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Our elementary school uses chromebooks from 1st grade on, and I do see a lot of downsides. The most outrageous problem, IMO, is that there are 'modules' that m

• nickbauman 7y ago
  There's no reasonable correlation between spelling and higher intelligence. It can be a proxy for minimum intelligence, absent other information, but that's about all.
  • elliekelly 7y ago
    Who said anything about intelligence? Spelling is a critical component of effective written communication.
    • yorwba 7y ago
      That also means students using spellcheck is not necessarily a problem, so long as they can communicate effectively in writing.
      • deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      • watwut 7y ago
        Education has many goals and one of them is to teach them spelling. The fact that fourth grade homework is spelled correctly does not matter at all - the goal is not to produce correctly spelled homework.
        • _audakel 7y ago
          Of they don't have to memorize random spellings it could free up mental resources for other things. Regardless, why be stuck in the past with things like handwriting or spelling or cursive?
          • NeoBasilisk 7y ago
            You don't think it would be embarrassing to be standing at a whiteboard at work and be unable to spell basic words?
            • yorwba 7y ago
              It won't be embarrassing if no one else in the room can spell better than you. (I once had a Chinese professor forget how to write a certain character while writing on the blackboard. He just laughed it off.) It's also not clear to me that spellcheck will lead to people forgetting how to spell, since it's all about notifying you of spelling mistakes.
            • catalogia 7y ago
              I think in the entirety of my 16 years as a student, I probably wrote less than 100 words total on blackboards or whiteboards. There weren't computers or ipads in those classrooms either. Whiteboards are something I use more often at work these days, but not really when I was in school.
            • mewpmewp2 7y ago
              So we should study things so we don't get embarrassed? Moving on are you embarrassed because you don't know how to swordfight or any other outdated skills?
  • pyuser583 7y ago
    Are you sure there’s no correlation between spelling and intelligence? Can you provide a source? It’s counterintuitive that people with extremely low IQs aren’t more likely to make spelling mistakes.
• griffinkelly 7y ago
  In Japan they don't use any computers etc until a much older age in school; interestingly much of that stems from a worry of hindering a student's ability to write kanji.
  • SkyBelow 7y ago
    Having dabbled in kanji, my initial assumption is that such a worry is justified. With English you have 60 or so characters you need to know how to write, many near duplicates (X vs x, U vs u). Kanji is far more numerous and also seems to have a more artistic emphasis.
    • SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
      Yeah, the worry's pretty unambiguously justified; even today, native speakers sometimes just forget how to write words they know. It's just a question of how much it matters.
  • jdshaffer 7y ago
    Hi there! Unfortunately (or fortunately), they DO use computers in schools in Japan now. Albeit not like handing out Chromebooks, but there is computer classes and computer time. In Middle school, I believe there is a small push to use iPads and the like on occasion. So, there is SOME use, but not like a Chromebook for everyone (Thank heavens!) -- JD in JP
• type0 7y ago
  > Plus the last thing my kid needs is more screentime. I don't want to have to sit next to them all night making sure that they are only doing 'productive' work. And you don't have to, there's youtube-dl, finding the right level material is another story though.
• commandlinefan 7y ago
  > kids with computer access at home can work on them at home More than once, my kids have been required to print something out, often in color. I have a crappy inkjet printer, but the quality is so bad that I've taken their assignments and printed them out at Staples a few times.
  • Agenttin 7y ago
    Taking a moment to proselytize on the value of color laser printers. They're well worth the investment. Inkjet printers are one of the greatest sources of human misery.
    • new2628 7y ago
      Except for the toxic toner-dust laser printers emit.
• gautamdivgi 7y ago
  My kids school allows them to take the Chromebook home. But until now class assignments have always been written assignments. They have "modules" which they do at school, not at home. There were a couple of days where it just got to be too much screen time. I've banned opening the Chromebook at home. It doesn't go up to their room. Allowing them to take the Chromebook home isn't a healthy idea. Too many downsides, I haven't seen a single upside.
