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I 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 b

I 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 ago
And... Shouldn't they have heavy backpacks for you know health?
- Qwertystop 7y ago
  If you think kids need more exercise, increase the time spent in gym class/phys-ed.
  - caconym_ 7y ago
    Wrong! 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.
- rhino369 7y ago
  I cannot vouch for the accuracy, but I've heard it speculated that heavy backpacks are bad for kids backs.
- moate 7y ago
  Gonna need you to flesh this one out for me. Why would a heavy backpack be healthier? They tend to promote bad posture and back/neck/shoulder problems. The extra weight resistance during walking probably isn't going to outweigh the potential negatives. https://www.nbcnews.com/better/health/why-bags-are-wrecking-our-backs-ncna803541 https://www.nbcnews.com/better/health/why-bags-are-wrecking-...
deckarep 7y ago
Somehow my daughter gets to carry both her Chromebook and her heavy books. :/
quotha 7y ago
Chromebooks have absolutely no place in the classrooms, I am dreading my kids entering what has become of this school system.
- derefr 7y ago
  Chromebooks specifically? What's the difference, if the point is just to get kids to interact with an online worksheet/test web-app; or to write a research report (a common reason a class period was spent in a computer lab ten years ago); or to just have their textbooks loaded onto them? For all of those activities, all you need is a web browser; it doesn't matter what it's running on. (Also, if you're clever, you can do things like finding a web-app that lets you use them as a substitute for those vote-clickers that some university lecturers use to gauge pre-lesson knowledgeability.)
  - cliffy 7y ago
    Probably: Lock-in to Google's proprietary walled garden. Probably loaded with school spy-ware too. Unfortunately a lot of parents won't care, and the school system won't give them a choice either. However, it leads to shit like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbins_v._Lower_Merion_School_District https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbins_v._Lower_Merion_School... The ideal is BYOD. If all you really need is a web browser, then let parents and kids decide what to use together. If you really give a shit about cheating use analog quizzes/tests. It's not perfect, but the old ways are easier to police.
    - derefr 7y ago
      > The ideal is BYOD. These aren't the student's devices; they're enterprise-MDM workstations that the kids happen to carry around. Think of them as a computer lab that the kids don't have to go to; not as Personal Computers per se. They're probably logged into them with a school-issued GSuite email rather than their personal Google Account, too, and told to not use these computers for non-school activity. (I'm not intimately familiar with the Chromebook education initiative, but if it's anything like Apple's initiative with iPads, then that's how it's set up.) And no, the school wouldn't ever be okay with not using Mobile Device Management; MDM is how they ensure that a classroom full of laptops all on a LAN together aren't spreading malware like the digital equivalent of a kindergarten in flu season; and how they ensure the devices don't get spyware installed onto them by someone else (some stranger; or someone's parents!) to steal kids' contact info and location details with the goal of kidnapping or worse. I'd actually think that BYOD would be worse in such a case, as you'd have to contaminate your personal device with an enterprise MDM profile in order to get it on the network. Better to just tell the kid that they can have a personal device, but they also have to have this school-managed device, and that they should think of them as separate things and not use one for the activities better suited to the other. (This also neatly solves the "school spy-ware" worry as well, because if the students are only doing school-work on their laptop and are just using their phones+ISP data plans to text/email/etc., then the school sees none of that.)
triceratops 7y ago
> It really hasn't improved their ability to learn mathematics or English. Lightening backpack load and improved scheduling are pretty good outcomes, as long as learning hasn't gotten worse. Why would learning ability (for basics like the 3Rs) be significantly improved using tech? The students are still the same after all.
- superfrank 7y ago
  I used to work at an ed-tech company. When we talked with teachers, one of the things we learned that students were doing was opening up shared Google Docs during lectures and taking notes collaboratively. Even more interesting is that if one of the students didn't understand something the teacher said, they could use the comment function to make a note and other students would then explain the concept to them. I think you are correct that the concepts these students are learning probably aren't improved too much by technology, but there are tons of ways in which students can learn and collaborate in real time which wouldn't be possible without devices like chromebooks.
  - randogogogo 7y ago
    Huh, that's an interesting idea. I'll to ask my kids about this kind of sharing this afternoon.

coding123 7y ago

And... Shouldn't they have heavy backpacks for you know health?

