y ago
    The number of people who need to do 9x14 when they have no access to a calculator is pretty much zero.
    - pc86 11y ago
      To be fair though, that's the math version of "I don't need to know JavaScript at all because I will always have jQuery." Technically accurate but lazy.
      - lmm 11y ago
        Javascript or 9x14 is not the kind of knowledge that's valuable for its own sake. http://unreasonable.org/Feynman_and_the_map_of_the_cat http://unreasonable.org/Feynman_and_the_map_of_the_cat
    - untog 11y ago
      That doesn't mean it isn't a valuable skill. Mental arithmetic can also improve other brain skills.
      - gregweng 11y ago
        No? As an Asian student I have seen countless people try to push their children to exercise arithmetic skills because they believe that does good to their brains. However, it only misleads children to hate "math" and sometimes even their lives based on this the most important subject again and again. Moreover, children would wholly waste their exercised brain on the ruined confidence because some of them just cannot "recite" the patterns well among questions in tests, because you're required to answer too much questions during too short time, which means if you cannot recite the solution patterns from textbook and calculate the answers right at first time, you barely have no chance to try it again. Even those who did excellently in those high-school tests will face another crash at the beginning of university, because the "real math" no matter cares your arithmetic skills, but your abstract thinking and the feeling to grab and deduct rules from axiom. After all, except those real geniuses can conquer these two very different requirements and continuously get payback from that, I don't see any benefits from focusing on arithmetic with so high-strength training.
    - thearn4 11y ago
      That's too application focused. The primary value of arithmetic is that it forces you to exercise parts of your mind in a way which would otherwise be difficult. The same can be said of general mathematics, and literary analysis, etc.
      - marcosdumay 11y ago
        Hum, basic arithmetics is mechanical repetition. There may be some benefit to the brain in doing it, but I'm doubting it until I get evidence. The main benefit is that knowing arithmetics well makes higher mathematics easier to learn. That's because one won't get distracted doing calculations. That's still true on the calculator era, just a bit less so, thus I do think it's important to learn arithmetics... It just the "it improves your brain" that I find highly suspect.
  - pc86 11y ago
    To this point is there an easier way to do this than mentally do (9x10)+(9x4), which is what I've done since I was in elementary school (29 now)?
    - davnicwil 11y ago
      Hmm that's interesting - I'd tend to round one of the numbers, whichever is closest to a '5' or '10', to make an 'easier' multiplication, then add / subtract the extra value lost / gained by rounding. Example 9 x 14 = (<10> * 14) - ([1] * 14) = 140 - 14 = 126 key: <> easier rounded number [] deal with rounding 'error'
      - pc86 11y ago
        I've done that before too, but for whatever reason my mind just defaults to adding two numbers rather than subtracting. Probably either habit or I just find it easier.
      - pavel_lishin 11y ago
        Weird, I did it the other way - 9x10 + 9x4 = 90 + 36 = 126
    - nkrisc 11y ago
      I do the same. However, recognizing you can do that is part of learning arithmetic and problem solving in general. I learned that method at an early age and it taught me that most big, scary problems in general are really just a bunch of small problems that can be identified and solved more easily.
    - jacquesm 11y ago
      10 times 14 - 14.
      - neffy 11y ago
        (9* 7) * 2 :)
    - eterm 11y ago
  - Retra 11y ago
    The number of people who can do it quickly in their head, maybe. I don't know a single adult who would look at that problem and say they don't know how to solve it. Math is a perishable skill. You get slow at it if you don't use it.
    - matwood 11y ago
      It is just a matter of remembering the tricks. (9x10) + (9x4)
  - dagw 11y ago
    But calculators actually did negatively impact basic arithmetic skills. Sure, but the interesting question is if they negatively impacted math skills.
    - a-saleh 11y ago
      Depends what kind of math skills are you looking for. I remember my classmate, 1st year at university, that passed one of his classes just because his calculator was capable of precise enough numeric integration. Next semester he was required to construct proofs as well and he flunked the class.
  - w8rbt 11y ago
    I do 9 x 14 in my head by breaking it down. I assume others do this too. Anyone should be able to break a problem down (pre or post tech generation) and do the small parts, then put them together to answer the bigger question. In general, that's the essence of learning. If we stop teaching that, then we're all in trouble ;) 9 x 10 = 90 9 x 4 = 36 90 + 36 = 126
    - gambiting 11y ago
      Ha, very interesting, I do something very similar, although for multiplication by 9 I would multiply by 10(since it requires no mental effort, you just add a zero at the end) then subtract one. So: 14 x 10 = 140 140 - 14 = 126
  - theinternetman 11y ago
    > negatively impact basic arithmetic skills Yep and that skill was rendered completely obsolete. Always remember being told "you won't always have a calculator with you!!" because I couldn't be bothered showing my working on my maths work. How did that work out... oh everyone now always has calculators with them. Glad I didn't waste my time memorising multiplication tables.
- mhurron 11y ago
  Change also doesn't just happen because you dumped a computer in a room. I personally haven't seen a computer used effectively in a classroom, in a large part because the teachers don't know how to integrate them into their lessons. They were given devices and then given no instruction on how to use them.
  - jerf 11y ago
    Education is just barely starting to come out of what I call the "... but on a computer!" [1] era, which is when you try to do exactly the same thing you did before, but now it's on a computer (or a tablet in this case). There's basically no advantage to taking existing classroom practices, but sticking them on a computer. You'll have to rewrite the entire education process to figure out how to harness computers. Let me give a concrete example. I am now a fantastic speller, of a language that is one of the harder languages to spell. Am I fantastic because I'm just that awesome? No! Am I fantastic because I have spent years studying lists of words and taking spelling tests? Hell no! I'm fantastic now because every major text input I use now has the red-squiggly line, and the instant I misspell a word and hit space, bam, red line. Backspace & correct. Right-click and select if I really, really can't work it out. (But with backspace & correct actually being way faster, I prefer that.) With instant feedback comes a high rate of learning. I can tell this isn't "cheating", because when I do function in an environment where I don't have this functionality, I retain my spelling skill, the golden standard of whether a skill exists in the tools or the brain. In fact I write many of my blog posts in emacs with no spelling support on, and while I still scan over my posts with a spell checker before posting them, I routinely experience writing several thousand words without a single misspelling, because I have harnessed solid technology to train my brain. I also spell well with handwriting. This is unbelievably fantastic technology for teaching spelling so efficiently and so effectively that it hardly even need be explicitly taught; sit students down in front of this technology and have them simply write and let the red squiggly handle the spelling training. (You'll still need vocabulary training, but, again, let the red squiggly handle the spelling of the vocabulary while the vocabulary training focuses on meanings.) By contrast, doing spelling tests "but on a computer" is a terrible way of doing business! First of all, if the students have to "turn in" the test before they get feedback, you've already missed the sub-second feedback rate that would have been so much better anyhow, but second of all, the