• fatnoah 7y ago
  >Our elementary school uses chromebooks from 1st grade on, and I do see a lot of downsides. When my family moved last year, we moved to a school system where Chromebooks are in use. (You can bring your own or the school will provide one for you for free). I was very worried about many of the downsides as well, but after 1.5 years, I think it's actually a pretty big positive. In my case, my son has ADHD, so getting paperwork organized is a huge challenge for him. Being able to access everything is a life saver for him. About 50% of his homework and projects are completed and submitted online. Getting him to complete a creative project on paper is pulling teeth, but making a slide deck for the same thing with lots of clip art, etc. is easy and he'll do countless revisions. I think some of the keys to success are that we only use the Chromebook for school stuff. Anything other than schoolwork happens elsewhere. The school system also does a good job balancing things and the "games" we've seen skew far more towards educational rather than game-like. As parents, we make it easy to find the recreational stuff on a different device, but that's a luxury we have that many don't. The result is that the school computer gets used for school. So, it's possible to make it work well, but I agree that there are many places it can go wrong.
  • Spooky23 7y ago
    I think Chromebooks are awesome, but not at grade 1. Kids are too developmentally different at that age. They range from the kids whose parents delay kindergarten a year to make them better at sports to the kids put into school early to save money on daycare. Using a trackpad and keyboard is too abstract. My kids' school uses iPads as limited enrichment devices until grade 3. As a reward, they get to independently use an iPad to do some things. Grade 3 and up Chrome is there in a similar way, and they start requiring them at grade 5. They are a little conservative, but I think they are getting better outcomes, especially with younger kids.
    • fatnoah 7y ago
      >I think Chromebooks are awesome, but not at grade 1. Great point. Our life w/Chromebooks didn't start until Grade 5.
    • is0tope 7y ago
• dvdkon 7y ago
  I can't agree about poor families being at a special disadvantage here. It's true that a computer costs more than paper and pencils, but families being too poor to afford a cheap chromebook is not a problem inherent in education. It's more of an indicator of a bad state of society. Of course, educators have to work within existing limits, but I wouldn't use it as a criticism of the idea. Besides, kids from poor families are probably already disadvantaged in more significant ways, like not having too much time with their parents, since they have to work longer.
• gowld 7y ago
  > spellcheck is always on, why learn real spelling when the computer fixes it for you? The computer immediately shows spelling errors and corrections, TEACHING correct spelling. > The videos are more about funny jokes than the different phases of matter. ( youtube is a funny one. Non-there are many great youtube channels packed with scientific content, like Smarter Every Day, Veritasium, Mark Rober, CGP Grey, VSauce, engineerguy, Physics Girl, Captain Disillusion, Mathologer, Numberphile, ... > I don't want to have to sit next to them all night making sure that they are only doing 'productive' work. That's a parenting issue not a computer issue. Teach your kids what's allowed and what's not, and check their browser history until they learn how to manipulate it, then check your router logs The main problem with ed tech is the extremely low quality of the apps the schools buy and make the kids use, not the computers and youtube themselves.
  • mrr54 7y ago
    Most of those channels you mention aren't really teaching anything beyond general knowledge and trivia. You could watch every video on every one of those channels and you might know a lot of random facts but it won't make you a physicist or a mathematician or a biologist. >That's a parenting issue not a computer issue. Teach your kids what's allowed and what's not, and check their browser history until they learn how to manipulate it, then check your router logs Ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. There are things I saw on the internet as a child that I still cannot unsee. My parents having seen that I saw them afterwards would not have changed that.
    • jacobolus 7y ago
      There is a lot of excellent inspiring youtube content (including well presented secondary and undergraduate level math and physics lectures) buried in mountains of dreck. People can learn all sorts of useful things from youtube, but they can also easily waste huge amounts of time, become radicalized by extremists, ....
      • mrr54 7y ago
        I'm not saying it can't be inspiring. I'm sure youtube videos about mathematics have inspired quite a few young people to pursue mathematics! They can foster an interest, inspire people to learn, etc. But that doesn't make them educational.
• jacobolus 7y ago
  Why do you think students will better learn to spell without spellcheck? As far as I can tell spending class time on spelling per se and/or grading students on spelling mistakes is a complete waste of time and focus. The ideal way to teach spelling is (1) get kids to read a whole lot, (2) show students their mistakes in context when they make them on as short a feedback loop as possible, without judgment. It’s plausible that showing that a mistake was made but then forcing the student to retype or rewrite the word correctly (without letting them just click once on the word to fix the mistake) would be more effective. But I have seen no evidence that spellcheck reduces people’s ability to learn spelling. I’d like to see some kind of formal study. Disclaimer: I think giving every 1st grade student a chromebook is a terrible mistake.
