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Parents Thought They Wanted Tech in Every Classroom, Now They’re Not So Sure
- Mathnerd314 7y agoI think there are a few viewpoints in this article all mixed together: 1. General anti-screen / anti-tech crowd (not uncommon, e.g. https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/bill-gates-children-no-mobile-phone-aged-14-microsoft-limit-technology-use-parenting-a7694526.html https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/ne...) 2. Anti-authoritarian crowd (privacy concerns, complaints about quality of teaching, etc.) 3. Pro-authoritarian crowd (playing games, not learning anything, low scores on standardized tests) I wonder if these just correlate with political party or there's a more interesting pattern.
- lacker 7y agoExpecting a laptop to improve education because it's "tech" is like reading a book chosen at random and expecting to become more intelligent.
- liability 7y agoThat is in fact a delusion many people seem to have. Reading books is seen as an inherent good, regardless of the book. School children are often told to get one book a week from the library. Any sort of book, it's often thought, will be good for the child. In my personal experience, most go straight for the "Where's Waldo" books. Fun books... but come on.
- randogogogo 7y agoI'd pile on to this sentiment with noticing that many kids who do read these days are not progression past YA fiction in their discretionary reading options.
- SolaceQuantum 7y agoYA fiction isn't any less literature than other fiction.
- liability 7y agoTrue if literature isn't synonymous with 'worthwhile.'
- SolaceQuantum 7y agoIt isn't synonymous with 'worthwhile'. That's just true. For one thing, 'literature' is a form of media, 'worthwhile' is an subjective quality of experience.
- liability 7y agoYou snark, but I think the enclosing conversation was about whether YA fiction is worthwhile (or, whether we should be concerned when people fail to progress past it), not whether it's literature.
- SolaceQuantum 7y agoWhether or not a literal entire genre of literature is worthwhile is itself a question of the worthwhileness, IMO. Historically, this has already been debated multiple times with multiple different genres- experimental fiction, fiction by female authors, fantasy, scifi, fiction by american authors. Must we repeat it for every new genre that becomes popular or even remotely prominent in the sphere of mainstream consumption?
- liability 7y agoI assert that some books have more value to children than others and that the distribution of worthwhile books is different in different genres. I further assert that YA fiction is proportionally less worthwhile than other genres generally accessible to the "young adult" demographic. Can you convince me that any of those assertions is wrong? Pointing out that "YA fiction is literature" doesn't come anywhere close to refuting any of the above assertions.
- commandlinefan 7y ago> regardless of the book Well, as opposed to, say, watching TV (or the somehow even more mindless content that’s on YouTube), do you really disagree?
- liability 7y agoI do disagree. Books are not categorically better than television. It's pretty easy to think of examples where TV seems better than a book. For instance, a Nova documentary seems inherently better than Where's Waldo. I don't think that's a fringe viewpoint. Perhaps a bit more fringe: I think a lot of light young adult fiction has the nutritional density of popcorn and any perceived inherent good in reading those books is likely a product of publishing industry propaganda campaigns. Scholastic Corporation, I am looking at you...
- lacker 7y agoWell, I am glad that my kid is told to get a book a week from the library. I guess the main objection I have to my own statement is that for a child young enough that they are still learning how to read, reading any sort of book that is word-based (i.e. not Where's Waldo) will probably make them a better reader, in the same way that when you are first learning how to code, writing any sort of working 10-line program will probably make you a better programmer.
- davinic 7y agoI think at some point it's good to read any book, as you're learning the process of reading. But later on it definitely matters. I had this same struggle with my daughter when she was in middle school -- she got so many kudos for "reading so much" but the books were all filler. I tried many times to point out that books are just a medium and the content is key.
- derefr 7y agoIt's kind of funny that we can say this; it seems that modern computers have come so far in having a user-friendly UX that you're now learning nothing about computers by learning to use one. Back in the 1980s, just giving kids a computer (without also giving them a bunch of game disks/tapes/carts) would certainly teach them something, in that the only thing you can really do with this "tech" is to fiddle around/tinker with it until you learn how to make it do something you came up with. Just sitting around "being bored on" these computers can—and did—gradually build up a skillset in many of us. There are still computers that are like this, of course. The Arduino comes to mind. There are also environments you could lock a modern computer down into that do the same. As well, there are apps and "games" that teach you a ton just by attempting to understand the model behind them, which bored children will stumble into and then learn from under the guise of "wasting time at recess." (The best thing you can preinstall on a computer that a middle-schooler is going to be using is an interactive kinematics sandbox program.)