fact that you're having a spelling test at all is a huge waste of their time. That's the sort of second-order effect we need to be harnessing with computers in the classroom, and we are only at the very, very beginning of that road. My first grader is just starting spelling tests. He's not quite computer savvy enough to start writing on a computer yet, but you can believe I'll be setting him up with a red squiggly as soon as is practicable. I still believe computers are going to rewrite education from top-to-bottom, but I find it is proving to be one of the most entrenched, hidebound, nearsighted, and even perhaps terrified of real change elements of society we can possibly imagine. We're so scare of what bad things might happen if we don't stuff a conventional education into our children's heads (moreso than ever, thanks to ever-more test-based education) that we're terrified of experimenting with anything new, and the only acceptable change to the "conventional" education is to precommit even more time to it, making it that much harder to work any experimentation into the system. There are major religions that treat their holy texts as more flexible than the way our culture treats the official line of How Children Are Taught. [1]: http://www.jerf.org/iri/post/2916 http://www.jerf.org/iri/post/2916
- alistairSH 11y ago
  Two counter-points... 1. Computers in classrooms have rarely, if ever, been deployed to entire classrooms in the way that tablets can be. Typically, you'll see one or two PCs in a class, plus a computer lab. PCs don't distract in the same way iPads can. 2. Calculators do make people worse at math. I saw this first-hand with my son. As he went through school, they used calculators for everything. Students began to rely on the calculators for simple arithmetic and took the answers provided as gospel, not realizing that garbage in = garbage out. He, along with many of his peers, never really developed the fluency in math to say to themselves "hmm, that answer looks suspect. Let me try again."
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    But you as a parent could easily fix that. Schools don't have a monopoly on education.
    - alistairSH 11y ago
      Of course, and we did. But, I continue to believe that allowing calculators on ALL mathematics work from a young age does the student a disservice. Calculators certainly have their place, but elementary school arithmetic is not that place.
      - jacquesm 11y ago
        Agreed. So I taught my eldest arithmetic at home and discouraged the schools from giving him more calculators until the sums involved more than two digits and other operators than the basic four. After the third calculator they got the message. Interesting aside: the teacher couldn't do anything beyond single digit arithmetic without reference to a calculator either. Pretty sad affair, and I really wonder how someone who does not understand the basics gets to be a teacher.
  - Vraxx 11y ago
    Counter anecdote to your calculator anecdote. I grew up using calculators all through school and excelled in knowing math. Using a calculator did not inhibit my ability to question the result of the calculator whatsoever. I don't think calculators are necessarily to blame here.
- kps 11y ago
  > When calculators were brought in instead of the slide rule > we heard it would be the end of actually "knowing" math. Plato argued in Phaedrus that literacy would be the end of anyone actually "knowing" anything. Why learn if you can just google^H^H^H^H^H^H read it? Same shit, different millennium.
rayiner 11y ago
> My lively little kids stopped talking and adopted the bent-neck, plugged-in posture of tap, tap, swipe. I'm extremely skeptical about the utility of technology in education, but iPads are a bad idea for reasons other than the above. A room full of kids working hard with pre-iPad technology looks like that too, except they're concentrating on books and paper.
- farmdve 11y ago
  I've noticed this behaviour outside of school and with much older people. I grew up with a computer and I admit I use it at least 15 hours a day every day, but a big chunk of this time I've used for learning and contributing rather than just pure media consumption. Today too many people are engrossed in facebook and can't continue a conversation without flicking and swiping through facebook every 30-60 seconds. Everybody's faces are now illuminated by their devices' screens.
thearn4 11y ago
Are there any really decent examples of devices like tablets being utilized creatively and effectively in a K-12 classroom? I don't want to sound cynical or like a luddite (I would be posting on the wrong site, for sure), but nearly every application that I have used that is meant to be used in a classroom environment has been extremely shallow.
baldfat 11y ago
My school district has lost almost 20% of the teachers and looking at another $13,000,000 in deficit next year. they can afford iPads what a BROKEN Education Funding System we have! Latino students get $0.85 for every dollar spent on White non-Hispanic students. > writes about how we are sacrificing connections, one quick check of our screens at a time The old Computers cause people to disconnect and check out argument again! As an old Geek I have always heard the anti-social behaviors breed by computer use. The funny thing is I was more connected to people then anyone I knew. The one culture that connects and gathers together have been the Geeks. PS iPads for each child in elementary school is a bad idea but not for these reasons.
- rtkwe 11y ago
  Part of that is that there are funds that are siloed to be spent only on getting tech into the hands of kids so money spent there by the school system couldn't necessarily be spent elsewhere by the school.
  - baldfat 11y ago
    Okay great give my Urban District designated funds for iPads.
joshstrange 11y ago
Good lord.... I don't think I can roll my eyes hard enough.... > One of my saddest days in my digital classroom was when the children rushed in from the lunchroom one rainy recess and dashed for their iPads. Wait, I implored, we play with Legos on rainy days! I dumped out the huge container of Legos that were pure magic just a couple of weeks ago, that prompted so much collaboration and conversation, but the delight was gone. My students looked at me with disdain. Some crossed their arms and pouted. We aren’t kids who just play anymore, their crossed arms implied. We’re iPad users. We’re tech-savvy. Later, when I allowed their devices to hum to glowing life, conversation shut down altogether. Look I loved Lego's growing up, I still have massive rubbermaid containers full of them but please tell me why playing with Legos is any more valuable than playing minecraft? Let's not pretend that just because kids like different things now that something MUST be lost. I never played a cup-and-ball game like I'm sure generations before me did (I'm sure they lamented the introduction of things like Lego). Every generation complains about the younger generation and how they are going to turn out wrong because they weren't raised the same way they were or with the same things ("I walked up hill to school both ways"). Did the kids get quieter? Sure, I have no doubt of that but who's to say they weren't communicating even more than before using chat programs? I had teachers in HS CONSTANTLY complain about how students were reading less and less all the time which I took issue with not only because I read plenty of books but also I read tons of articles online. The medium may change but the core concept remains IHMO. Reading Pride and Prejudice doesn't automatically make you a better person than the student who know what's happening in the world like the back of their hand. Lastly not introducing them to tech now is just setting them up for failure down the line. For better or worse the people who know technology will excel more than those who don't. Tech is not it's own little sector/industry, it's everywhere and it's integrated in to everything. To pretend otherwise is to stick one's head in the ground and ignore the world around you.
- greyman 11y ago
  > but please tell me why playing with Legos is any more valuable than playing minecraft? She did - because it encouraged collaboration and conversation.
  - 11y ago
bluedino 11y ago