  • OnlineGladiator 7y ago
    I don't have studies, but the idea is they never have to learn it because the computer just does it for them. So why bother? It's anecdotal, but growing up the students who relied on their calculators never really learned to do mental math the same. The difference was palpable. But I'm not a formal teacher or expert when it comes to the psychology of learning, so I also welcome studies on this subject.
    • jacobolus 7y ago
      Spellcheck is not like a handheld electronic calculator. It doesn’t write for you. It’s more like a system that would let you practice doing arithmetic with pen and paper but then immediately show errors. Look at how people practice board games nowadays: they try making their own moves but get a precise computer analysis to reveal when they have made a blunder on the spot, for real-time feedback. This is not the same as just watching the computer play against itself.
      • OnlineGladiator 7y ago
        You're thinking of it as a pedagological tool. I'm thinking of it as a crutch. The truth is in-between and will vary from person to person, but I'd bet money most people lean on it more than they learn from it.
• MandieD 7y ago
  “Plus the last thing my kid needs is more screentime. I don't want to have to sit next to them all night making sure that they are only doing 'productive' work.” That was my German mother-in-law's rationale for not having a TV in the house while my husband and sister-in-law were kids. “I didn’t have enough time to watch and make sure everything they saw was appropriate.” To her, just because the program claimed to be for children meant that every minute of it (and commercials) was appropriate for her children. I’m going to say it worked out well overall, because that family is way better at sitting down for calm, well-planned meals and just lounging in a quiet living room, talking to each other than my family is. Slight downside for my husband: he is absolutely incapable of tuning out the constantly-running TV my relatives use for background noise.
  • mrr54 7y ago
    I can't even comprehend how anyone could tune out constantly-running TV. Just turn it off!
    • ceejayoz 7y ago
      I know people who sleep to TV, and it genuinely sounds like torture to me.
      • blhack 7y ago
        I do this. I have a really difficult time turning my mind off in silence. If it’s dark and quiet, my mind is working. Listening to old TV shows like TNG helps distract me enough to fall asleep.
        • toasterlovin 7y ago
          Just gonna throw this out there (as a longtime insomniac): perhaps that’s your brains way of telling you that it needs to mull over whatever’s going on in your life. I’ve found that my insomnia is worst when I have so much going on that I’m not getting enough quiet time to process it all.
• catalogia 7y ago
  > - spellcheck is always on, why learn real spelling when the computer fixes it for you? I don't have an answer to that question. At least, not a better one than than some vague "it will build character." Do you have another answer in mind? Something I've been wondering about is the effect of typewriters and word processors on the development of penmanship. Has the average penmanship of a highschool graduate improved or declined with the proliferation of these technologies in schools? Has anybody researched this matter? I have my suspicions, but they're only suspicions. Supposing it got worse though, would that matter? Maybe the dexterity/coordination skills are transferable. But if that's the case, has that manifested in any apparent way? And if not, does it really matter?
  • Gunax 7y ago
    I think penmanship as an art is basically dead. Yes, kids still work on improving their handwriting, but only insofar as it's legible. I actually think this started out with the death of fountain pens, although computers likely contributed. We might be witnessing the death of connected writing.
• seanmcdirmid 7y ago
  > - spellcheck is always on, why learn real spelling when the computer fixes it for you? Why is this a problem? Augmented spelling isn't bad, and you still have to know the differences between similar correctly spelt words. Learning Chinese, I de-empahsized writing them by hand and being able to write them on computer instead, you still need to know about them, what they look like and how they sound, but the muscle memory isn't necessary. > - The de-emphasis on handwriting is mentioned in the article. In-class assignments are still handwritten, but take-home projects can be typed. As a lefty I would have loved this. Our handwriting is already worse because our hand is occluding what we are writing. I got plenty of flack for it in elementary school (to the point that some teachers thought I should I should use my "right" hand instead). The computer was a great equalizer to me, which is one of the reasons I got into them in the first place. As for the screen time issue, I'm more worried about their eye health, but ya, it is an issue all of us parents are facing these days.