- jseliger 7y agoThat is also my experience; I posted this in a sibling thread but it's also relevant here: https://jakeseliger.com/2008/12/28/laptops-students-distraction-hardly-a-surprise https://jakeseliger.com/2008/12/28/laptops-students-distract.... It seems apparent to most classroom instructors that most tech is a distraction, not an enhancement. Obviously exceptions should be made for disabilities and there are some uses—spaced-memory repetition software or some computer science classes can use tech effectively. But in most classes it's detrimental rather than helpful.
- austincheney 7y agoWhen did books become bad? Now to save money schools give out tablets or chrome books and the kids just watch YouTube all day.
- adamnemecek 7y agoBooks do have a lot of disadvantages (and I say this as someone who spends A LOT of money on books). They are heavy, expensive, take up space, you can't search them etc. However, I find it almost impossible to learn hard subjects from a PDF. Printed book is so much better. I wonder why.
- austincheney 7y agoProbably because you can’t search it. You actually have to pretend to read it.
- nomadluap 7y agoAnd if you pretending hard enough, then you might just learn something!
- justicezyx 7y agoSchool books are expensive is because they are produced by corps with interests to make profit... I see no reason why school books cannot be made cheaply...
- toper-centage 7y agoBiggest disadvantage of books is that they are shareable, reusable, and DRM free. For business, anyway. There's lots of cool things you can do to enhance learning with computers, like daily quizzes, discussion boards, etc. But replacing books is not one of them IMO
- somatic 7y agoThere are studies showing that e-texts are significantly less “assimilable” than paper texts. I think the consensus speculation is that the physicality of the paper gives the brain a better understanding of the text, where you are in the text, and so on. Text on a screen, on the other hand, has an effectively infinite “depth”, among other things.
- baq 7y agoi'm a parent and i want to minimize distractions in the classroom and tech is the greatest distraction ever, e.g. me posting here
- quotha 7y agoIt is such a big problem, we have to get the proprietary tech OUT -- and let the teachers TEACH
- Isamu 7y ago>There is a role for technology in school, she says, but it is a matter of how much and at what age. Something about the school procurement process that knocks all the nuance or subtlety out of the goals. This issue with technology goes way, way back decades. Always there are promising trials, it works here and there, under the right circumstances, and so some school wants to roll it out broadly and it doesn't work as well. Then there is a rollback. [edit] And I could say the same about software development processes.
- khawkins 7y ago>Something about the school procurement process that knocks all the nuance or subtlety out of the goals. The people authorizing the deals, administrators and school boards, aren't incentivized to improve outcomes, they're incentivized to make the people who put them there seem like they're doing something valuable. If parents could choose the schools they were sending their children to, instead of being saddled with whomever the state has appointed to run a particular school, they'd pick schools for which evidence has proven better outcomes. Sure, they might be swayed by flashy tech, but as other comments have said the push for tech didn't largely come from parents.
- mrkurt 7y agoThere's been a big backlash against screens in my high privilege/high achieving community. My dyslexic/ADHD daughter did a trial day at a private school with a "no screens in classrooms" policy. It was awful for her, because she's grown comfortable using text to speech, dictation, and other tools to do cope with the friction in her brain. My other kids benefit in different ways, they've all learned to do independent research way earlier than I ever did and know how to find answers to pretty much anything they think about. None of our kids have access to Candy Crush or other gamble-games, though, so they tend to have healthier screen habits than their friends. All the quotes from parents in the article make it sound like they're helpless. I think that's an indication of just how bad tooling and education for _parents_ is.
- faizshah 7y agoI agree that there's many beneficial things technology can bring to the classroom in moderation. But even when we didn't have chromebooks in every class, everybody in my grade used to go to great lengths to figure out how to play flash games, runescape, minecraft etc. on the school computers. I'm sure current students are even more sophisticated in distracting themselves now that chromebooks are assigned to each student.