Qwertystop 7y ago
If you think kids need more exercise, increase the time spent in gym class/phys-ed.
- caconym_ 7y ago
  Wrong! 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.
rhino369 7y ago
I cannot vouch for the accuracy, but I've heard it speculated that heavy backpacks are bad for kids backs.
moate 7y ago
Gonna need you to flesh this one out for me. Why would a heavy backpack be healthier? They tend to promote bad posture and back/neck/shoulder problems. The extra weight resistance during walking probably isn't going to outweigh the potential negatives. https://www.nbcnews.com/better/health/why-bags-are-wrecking-our-backs-ncna803541 https://www.nbcnews.com/better/health/why-bags-are-wrecking-...

deckarep 7y ago

Somehow my daughter gets to carry both her Chromebook and her heavy books. :/

quotha 7y ago

Chromebooks have absolutely no place in the classrooms, I am dreading my kids entering what has become of this school system.

derefr 7y ago
Chromebooks specifically? What's the difference, if the point is just to get kids to interact with an online worksheet/test web-app; or to write a research report (a common reason a class period was spent in a computer lab ten years ago); or to just have their textbooks loaded onto them? For all of those activities, all you need is a web browser; it doesn't matter what it's running on. (Also, if you're clever, you can do things like finding a web-app that lets you use them as a substitute for those vote-clickers that some university lecturers use to gauge pre-lesson knowledgeability.)
- cliffy 7y ago
  Probably: Lock-in to Google's proprietary walled garden. Probably loaded with school spy-ware too. Unfortunately a lot of parents won't care, and the school system won't give them a choice either. However, it leads to shit like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbins_v._Lower_Merion_School_District https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbins_v._Lower_Merion_School... The ideal is BYOD. If all you really need is a web browser, then let parents and kids decide what to use together. If you really give a shit about cheating use analog quizzes/tests. It's not perfect, but the old ways are easier to police.
  - derefr 7y ago
    > The ideal is BYOD. These aren't the student's devices; they're enterprise-MDM workstations that the kids happen to carry around. Think of them as a computer lab that the kids don't have to go to; not as Personal Computers per se. They're probably logged into them with a school-issued GSuite email rather than their personal Google Account, too, and told to not use these computers for non-school activity. (I'm not intimately familiar with the Chromebook education initiative, but if it's anything like Apple's initiative with iPads, then that's how it's set up.) And no, the school wouldn't ever be okay with not using Mobile Device Management; MDM is how they ensure that a classroom full of laptops all on a LAN together aren't spreading malware like the digital equivalent of a kindergarten in flu season; and how they ensure the devices don't get spyware installed onto them by someone else (some stranger; or someone's parents!) to steal kids' contact info and location details with the goal of kidnapping or worse. I'd actually think that BYOD would be worse in such a case, as you'd have to contaminate your personal device with an enterprise MDM profile in order to get it on the network. Better to just tell the kid that they can have a personal device, but they also have to have this school-managed device, and that they should think of them as separate things and not use one for the activities better suited to the other. (This also neatly solves the "school spy-ware" worry as well, because if the students are only doing school-work on their laptop and are just using their phones+ISP data plans to text/email/etc., then the school sees none of that.)

triceratops 7y ago

> It really hasn't improved their ability to learn mathematics or English. Lightening backpack load and improved scheduling are pretty good outcomes, as long as learning hasn't gotten worse. Why would learning ability (for basics like the 3Rs) be significantly improved using tech? The students are still the same after all.

superfrank 7y ago
I used to work at an ed-tech company. When we talked with teachers, one of the things we learned that students were doing was opening up shared Google Docs during lectures and taking notes collaboratively. Even more interesting is that if one of the students didn't understand something the teacher said, they could use the comment function to make a note and other students would then explain the concept to them. I think you are correct that the concepts these students are learning probably aren't improved too much by technology, but there are tons of ways in which students can learn and collaborate in real time which wouldn't be possible without devices like chromebooks.
- randogogogo 7y ago
  Huh, that's an interesting idea. I'll to ask my kids about this kind of sharing this afternoon.