  • mwcampbell 7y ago
    > The computer was a great equalizer to me It was an even greater equalizer to me, as a legally blind person. I can see enough to handwrite, but it's laborious. When I was in the third grade, my mother convinced my teachers to let me do as much of my homework as possible on my family's home computer. And sometimes I could do in-class assignments on a computer as well, either in the regular classroom or in the special room for the blind students. I wish we had had ubiquitous laptops back then (late 80s and into the 90s).
  • mrr54 7y ago
    I don't see how your hand occludes what you're writing. It occludes what you've already written. But you've already written that bit, and you can move your hand if you really need to see it. Maybe we should go back to what the Ancient Egyptians did and allow people to write in whatever direction they like!
    • seanmcdirmid 7y ago
      It includes what you have written and much of what you are writing, you are basically writing your character blind. Writing in straight lines is especially problematic on whiteboards (which these days is an interviewing handicap).
• MisterBastahrd 7y ago
  My little girl had a recent projects. She had to choose from one of six entrepreneurs and answer some questions about one of them in complete sentences. How was she to acquire the information about this person? A URL to a biography.com bio. Fine. I have a computer and she was able to read the article. She then answered the questions. To my surprise, she hadn't capitalized a single word. I told her that she needed to capitalize her sentences and proper pronouns, and she was annoyed because "my teacher doesn't make us do that." WTF? First I was annoyed because they sent a link, which means that kids without internet access might not be able to complete the assignment. THEN I was upset because her 3rd grade English teacher didn't care that students were paying attention to basic capitalization. And this is in a REALLY good school district.
• jelliclesfarm 7y ago
  English is not my native language, but the medium of education in my school was English. My grandmother used to make me read three articles from the newspaper. One from the front page, one from the weather pages and one from the sports pages. Puzzles on weekends and it was our job to scan and read out obituaries everyday. She was born in 1921 and never went to school after 8th grade. She learnt how to spell and write in English because she figured newspaper articles were already spell checked and edited for correct grammar etc. I had to chuckle as I imagined re what she would have said if she were alive in our buzzfeed and dailymail times.
  • floren 7y ago
    Go back and look at archives of old newspapers. Seems like any time I read an old newspaper article, say from the 60s, I spot more grammatical mistakes than say a given Buzzfeed or Daily Mail article.
    • jelliclesfarm 7y ago
      Not in India, it wasn’t..the English was impeccable. Newspapers was how so many people who didn’t go to school brushed up and learnt English grammar and spelling. When you are 45 and have 3 kids..and as a housewife have never learnt English..a newspaper lying around was great reading material in the afternoons between cooking and cleaning. And it was cheap..almost free. Self paced language lessons!
• lechemin 7y ago
  Why would you even mention this as a problem when the real problem is that kids are sitting in front of computer screens instead of running around and playing and learning how things work the real way instead of a completely false game version?
• lechemin 7y ago
  But I guess, now that I think about it, that with a shortage of teachers we must get education out to the kids somehow..
• tgsovlerkhgsel 7y ago
  To me, de-emphasizing handwriting seems like going with the times, where handwriting is getting more and more rare. Likewise, if spellcheck is always on in the real world, is correct spelling without it still as important as it was 50 years ago? Society changes. Remember how we were taught that we need to know how to do math on paper because we won't always be carrying a calculator? Nowadays, it may be useful to learn it just to understand the principles behind the math, but it's a lot more useful to learn how to effectively use the calculators (and potential CAS) that we are all carrying in our pockets than to learn how to perform long division on paper. (Long division in particular seems like one of those skills that contribute little to understanding the principles behind it and are unnecessary nowadays). In school, I was taught how to write with various implements - had to write some things with a fountain pen, which is a 100% useless skill. A complete waste of time. What I wasn't taught is how to effectively use a keyboard, because school was too obsessed teaching us how to write with ancient instruments just because they were seen as morally superior to the easier to use modern pens.
  • floriol 7y ago
    But handwriting is important not only for the exact skill, but because it is one of the most demanding fine-movement we will ever do - missing out/not properly learning that in an age where we are truly plastic to it both mentally AND physically - I really do believe - will cause at least a big generational difference , at most rendering certain currently mundane tasks impossible for younger people.