Access, not immersion. I cringed 15 years ago when school boards pushed to put computers in every classroom. What good is a room full of kids on MySpace and AIM? Sure, you need computer skills for the future. But beyond learning how to use a computer for typing, spreadsheets, word processing, you don't need more than that in the K-12 level. Some kids will want to be programmers. Some kids will want to do music. Some will want to do graphics or desktop publish. Have computers available for kids to do that in computer class or art class or math - but don't push them in every setting.
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  It may be too late to avoid computers in every setting. Or soon will be - witness WalMart's $10 smart phone. We have to learn to deal with this somehow.
- joshstrange 11y ago
  Why? Seriously why? Technology and software are, not to sound cliche, eating the world. Even something you would consider to not need tech for like farming is seeing great advances from technology including but not limited to: drip irrigation, gps auto-pilot machinery, robots to kill weeds without herbicides, weather patterns, crop patterns, and more. Software and technology is everywhere and if it's not somewhere yet then it will be soon. Why should be churning out tech-illiterate students except for a couple of fields? This seems incredibly short-sighted.
greyman 11y ago
Hm, this is sad. What I wonder is - couldn't this be anticipated beforehand? If they asked me, I would probably predict that what she describes would happen (having iPad and a child at home). Anyway, why on earth would you give the child a mainly-leisure device, why at least not netbook instead?!
CodeWriter23 11y ago
We don't have any of those problems at my daughter's school. First, all the iPads are locked down using some management software, so the kids are locked out of the clock, etc. that can cause unintentional distractions. Second, they limit use to about 30 minutes per day, so traditional lessons are taught using traditional techniques. Third, our school emphasizes social interaction with project-based learning, with the children working in teams. And a sizable portion of their report card deals with socialization and citizenship. The tablet is a tool, alongside pencil, ruler, scissors, etc. NOT the primary device for delivering content. The kids use them (K-2) to make movies, make sketches of the things they are engineering, and math drills. It seems a good lesson was lost on the author: teaching the kids how to appropriately use this type of tool. At my daughter's school, we get it. Starting next year, Grades 3-5 will have an admin account on their take-home MacBook Airs. Yep, sounds totally crazy. The value here is teaching the children not just how to use their computer but how to take responsibility for keeping it running. Hopefully El Capitan rootless mode will provide a robust defense against those pesky Flash 0-day bugs.
- bonesinger 11y ago
  Agreed, my girlfriend's school implements iPad use and she has none of these problems. They have a single IT person in the school who setup all the iPads. My gf setup guided access on her 30 ipads to lock them down and the kids only use them for 1 or 2 lessons max. The majority of her teaching is down without iPad use. A lot of the author's issues seem to be a lack of awareness on technology, how to use iPads, and even proper classroom management.
  - VLM 11y ago
    "They have a single IT person in the school who setup all the iPads" This leads to an important side issue that people outside the .edu system don't understand, that you release a product for kids that is web based, my daughter's teacher can roll it out to the kids in about 10 minutes using a laser printer to make a QR code of the URL for the kids to scan and then do math drills or whatever, literally during a single recess period. In comparison, if you wrap the same exact content in an app, its going to take at least a year to get the app approved by the technology council and possibly installed, or possibly not if another teacher makes a stronger argument for using the limited storage space for video recording kid presentations of learning or their pet app or who knows, assuming you have the political clout, time, and motivation to ram the new app thru the system. Educational apps are dead. Educational websites are where its at.
dangerpowpow 11y ago
These schools have too much money
- cthalupa 11y ago
  These programs are often funded by federal aid based on the number of students on free or reduced lunch. The money, IIRC, can really only be used for library stuff or technology, and it's a sort of 'use it or lose it' deal.
  - tormeh 11y ago
    Yes, but since students usually do better without computers it's better to use it on the library or simply not take the money.
    - joshstrange 11y ago
      Want to provide some kind of source for that claim?
      - tormeh 11y ago
        Yes: http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/education/students-computers-and-learning_9789264239555-en#page5 http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/educati... (it's an OECD study. I don't really know their pedigree as a source of evidence)
jl4ntz 11y ago
I'm not an education professional, but this seems like it would be a better idea for kids that are a little older than third grade.
aaronharnly 11y ago
I'm surprised that (by appearances) these iPads were in essentially full-time 1:1 use in a 3rd grade classroom, when students have a lot of learning to do about and through movement and physical manipulation, not to mention social engagement. From what I've seen[1], in lower elementary grades technology can be very effectively used in the hands of the teacher (for assessment, interpreting student strengths and weaknesses in reading or math, and for projecting rich media). Putting devices in the hands of students in lower elementary is probably best done for very targeted purposes and limited time; for example, keeping the rest of class engaged with an activity while the teacher is giving his or her full attention to working with a reading small group for 30 minutes. [1]I've been part of teams creating teacher-facing tools for elementary, and digital curriculum for middle school and above.
MrBunny 11y ago
So the real issue here is the lack of in person face to face? Which is the continued argument that adults/college students don’t know how to handle social interactions with tech. Is it possible adults/college students don’t know how to handle social interaction with tech around because their exposure was much later in life? Is the lesson these kids learning even more important? How to hold on to humanity in the face of technology. Or possibly humanity and tech has entirely different direction and we are just trying to fight it all together.
joeevans1000 11y ago
Remember when that guy was offering to buy every classroom free TVs in exchange for the school's commitment to have the kids watch a certain amount of programming a day? The programming included ads. This seems the same. Having the kids load linux onto laptops, yeah... I could understand the value in that. Having them work with Raspberry Pi's, I could see the merit in that. Program robots? Definitely. But this debacle of Apple products for kids has been terrible. I do believe the schools and city councils are well meaning. Yes, these expenditures are so huge the city councils have to often get involved. But introducing kids to computing via the walled gardens of Apple are a disservice to them, and a step back, in my opinion. Apple devices are imminently non-configurable... they are designed to walk you through the computing experience, training you to seek the help of 'geniuses' as opposed to becoming your own genius. The cost of these programs is astounding. Districts could be loading linux onto machines bought for relatively nothing... those linux skills would be immediately applicable to Raspberry Pis and to robots. Are schools afraid of really educating their students, as opposed to making them dependents of Apple's consumer culture?
- thearn4 11y ago