- mrkurt 7y agoI consider "getting around technical restrictions" to be a big part of learning about technology! Fortunately I'm better at restricting than my younger kids are at finding workarounds. My oldest got pretty good, though, but she's has to learn to learn to manage her own distractions anyway.
- jseliger 7y agoAlmost all of these policies have exceptions for disabilities. Most technology seems to be used to detract from learning: https://jakeseliger.com/2008/12/28/laptops-students-distraction-hardly-a-surprise https://jakeseliger.com/2008/12/28/laptops-students-distract... rather than enhancing it. Obviously there are exceptions, like spaced-memory repetition software or some computer science classes. But focus and concentration seem to be in short supply, relative to technology.
- rjkennedy98 7y agoThis headline bothers me. What evidence is there that parents drove the use of technology in schools? From the beginning parents have been extremely skeptical about the use of technology and have always voiced concerns. There is every evidence that this was driven by administrators responding to incentives and mandates, and tech companies hoping to make money selling software and devices. There has never been any evidence that giving kids screens helps them learn, and as we see in the real world, the exact opposite is what is happening.
- benologist 7y agoDoes it matter who drove adoption? Surely at some point schools would have explored using tablets in education anyway? They weren't going to forever ignore the possibilities, and it didn't enhance education and now we know. That's just a valid outcome to a question we had to ask.
- randogogogo 7y agoI cannot speak to motives behind the move but my experience has also been that administration has driven this. My kids schools are 100% Chromebooks. This has been great for scheduling extracurricular activities and making their backpacks lighter. It really hasn't improved their ability to learn mathematics or English.
- coding123 7y agoAnd... Shouldn't they have heavy backpacks for you know health?
- Qwertystop 7y agoIf you think kids need more exercise, increase the time spent in gym class/phys-ed.
- caconym_ 7y agoWrong! We should make the backpacks heavier, cut gym/phys-ed altogether, and funnel the resulting surplus into purchasing more educational software[aaS] to confuse and frustrate our children and add to their already burdensome workload.
- meristem 7y agoThere is a panic regarding having children 'ready' for the future-- and having kids be proficient in 'future' technologies/ needs. We in tech drive this, actually, as salaries in the area outpace other salaries. That pushes technology into the classroom, which is not the same as thoughtful uses of well-tooled technology that aids students.
- beamatronic 7y agoI feel that one could teach a fairly complete CS class with a piece of chalk and a chalkboard.
- behringer 7y agoi feel like CS is lightyears ahead of where it was when I was in school. My son learned Python and Java in HS, something I would only have dreamed of when I was his age. Instead I got to learn MS Office.
- jrochkind1 7y agoA) On the other hand, in middle school in the 80s, I learned Commodore 64 BASIC. (and my DAD learned BASIC because when you bought an Apple IIe, the manual suggested that learning BASIC was how you learned how to use the Apple IIe, and included a tutorial, so my Dad just followed it. I think programming has become a lot less common as a 'basic computer skill', not more). B) I think you are confusing CS with programming/software engineering. They are related, but the "CS" class the post you are responding to suggested with nothing but a chalkboard would not have it's students ready for a job getting paid programming. (I don't mean this as an insult to you). On the other hand, the class in which you were learning MS Office probably wasn't CS at all. A class involving Python and Java might get someone more ready for a job getting paid programming, but may or may not be a CS class, depending on... if it includes any CS.
- war1025 7y agoChalkboards are an underappreciated tool.
- tolmasky 7y agoI'm aware that funds aren't necessarily discretionary, but could the money spent on all this technology be redirected to teacher salaries (or other basic supplies) if the technology is dumped? I'd be curious to see the breakdown of funds that gets used for iPads/Chromebooks/etc. As someone who thinks that children should absolutely be learning programming as soon as possible, I don't really think that means they need brand new whatever every year (not implying that's what is currently happening). When I was growing up, we had incredibly old machines (in a computer lab, or sometimes a couple shared computers pre classroom), and I think this actually worked fine (perhaps better in some respects now -- since a "benefit" of an old Apple II is that its pretty focused on the one task at hand, and can't load up other things).