• vonseel 7y ago
  - spellcheck is always on, why learn real spelling when the computer fixes it for you? I wonder if over time you absorb the information anyways. Also, spell-check telling you there's an error isn't the same as automatically fixing the errors and hiding that there was ever an issue... so I think the right click/see list of likely words / pick one is still a learning process. - The de-emphasis on handwriting is mentioned in the article. In-class assignments are still handwritten, but take-home projects can be typed. I'm 30 and my handwriting is getting much worse unless I deliberately try to write perfectly. It's wild. Sometimes I don't write anything by hand for months at a time.
  • dijit 7y ago
    spellcheck can't fix things like "their" and "there", many people autocorrect/spellcheck the wrong word in.
    • dwild 7y ago
      It certainly can, either by detecting the sentence structure, or even more simply, by tagging them all as warning. You then go over them one by one and it can remind you of the difference and ask you whether you used the right one.
  • dwild 7y ago
    > Also, spell-check telling you there's an error isn't the same as automatically fixing the errors and hiding that there was ever an issue... so I think the right click/see list of likely words / pick one is still a learning process. Here in Quebec we got a spellcheck that I sadly only learned about after high school (though it still helped me so much) called Antidote. They not only tell you what's wrong, but also why it's wrong and trick to avoid that mistake. It's in French though, they do have an English version, but I'm not sure if it's as good. It's spell checking is also much better than the one from Word (though again, French may be the issue here)
• hvidgaard 7y ago
  > Plus the last thing my kid needs is more screentime. I don't want to have to sit next to them all night making sure that they are only doing 'productive' work. I don't think that is necessarily the best approach - it get's the job done with regard to YouTube, but there is some derrived effect they're missing. I don't think problem is that children watch funny, but ultimately meaningless videos. That give them basis for a social life with their peers. The way I see it, the problem is when they do it too much. What I've done is limit the the available screen time for them. They can do what they want with that time they're allotted, but beyond that it's for homework or hobbies (drawing, guitar, programming, ect.). They learn to prioritize with they available screen time.
• elfexec 7y ago
  > Kids from low income families are screwed over - again. No matter what, there will be disadvantages, but it's not the end of the world. At least they have less screentime at home right? > Tech parents are always like "f yea, of course you block youtube" "Always"? I highly doubt that. Actually, I bet most tech parents guide their kids on which youtube channels to watch because most tech parents watch youtube. > I don't want to have to sit next to them all night making sure that they are only doing 'productive' work. They are kids. Why are you concerned about 'productive' work. Sounds like you are dealing with a company and employees rather than a family and kids. Calm down. Everything will be okay. People really do turn into their parents.
• glaberficken 7y ago
  Tech-parent here (if you can call me that!) I have a 9 and 4yo. My 9yo watches youtube since she was 2 (on normal restricted mode) I have been teaching my kids (especially the older one) to identify by herself what is quality content that you can learn from Vs what is just dopamine inducing click bait. I think it is delusional to think you are achieving anything by blocking youtube. The earlier you teach your kids to create their own filters the better. They will be exposed to it at some point anyway. My kid learned a lot of stuff by herself already on you-tube. How to draw, how to braid her hair, its really an empowering thing for kids. I wish i had youtube when I was a kid. It just enables them to learn by seeing and imitating, except they are not limited to what they see at school or at home. She already has a great sense of what is a shit video full of non-sense or what might be violent or inappropriate for her and polices herself to stop watching straight away. (obviously there is some supervision involved. She is not allowed to watch yt on the infrequent occasions she is home alone). The other day we were researching something on wikipedia together for one of her homework assignments and i closed a browser tab by accident, she immediately turned and pressed Ctrl+Shift+T. I asked her how did she learn that. You guessed it, on youtube. One day she was drawing on a online drawing app and she closed the tab by accident and was really upset about loosing the drawing she had made, so she went on youtube and searched how to recover lost tabs.
• dwild 7y ago
  > The videos are more about funny jokes than the different phases of matter. I learn so much better when I'm interested in what I learn, making it funny can be a good way to learn it. > I don't want to have to sit next to them all night making sure that they are only doing 'productive' work. Can you explain that one a bit more? Do you expect your kid to always do productive work? Is being productive is all you think matters in life?