  > Are schools afraid of really educating their students, as opposed to making them dependents of Apple's consumer culture? I think a key component to the problem here is the very clear gap between computing enthusiasts/application developer and your typical K-12 teacher. Which is really not meant to be a knock on our teachers, but I don't think your typical school has the people with the right skill sets to teach "true" computing. They don't realistically have any choice but to rely on the watered-down end user version experienced through the walled-garden of one vendor or another. Which makes most "technology in the classroom" initiatives to me look more like solutions in search of a problem (ie. not a very effective use of district resources).
- creshal 11y ago
  > Apple devices are imminently non-configurable... they are designed to walk you through the computing experience Which probably seems tempting for budget-strapped schools which can't afford replacing equipment every year nor have the staff to build something themselves around RasPis.
hmottestad 11y ago
Learning how to take control when faced with all these screens and all this information and communication without getting sucked in might be one of the greatest lessons to teach children today.
gnrme 11y ago
iPads are primarily high end content consumption devices - in my mind, that makes them a strange choice for education.
- greyman 11y ago
  Depends on which apps do you use - there are also a lot of quizzes, puzzles, math and grammar exercises etc. But the problem is, what I also observed on my daughter, that when the exercises are printed on paper, she can just focus on them, since there isn't anything else on the paper. But when on iPad, there is always a lure to just close that educational app and switch to another entertainment one. The attention span is shorted and the focus is shallower, since there is always a temptation to be distracted by something else.
b6 11y ago
This was really painful to read. I don't often think I have vision or significant insight, but it's been obvious to me for as long as I can remember that egregious use of technology in classrooms is a profoundly terrible idea. What, educators were worried children wouldn't spend enough time staring at glowing rectangles, and needed to get a head start? Really? It's not clear whether most adults are even capable of making good decisions about what technologies to invite into their lives. Inflicting computers and software on children in a classroom, I think, demonstrates either profound lack of understanding about the state of these technologies, or judgement, or both. Pens, pencils, crayons, markers, paper, books, musical instruments. These are the kinds of things that belong in classrooms. Children should be reading and drawing and building and talking and playing creatively, learning to think and solve problems based on experiencing the world directly, not trying to sip secondhand information through the straw of a screen, not wasting time with the latest malware and ads and passwords and an infinite amount of other stupid computer bullshit. Technology is a kind of heroin-like thing you should choose to invite into your life later as an adult if you want, not inflicted on you as a child.
- Allegrippus 11y ago
  And what's a "gathering rug", anyway? Are desks too rough on their little sissy rear ends?
- panzagl 11y ago
  Tablets are just the next step in replacing teachers with their exorbitant $40K salaries with half that number of $10/hr babysitters, so more money can be funneled to the companies providing the curriculum and testing.
  - lintiness 11y ago
    cities like chicago have near 3% property taxes to pay current teachers average salaries over $75k/yr. with health, with vacation, with summers, with cola, with lifetime guaranteed pensions of 70%+. school admins routinely take home $125k+. when are we going to stop with the nonsense that teachers save the world while starving in their yugos?
m52go 11y ago
A thought regarding the argument that iPads encourage anti-social behavior: Many of us here were introduced to this immersive technology as mature adults & don't know how to balance this technology with the demands of humanity (namely, proper social communication). Give me an iPad, and I'll find a way to watch stupid videos and avoid productivity (that's why I don't have one). Or send me a text and I'll make my best effort at checking it ASAP, even if that means losing focus on a real conversation for a few moments. BUT: humans have an innate need to communicate. It's not a generational thing--it's a human thing. Kids aren't going to forget they need to make quality bonds with the people in their lives. They'll still do it. And I bet these kids growing up now will be able to achieve this balance between man and machine better than us. I predict: it's not technology we're going to learn from our kids--it's how to truly live well with it.
facepalm 11y ago
That seems a bit one-sided. It is not all or nothing. My son (age 5) gets to use a tablet from time to time, mostly to watch "Sendung mit der Maus" which is a famous German educational show. They cover various topics in 10 minute blocks. My son has already learned a lot from that. I recently visited an elementary school and all the kids were having lessons about squirrels (it was in autumn). I guess "under the hood" they were learning more than just squirrel stuff, like reading comprehension, writing, structuring information and so on. But other than that, I am pretty sure what takes them days to learn about squirrels in school would be easier taught by Sendung mit der Maus.
limaoscarjuliet 11y ago
Computers will rot your brain. Or... not? I'm 40. I come from an Eastern-Bloc country. Back in the day we raised ourselves, running outside all day, building and breaking friendships by playing sports and other more stupid games (e.g. throwing small rocks at cars - yes, THAT stupid). Just like kids today have Internet, we had a drug - TV. Grandma said: it would rot your brain, it is the Satan, stay away. Apparently the TV did not rot my brain. I do not watch it today (other than Netflix). I cannot stand it. Yes, we did not have fun exactly like Grandma had in her youth (I bet she had some fun ;-), but we had fun. So perhaps tablets are not that bad. Perhaps Internet is not that bad. Sure, it will change us, but - just perhaps - in a good way. Perhaps it is just us, older folks, who cannot see what is good and what is bad for our kids.
- csorrell 11y ago
  I grew up with a TV that had no boundaries around it and don't feel like it kept me from experiencing a full childhood either. I did waste a lot of time in front of it but television was mostly just a fallback; I preferred playing outside and with other kids. The thing about TV then that is different from technology now, is that we were limited more by whatever programming the cable networks had scheduled between all those commercials. TV was actually boring most of the time, especially during the day. I have kids now and know that with my oldest at least (11 year old boy), when there are no boundaries around screen time, the screens are always on. There is a lot more going on in the world of video games, movies, the internet, etc. these days which make it easier for kids to get lost in.
diivio 11y ago
What....why the heck would you give 8 year olds iPads....my littlest brother was born in 2002 I think and when he turned 8 his school didn't do this nonsense. They should be reading from regular books and get regular chalkboard/whiteboard Lectures and doing hands on activities. Instead of giving them iPads you could have a small set of time in the week to go onto a desktop computer and learn how to keyboard and do those kid like programming exercises and maybe some fun online learning tools. Technology is only bad for kids if you don't know how to ration it and talk to them about it and limit it to educational uses. Just giving them iPads makes no sense. All you're doing is helping Apple lol..... You cannot even teach them practical academic tech stuff like keyboarding or programming using those kid friendly programming applications like Minecraft. Or at least lock down the iPads so it only has educational apps.
Joof 11y ago
I'm sure iPads can be useful, but you know what's more useful? Good teachers.
jvvlimme 11y ago
A while back I attended a presentation and the speaker summed it up nicely: "We live in the 21st century, we go to work in the 20th and our kids go to school in the 19th." And the main hurdle here is not the tech but the teachers. With a few exceptions, teachers are technophobes and they don't have the mindset to support tech in the classroom.