- meangrape 7y agoOne of my problems with the way technology is used in the classroom (at least in my kid's school) is that they're being trained how to operate applications -- not how to use a computer.
- gervase 7y agoThis seems like it would be related to a broader shift (among tech parents, at least [0]) from digital to analog. From my perspective, it seems like a pendulum. On the whole, baby boomers didn't adapt to the advent of computers very well. However, they generally recognized their value, and provided access to the devices in a mostly unstructured way. Thus, their Gen X/millennial children are overall more technically savvy than they. Now, those children are becoming parents themselves, and reflecting on the potential negative aspects of unlimited screen access, social media, widespread gamification, etc. on their own children. Providing the same unrestricted access to their own children may seem unlikely to produce the same results that they themselves experienced. Thus, alternatives like reducing or restricting access at home/school become more common/popular. Perhaps the next generation will resent their parents' restrictions, or feel left behind technically, and swing back the other way? [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18309305 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18309305
- fullshark 7y agoAs a parent I basically want tech to enhance learning if possible in the classroom. I don't want tech that 1. Replaces teachers / supervision. 2. Distracts students. It seems like administrators are particularly interested in 1 for cost savings reasons, and are unable to solve 2.
- Nasrudith 7y agoTo be a smartass technically books qualify as #1 - and can count as #2 depending on their interests.
- theandrewbailey 7y ago> An interactive program delivered an image of a token on the screen when she completed an assignment. She could then trade in those tokens to play games. > To Dr. Boyd, a professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins, it looks more like a video game than a math class. She isn’t sure if the lessons are sticking with Jane and worries about the hyper-stimulating screen time. I think gamifying school is probably a good idea. How many kids don't know the parts of speech, but have memorized the Pokedex?
- khawkins 7y agoEven in the late 90s/early 2000s they had a program set up in my district which gamified reading books. For the books in the program you could choose to take a quiz that would effectively test whether you read and comprehended the content. If you passed the quiz, you'd get points based on how well you did on the quiz and how long the book was. Those points would add up and you could use them for prizes at the end of the semester.
- colpabar 7y agoI have to agree. I've accepted that the Pokedex part of my brain is never going to be reclaimed. What worries me though is that it will end up being even worse than standardized testing. I fear that these "games" will be nothing more than smaller, more frequent tests that will be used to generate metrics which will be used to "fund" individual students.
- Nasrudith 7y agoThat brings to mind a classic issue - it isn't the tech but how it is used. The same standardized test approach which combines the worst features of feudalism and bueracracy with the virtues of neither was there before. The games or lack of them won't change that. I vividly remember how in Elementary School they had workbooks after workbooks of multiple choice analogies with words used within occasionally unexplained. They insisted it was all very important when we asked why so overboard. The real answer became obvious when the SAT was changed to have a writing section instead of an analogies one and they promptly vanishes into the void only to appear on standardized tests four questions a year at very most. They didn't even have the honesty to say "It is used a lot for in important test."
- scroot 7y ago"The music is not in the piano"
- OedipusRex 7y agoI work in the EdTech realm writing software to keep students on track. Technology in the classroom is a means and not and ends, it all depends on usage. We have two "model" teachers. The old guard teacher who started their career before computers were in classrooms, those teachers utilize our technology to accomplish a task (block websites, etc) The other model teacher is someone who welcomes technology into the classroom, they utilize the deeper functionality of our program, and normally have more than one technology of some kind running in the classroom. Both are great teachers, they just use our product differently.
- geebee 7y agoI've reflected a lot on this, as a parent. I can't quite get behind the "no computer screen" thing, because a bit part of me wants to get my kids into unix, python, and interesting electronics projects from an early age. Another part of me sees this as a potentially endless loop of gummy bear videos (and, to paraphrase "war of the roses", "by the time this is all over, an argument about gummy bear videos will seem like one of your lighter moments"). I've come to a general, porous, leaky set of guidelines. The closer you are to black text on a white background (or white text on a black background), you're more likely it is you're doing something interesting. That could mean reading a novel or analyzing data with python or R or unix on the command line or in a relatively lightweight IDE. If lots of distractingly flashy colors and sounds are going on around you, then odds are you're getting sucked into the screen vortex, even if you aren't actually looking at a screen. And like I said, porous. There are, indisputably, phenomenal comic books (ok, graphic novels) with great depth. Videos and movies can have tremendous artistic value. Those flashy images on a screen could be watching Citizen Kane. That black and white text could be 101 fart jokes. What the hell do I know. But overall, I feel like the equation holds, sort of. If you're looking at symbols on a background, odds are this isn't the wrong kind of screen time, and it could be very intellectually enriching.