72 points by e15ctr0n 11y ago

Change is hard. When computers were first introduced to schools there were similar arguments and complaints. When calculators were brought in instead of the slide rule we heard it would be the end of actually "knowing" math. Teachers who are great find ways to use technology and tools available to inspire their students and create engaging lessons. This teacher just sounds resistant to change.

jacquesm 11y ago
But calculators actually did negatively impact basic arithmetic skills. The number of people that can't do 9x14 without reaching for a calculator is scary.
- delecti 11y ago
  The number of people who need to do 9x14 when they have no access to a calculator is pretty much zero.
  - pc86 11y ago
    To be fair though, that's the math version of "I don't need to know JavaScript at all because I will always have jQuery." Technically accurate but lazy.
    - lmm 11y ago
      Javascript or 9x14 is not the kind of knowledge that's valuable for its own sake. http://unreasonable.org/Feynman_and_the_map_of_the_cat http://unreasonable.org/Feynman_and_the_map_of_the_cat
  - untog 11y ago
    That doesn't mean it isn't a valuable skill. Mental arithmetic can also improve other brain skills.
    - gregweng 11y ago
      No? As an Asian student I have seen countless people try to push their children to exercise arithmetic skills because they believe that does good to their brains. However, it only misleads children to hate "math" and sometimes even their lives based on this the most important subject again and again. Moreover, children would wholly waste their exercised brain on the ruined confidence because some of them just cannot "recite" the patterns well among questions in tests, because you're required to answer too much questions during too short time, which means if you cannot recite the solution patterns from textbook and calculate the answers right at first time, you barely have no chance to try it again. Even those who did excellently in those high-school tests will face another crash at the beginning of university, because the "real math" no matter cares your arithmetic skills, but your abstract thinking and the feeling to grab and deduct rules from axiom. After all, except those real geniuses can conquer these two very different requirements and continuously get payback from that, I don't see any benefits from focusing on arithmetic with so high-strength training.
  - thearn4 11y ago
    That's too application focused. The primary value of arithmetic is that it forces you to exercise parts of your mind in a way which would otherwise be difficult. The same can be said of general mathematics, and literary analysis, etc.
    - marcosdumay 11y ago
      Hum, basic arithmetics is mechanical repetition. There may be some benefit to the brain in doing it, but I'm doubting it until I get evidence. The main benefit is that knowing arithmetics well makes higher mathematics easier to learn. That's because one won't get distracted doing calculations. That's still true on the calculator era, just a bit less so, thus I do think it's important to learn arithmetics... It just the "it improves your brain" that I find highly suspect.
- pc86 11y ago
  To this point is there an easier way to do this than mentally do (9x10)+(9x4), which is what I've done since I was in elementary school (29 now)?
  - davnicwil 11y ago
    Hmm that's interesting - I'd tend to round one of the numbers, whichever is closest to a '5' or '10', to make an 'easier' multiplication, then add / subtract the extra value lost / gained by rounding. Example 9 x 14 = (<10> * 14) - ([1] * 14) = 140 - 14 = 126 key: <> easier rounded number [] deal with rounding 'error'
    - pc86 11y ago
      I've done that before too, but for whatever reason my mind just defaults to adding two numbers rather than subtracting. Probably either habit or I just find it easier.
    - pavel_lishin 11y ago
      Weird, I did it the other way - 9x10 + 9x4 = 90 + 36 = 126
  - nkrisc 11y ago
    I do the same. However, recognizing you can do that is part of learning arithmetic and problem solving in general. I learned that method at an early age and it taught me that most big, scary problems in general are really just a bunch of small problems that can be identified and solved more easily.
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    10 times 14 - 14.
    - neffy 11y ago
      (9* 7) * 2 :)
  - eterm 11y ago
- Retra 11y ago
  The number of people who can do it quickly in their head, maybe. I don't know a single adult who would look at that problem and say they don't know how to solve it. Math is a perishable skill. You get slow at it if you don't use it.
  - matwood 11y ago
    It is just a matter of remembering the tricks. (9x10) + (9x4)
- dagw 11y ago
  But calculators actually did negatively impact basic arithmetic skills. Sure, but the interesting question is if they negatively impacted math skills.
  - a-saleh 11y ago
    Depends what kind of math skills are you looking for. I remember my classmate, 1st year at university, that passed one of his classes just because his calculator was capable of precise enough numeric integration. Next semester he was required to construct proofs as well and he flunked the class.
- w8rbt 11y ago
  I do 9 x 14 in my head by breaking it down. I assume others do this too. Anyone should be able to break a problem down (pre or post tech generation) and do the small parts, then put them together to answer the bigger question. In general, that's the essence of learning. If we stop teaching that, then we're all in trouble ;) 9 x 10 = 90 9 x 4 = 36 90 + 36 = 126
  - gambiting 11y ago
    Ha, very interesting, I do something very similar, although for multiplication by 9 I would multiply by 10(since it requires no mental effort, you just add a zero at the end) then subtract one. So: 14 x 10 = 140 140 - 14 = 126
- theinternetman 11y ago
  > negatively impact basic arithmetic skills Yep and that skill was rendered completely obsolete. Always remember being told "you won't always have a calculator with you!!" because I couldn't be bothered showing my working on my maths work. How did that work out... oh everyone now always has calculators with them. Glad I didn't waste my time memorising multiplication tables.
mhurron 11y ago
Change also doesn't just happen because you dumped a computer in a room. I personally haven't seen a computer used effectively in a classroom, in a large part because the teachers don't know how to integrate them into their lessons. They were given devices and then given no instruction on how to use them.
- jerf 11y ago
  Education is just barely starting to come out of what I call the "... but on a computer!" [1] era, which is when you try to do exactly the same thing you did before, but now it's on a computer (or a tablet in this case). There's basically no advantage to taking existing classroom practices, but sticking them on a computer. You'll have to rewrite the entire education process to figure out how to harness computers. Let me give a concrete example. I am now a fantastic speller, of a language that is one of the harder languages to spell. Am I fantastic because I'm just that awesome? No! Am I fantastic because I have spent years studying lists of words and taking spelling tests? Hell no! I'm fantastic now because every major text input I use now has the red-squiggly line, and the instant I misspell a word and hit space, bam, red line. Backspace & correct. Right-click and select if I really, really can't work it out. (But with backspace & correct actually being way faster, I prefer that.) With instant feedback comes a high rate of learning. I can tell this isn't "cheating", because when I do function in an environment where I don't have this functionality, I retain my spelling skill, the golden standard of whether a skill exists in the tools or the brain. In fact I write many of my blog posts in emacs with no spelling support on, and while I still scan over my posts with a spell checker before posting them, I routinely experience writing several thousand words without a single misspelling, because I have harnessed solid technology to train my brain. I also spell well with handwriting. This is unbelievably fantastic technology for teaching spelling so efficiently and so effectively that it hardly even need be explicitly taught; sit students down in front of this technology and have them simply write and let the red squiggly handle the spelling training. (You'll still need vocabulary training, but, again, let the red squiggly handle the spelling of the vocabulary while the vocabulary training focuses on meanings.) By contrast, doing spelling tests "but on a computer" is a terrible way of doing business! First of all, if the students have to "turn in" the test before they get feedback, you've already missed the sub-second feedback rate that would have been so much better anyhow, but second of all, the fact that you're having a spelling test at all is a huge waste of their time. That's the sort of second-order effect we need to be harnessing with computers in the classroom, and we are only at the very, very beginning of that road. My first grader is just starting spelling tests. He's not quite computer savvy enough to start writing on a computer yet, but you can believe I'll be setting him up with a red squiggly as soon as is practicable. I still believe computers are going to rewrite education from top-to-bottom, but I find it is proving to be one of the most entrenched, hidebound, nearsighted, and even perhaps terrified of real change elements of society we can possibly imagine. We're so scare of what bad things might happen if we don't stuff a conventional education into our children's heads (moreso than ever, thanks to ever-more test-based education) that we're terrified of experimenting with anything new, and the only acceptable change to the "conventional" education is to precommit even more time to it, making it that much harder to work any experimentation into the system. There are major religions that treat their holy texts as more flexible than the way our culture treats the official line of How Children Are Taught. [1]: http://www.jerf.org/iri/post/2916 http://www.jerf.org/iri/post/2916
alistairSH 11y ago
Two counter-points... 1. Computers in classrooms have rarely, if ever, been deployed to entire classrooms in the way that tablets can be. Typically, you'll see one or two PCs in a class, plus a computer lab. PCs don't distract in the same way iPads can. 2. Calculators do make people worse at math. I saw this first-hand with my son. As he went through school, they used calculators for everything. Students began to rely on the calculators for simple arithmetic and took the answers provided as gospel, not realizing that garbage in = garbage out. He, along with many of his peers, never really developed the fluency in math to say to themselves "hmm, that answer looks suspect. Let me try again."
- jacquesm 11y ago
  But you as a parent could easily fix that. Schools don't have a monopoly on education.
  - alistairSH 11y ago
    Of course, and we did. But, I continue to believe that allowing calculators on ALL mathematics work from a young age does the student a disservice. Calculators certainly have their place, but elementary school arithmetic is not that place.
    - jacquesm 11y ago
      Agreed. So I taught my eldest arithmetic at home and discouraged the schools from giving him more calculators until the sums involved more than two digits and other operators than the basic four. After the third calculator they got the message. Interesting aside: the teacher couldn't do anything beyond single digit arithmetic without reference to a calculator either. Pretty sad affair, and I really wonder how someone who does not understand the basics gets to be a teacher.
- Vraxx 11y ago
  Counter anecdote to your calculator anecdote. I grew up using calculators all through school and excelled in knowing math. Using a calculator did not inhibit my ability to question the result of the calculator whatsoever. I don't think calculators are necessarily to blame here.
kps 11y ago
> When calculators were brought in instead of the slide rule > we heard it would be the end of actually "knowing" math. Plato argued in Phaedrus that literacy would be the end of anyone actually "knowing" anything. Why learn if you can just google^H^H^H^H^H^H read it? Same shit, different millennium.

rayiner 11y ago

> My lively little kids stopped talking and adopted the bent-neck, plugged-in posture of tap, tap, swipe. I'm extremely skeptical about the utility of technology in education, but iPads are a bad idea for reasons other than the above. A room full of kids working hard with pre-iPad technology looks like that too, except they're concentrating on books and paper.

farmdve 11y ago
I've noticed this behaviour outside of school and with much older people. I grew up with a computer and I admit I use it at least 15 hours a day every day, but a big chunk of this time I've used for learning and contributing rather than just pure media consumption. Today too many people are engrossed in facebook and can't continue a conversation without flicking and swiping through facebook every 30-60 seconds. Everybody's faces are now illuminated by their devices' screens.

thearn4 11y ago

Are there any really decent examples of devices like tablets being utilized creatively and effectively in a K-12 classroom? I don't want to sound cynical or like a luddite (I would be posting on the wrong site, for sure), but nearly every application that I have used that is meant to be used in a classroom environment has been extremely shallow.

baldfat 11y ago

My school district has lost almost 20% of the teachers and looking at another $13,000,000 in deficit next year. they can afford iPads what a BROKEN Education Funding System we have! Latino students get $0.85 for every dollar spent on White non-Hispanic students. > writes about how we are sacrificing connections, one quick check of our screens at a time The old Computers cause people to disconnect and check out argument again! As an old Geek I have always heard the anti-social behaviors breed by computer use. The funny thing is I was more connected to people then anyone I knew. The one culture that connects and gathers together have been the Geeks. PS iPads for each child in elementary school is a bad idea but not for these reasons.

rtkwe 11y ago
Part of that is that there are funds that are siloed to be spent only on getting tech into the hands of kids so money spent there by the school system couldn't necessarily be spent elsewhere by the school.
- baldfat 11y ago
  Okay great give my Urban District designated funds for iPads.

joshstrange 11y ago

Good lord.... I don't think I can roll my eyes hard enough.... > One of my saddest days in my digital classroom was when the children rushed in from the lunchroom one rainy recess and dashed for their iPads. Wait, I implored, we play with Legos on rainy days! I dumped out the huge container of Legos that were pure magic just a couple of weeks ago, that prompted so much collaboration and conversation, but the delight was gone. My students looked at me with disdain. Some crossed their arms and pouted. We aren’t kids who just play anymore, their crossed arms implied. We’re iPad users. We’re tech-savvy. Later, when I allowed their devices to hum to glowing life, conversation shut down altogether. Look I loved Lego's growing up, I still have massive rubbermaid containers full of them but please tell me why playing with Legos is any more valuable than playing minecraft? Let's not pretend that just because kids like different things now that something MUST be lost. I never played a cup-and-ball game like I'm sure generations before me did (I'm sure they lamented the introduction of things like Lego). Every generation complains about the younger generation and how they are going to turn out wrong because they weren't raised the same way they were or with the same things ("I walked up hill to school both ways"). Did the kids get quieter? Sure, I have no doubt of that but who's to say they weren't communicating even more than before using chat programs? I had teachers in HS CONSTANTLY complain about how students were reading less and less all the time which I took issue with not only because I read plenty of books but also I read tons of articles online. The medium may change but the core concept remains IHMO. Reading Pride and Prejudice doesn't automatically make you a better person than the student who know what's happening in the world like the back of their hand. Lastly not introducing them to tech now is just setting them up for failure down the line. For better or worse the people who know technology will excel more than those who don't. Tech is not it's own little sector/industry, it's everywhere and it's integrated in to everything. To pretend otherwise is to stick one's head in the ground and ignore the world around you.

greyman 11y ago
> but please tell me why playing with Legos is any more valuable than playing minecraft? She did - because it encouraged collaboration and conversation.
- 11y ago

bluedino 11y ago

Access, not immersion. I cringed 15 years ago when school boards pushed to put computers in every classroom. What good is a room full of kids on MySpace and AIM? Sure, you need computer skills for the future. But beyond learning how to use a computer for typing, spreadsheets, word processing, you don't need more than that in the K-12 level. Some kids will want to be programmers. Some kids will want to do music. Some will want to do graphics or desktop publish. Have computers available for kids to do that in computer class or art class or math - but don't push them in every setting.