- mrkurt 7y agoWe also have porous guidelines for our kids. The ones that worked the best for us are: * Only creative / educational games (including minecraft), and those for less than 2 hours per day. They don't get games that are heavily optimized for addiction. * No screens in their bedrooms ever. As my oldest got more of a social life, we noticed the drama of friends kept following her around and she never naturally escaped from it. Once we stopped letting her have her phone in her room her ability to deal with drama bombs improved drastically. * No video apps at all for the younger kids. Screentime makes it reasonably easy to enforce this stuff on iPads, and the original Screen Time (https://screentimelabs.com/ https://screentimelabs.com/) is even better on Android.
- tsumnia 7y ago"An interactive program delivered an image of a token on the screen when she completed an assignment. She could then trade in those tokens to play games. To Dr. Boyd, a professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins, it looks more like a video game than a math class." I think this is a core part of the problem. Gamification, perceived usefulness, and enjoyment are being used in lieu of actual learning gains. I believe, however there is too much focus on "enjoyment" rather than learning. As an example, my research is on rote practice of writing code. Literally retyping syntax, because I believe the technical literacy is the foundation to conceptual understanding. This is no different than a cook, musician, athlete, even doctors. However, retyping syntax is not "fun". It's not "interactive". It's not meta-cognitive. It's drilling. But the responses I get are near bimodal. Some people fully understand the logic and others outright argue against it. However, rote practice is (in my opinion) the first step to high-level learning. Meta-cognitive skills like self-explanation are great but only if you have the prior knowledges to utilize them. They should not be given to a pure novice; however, no one wants to admit to being a novice. Somehow, that's for children, but I'm an adult / young-adult / "big boy"! True novices should be given the chance to learn these lower level skills without feeling like its beneath them or treated as "lesser" than higher level skills.
- markbnj 7y agoMy wife and I raised three daughters, all of whom are in their 20's now. Their generation went from no home Internet in the mid-90's to smart phones in their pockets today. As parents we struggled like everyone simply because we didn't know what was right. I would describe the phases we went through as something like: uncertainty combined with attempts at control, followed by a loss of any illusion of control as the channels proliferated. I specifically came to feel that we were experiencing a grand and fundamental change in human society and that anything I tried to do to stand as a filter between the girls and the rest of the world that was now pouring in would do more harm than good. In the end, they all came through it fine. I won't rattle off metrics of their normality, but they are doing fine, along with all the others of their generation that we came to know over the years. Being human they proved impressively adaptable in the face of change, even high-velocity vertigo-inducing change. As for my wife and I, we still don't know how much technology and information is the right amount, at home or in schools. In fact the only thing I think we learned on that score is how much we didn't know, how much we still don't know, and how terribly weak our ability to predict how any of this will work out is. Probably parents felt similarly 30 or 40 years after the invention of printed material, or radio, or phones. Regardless, the genie is well out of the bottle.
- war1025 7y agoMy in-laws are very anti-public schools. My wife was home schooled for a few years and otherwise went to a private religious school. Before we had kids, I thought that was the most ridiculous opinion I'd ever heard. The closer our kids get to school age, the more reluctant I am to entrust them to the school system. Probably just paranoia, I guess. But it seems like the majority of what I hear about schools anymore is how they have the same issue as the corporate world: being too focused on showing short-term gains instead of actually doing what is best over the long-term.
- iamleppert 7y agoThe biggest predictor by far of a child's success at school is and always remains their parent. Adding technology cannot make up for a parent who doesn't teach their child study skills, good learning habits and places an importance on the value of education. Parents should look at themselves if their child is not performing rather than put the blame on some tool like technology.