JoeAltmaier 11y ago
It may be too late to avoid computers in every setting. Or soon will be - witness WalMart's $10 smart phone. We have to learn to deal with this somehow.
joshstrange 11y ago
Why? Seriously why? Technology and software are, not to sound cliche, eating the world. Even something you would consider to not need tech for like farming is seeing great advances from technology including but not limited to: drip irrigation, gps auto-pilot machinery, robots to kill weeds without herbicides, weather patterns, crop patterns, and more. Software and technology is everywhere and if it's not somewhere yet then it will be soon. Why should be churning out tech-illiterate students except for a couple of fields? This seems incredibly short-sighted.

greyman 11y ago

Hm, this is sad. What I wonder is - couldn't this be anticipated beforehand? If they asked me, I would probably predict that what she describes would happen (having iPad and a child at home). Anyway, why on earth would you give the child a mainly-leisure device, why at least not netbook instead?!

CodeWriter23 11y ago

We don't have any of those problems at my daughter's school. First, all the iPads are locked down using some management software, so the kids are locked out of the clock, etc. that can cause unintentional distractions. Second, they limit use to about 30 minutes per day, so traditional lessons are taught using traditional techniques. Third, our school emphasizes social interaction with project-based learning, with the children working in teams. And a sizable portion of their report card deals with socialization and citizenship. The tablet is a tool, alongside pencil, ruler, scissors, etc. NOT the primary device for delivering content. The kids use them (K-2) to make movies, make sketches of the things they are engineering, and math drills. It seems a good lesson was lost on the author: teaching the kids how to appropriately use this type of tool. At my daughter's school, we get it. Starting next year, Grades 3-5 will have an admin account on their take-home MacBook Airs. Yep, sounds totally crazy. The value here is teaching the children not just how to use their computer but how to take responsibility for keeping it running. Hopefully El Capitan rootless mode will provide a robust defense against those pesky Flash 0-day bugs.

bonesinger 11y ago
Agreed, my girlfriend's school implements iPad use and she has none of these problems. They have a single IT person in the school who setup all the iPads. My gf setup guided access on her 30 ipads to lock them down and the kids only use them for 1 or 2 lessons max. The majority of her teaching is down without iPad use. A lot of the author's issues seem to be a lack of awareness on technology, how to use iPads, and even proper classroom management.
- VLM 11y ago
  "They have a single IT person in the school who setup all the iPads" This leads to an important side issue that people outside the .edu system don't understand, that you release a product for kids that is web based, my daughter's teacher can roll it out to the kids in about 10 minutes using a laser printer to make a QR code of the URL for the kids to scan and then do math drills or whatever, literally during a single recess period. In comparison, if you wrap the same exact content in an app, its going to take at least a year to get the app approved by the technology council and possibly installed, or possibly not if another teacher makes a stronger argument for using the limited storage space for video recording kid presentations of learning or their pet app or who knows, assuming you have the political clout, time, and motivation to ram the new app thru the system. Educational apps are dead. Educational websites are where its at.

dangerpowpow 11y ago

These schools have too much money

cthalupa 11y ago
These programs are often funded by federal aid based on the number of students on free or reduced lunch. The money, IIRC, can really only be used for library stuff or technology, and it's a sort of 'use it or lose it' deal.
- tormeh 11y ago
  Yes, but since students usually do better without computers it's better to use it on the library or simply not take the money.
  - joshstrange 11y ago
    Want to provide some kind of source for that claim?
    - tormeh 11y ago
      Yes: http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/education/students-computers-and-learning_9789264239555-en#page5 http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/educati... (it's an OECD study. I don't really know their pedigree as a source of evidence)

jl4ntz 11y ago

I'm not an education professional, but this seems like it would be a better idea for kids that are a little older than third grade.

aaronharnly 11y ago

I'm surprised that (by appearances) these iPads were in essentially full-time 1:1 use in a 3rd grade classroom, when students have a lot of learning to do about and through movement and physical manipulation, not to mention social engagement. From what I've seen[1], in lower elementary grades technology can be very effectively used in the hands of the teacher (for assessment, interpreting student strengths and weaknesses in reading or math, and for projecting rich media). Putting devices in the hands of students in lower elementary is probably best done for very targeted purposes and limited time; for example, keeping the rest of class engaged with an activity while the teacher is giving his or her full attention to working with a reading small group for 30 minutes. [1]I've been part of teams creating teacher-facing tools for elementary, and digital curriculum for middle school and above.

MrBunny 11y ago

So the real issue here is the lack of in person face to face? Which is the continued argument that adults/college students don’t know how to handle social interactions with tech. Is it possible adults/college students don’t know how to handle social interaction with tech around because their exposure was much later in life? Is the lesson these kids learning even more important? How to hold on to humanity in the face of technology. Or possibly humanity and tech has entirely different direction and we are just trying to fight it all together.

joeevans1000 11y ago

Remember when that guy was offering to buy every classroom free TVs in exchange for the school's commitment to have the kids watch a certain amount of programming a day? The programming included ads. This seems the same. Having the kids load linux onto laptops, yeah... I could understand the value in that. Having them work with Raspberry Pi's, I could see the merit in that. Program robots? Definitely. But this debacle of Apple products for kids has been terrible. I do believe the schools and city councils are well meaning. Yes, these expenditures are so huge the city councils have to often get involved. But introducing kids to computing via the walled gardens of Apple are a disservice to them, and a step back, in my opinion. Apple devices are imminently non-configurable... they are designed to walk you through the computing experience, training you to seek the help of 'geniuses' as opposed to becoming your own genius. The cost of these programs is astounding. Districts could be loading linux onto machines bought for relatively nothing... those linux skills would be immediately applicable to Raspberry Pis and to robots. Are schools afraid of really educating their students, as opposed to making them dependents of Apple's consumer culture?

thearn4 11y ago
> Are schools afraid of really educating their students, as opposed to making them dependents of Apple's consumer culture? I think a key component to the problem here is the very clear gap between computing enthusiasts/application developer and your typical K-12 teacher. Which is really not meant to be a knock on our teachers, but I don't think your typical school has the people with the right skill sets to teach "true" computing. They don't realistically have any choice but to rely on the watered-down end user version experienced through the walled-garden of one vendor or another. Which makes most "technology in the classroom" initiatives to me look more like solutions in search of a problem (ie. not a very effective use of district resources).
creshal 11y ago
> Apple devices are imminently non-configurable... they are designed to walk you through the computing experience Which probably seems tempting for budget-strapped schools which can't afford replacing equipment every year nor have the staff to build something themselves around RasPis.

hmottestad 11y ago

Learning how to take control when faced with all these screens and all this information and communication without getting sucked in might be one of the greatest lessons to teach children today.

gnrme 11y ago

iPads are primarily high end content consumption devices - in my mind, that makes them a strange choice for education.

greyman 11y ago
Depends on which apps do you use - there are also a lot of quizzes, puzzles, math and grammar exercises etc. But the problem is, what I also observed on my daughter, that when the exercises are printed on paper, she can just focus on them, since there isn't anything else on the paper. But when on iPad, there is always a lure to just close that educational app and switch to another entertainment one. The attention span is shorted and the focus is shallower, since there is always a temptation to be distracted by something else.

b6 11y ago

This was really painful to read. I don't often think I have vision or significant insight, but it's been obvious to me for as long as I can remember that egregious use of technology in classrooms is a profoundly terrible idea. What, educators were worried children wouldn't spend enough time staring at glowing rectangles, and needed to get a head start? Really? It's not clear whether most adults are even capable of making good decisions about what technologies to invite into their lives. Inflicting computers and software on children in a classroom, I think, demonstrates either profound lack of understanding about the state of these technologies, or judgement, or both. Pens, pencils, crayons, markers, paper, books, musical instruments. These are the kinds of things that belong in classrooms. Children should be reading and drawing and building and talking and playing creatively, learning to think and solve problems based on experiencing the world directly, not trying to sip secondhand information through the straw of a screen, not wasting time with the latest malware and ads and passwords and an infinite amount of other stupid computer bullshit. Technology is a kind of heroin-like thing you should choose to invite into your life later as an adult if you want, not inflicted on you as a child.

Allegrippus 11y ago
And what's a "gathering rug", anyway? Are desks too rough on their little sissy rear ends?
panzagl 11y ago
Tablets are just the next step in replacing teachers with their exorbitant $40K salaries with half that number of $10/hr babysitters, so more money can be funneled to the companies providing the curriculum and testing.
- lintiness 11y ago
  cities like chicago have near 3% property taxes to pay current teachers average salaries over $75k/yr. with health, with vacation, with summers, with cola, with lifetime guaranteed pensions of 70%+. school admins routinely take home $125k+. when are we going to stop with the nonsense that teachers save the world while starving in their yugos?

m52go 11y ago

A thought regarding the argument that iPads encourage anti-social behavior: Many of us here were introduced to this immersive technology as mature adults & don't know how to balance this technology with the demands of humanity (namely, proper social communication). Give me an iPad, and I'll find a way to watch stupid videos and avoid productivity (that's why I don't have one). Or send me a text and I'll make my best effort at checking it ASAP, even if that means losing focus on a real conversation for a few moments. BUT: humans have an innate need to communicate. It's not a generational thing--it's a human thing. Kids aren't going to forget they need to make quality bonds with the people in their lives. They'll still do it. And I bet these kids growing up now will be able to achieve this balance between man and machine better than us. I predict: it's not technology we're going to learn from our kids--it's how to truly live well with it.

facepalm 11y ago

That seems a bit one-sided. It is not all or nothing. My son (age 5) gets to use a tablet from time to time, mostly to watch "Sendung mit der Maus" which is a famous German educational show. They cover various topics in 10 minute blocks. My son has already learned a lot from that. I recently visited an elementary school and all the kids were having lessons about squirrels (it was in autumn). I guess "under the hood" they were learning more than just squirrel stuff, like reading comprehension, writing, structuring information and so on. But other than that, I am pretty sure what takes them days to learn about squirrels in school would be easier taught by Sendung mit der Maus.

limaoscarjuliet 11y ago

Computers will rot your brain. Or... not? I'm 40. I come from an Eastern-Bloc country. Back in the day we raised ourselves, running outside all day, building and breaking friendships by playing sports and other more stupid games (e.g. throwing small rocks at cars - yes, THAT stupid). Just like kids today have Internet, we had a drug - TV. Grandma said: it would rot your brain, it is the Satan, stay away. Apparently the TV did not rot my brain. I do not watch it today (other than Netflix). I cannot stand it. Yes, we did not have fun exactly like Grandma had in her youth (I bet she had some fun ;-), but we had fun. So perhaps tablets are not that bad. Perhaps Internet is not that bad. Sure, it will change us, but - just perhaps - in a good way. Perhaps it is just us, older folks, who cannot see what is good and what is bad for our kids.

csorrell 11y ago
I grew up with a TV that had no boundaries around it and don't feel like it kept me from experiencing a full childhood either. I did waste a lot of time in front of it but television was mostly just a fallback; I preferred playing outside and with other kids. The thing about TV then that is different from technology now, is that we were limited more by whatever programming the cable networks had scheduled between all those commercials. TV was actually boring most of the time, especially during the day. I have kids now and know that with my oldest at least (11 year old boy), when there are no boundaries around screen time, the screens are always on. There is a lot more going on in the world of video games, movies, the internet, etc. these days which make it easier for kids to get lost in.

diivio 11y ago

What....why the heck would you give 8 year olds iPads....my littlest brother was born in 2002 I think and when he turned 8 his school didn't do this nonsense. They should be reading from regular books and get regular chalkboard/whiteboard Lectures and doing hands on activities. Instead of giving them iPads you could have a small set of time in the week to go onto a desktop computer and learn how to keyboard and do those kid like programming exercises and maybe some fun online learning tools. Technology is only bad for kids if you don't know how to ration it and talk to them about it and limit it to educational uses. Just giving them iPads makes no sense. All you're doing is helping Apple lol..... You cannot even teach them practical academic tech stuff like keyboarding or programming using those kid friendly programming applications like Minecraft. Or at least lock down the iPads so it only has educational apps.

Joof 11y ago

I'm sure iPads can be useful, but you know what's more useful? Good teachers.

jvvlimme 11y ago

A while back I attended a presentation and the speaker summed it up nicely: "We live in the 21st century, we go to work in the 20th and our kids go to school in the 19th." And the main hurdle here is not the tech but the teachers. With a few exceptions, teachers are technophobes and they don't have the mindset to support tech in the classroom.