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I'm not sure why we give kids smart phones and laptops. This is actually unavoidable. Your school will give your kid a laptop, even if you prohibit it at home.

I'm not sure why we give kids smart phones and laptops. This is actually unavoidable. Your school will give your kid a laptop, even if you prohibit it at home. Imagine being 14 and having an entire laptop to prevent you from ever needing to focus in class. I never would have managed it.

squigz 10mo ago
Probably because computers are and have been a fundamental part of living in society for decades now. I had a laptop in school at that age. I managed it.
- everdrive 10mo ago
  Kids get ChromeOS and learn how to navigate their school's UI. They're not learning computing. They're given a math question which could have been on a piece of paper or in book.
  - squigz 10mo ago
    This seems like a really narrow perspective on kids' use of computers in schools, but even if that's the case, it seems to me the solution might be to... teach them computing, not take it away. Or, we might recognize that there's lots of technology we don't learn the ins-and-outs of and yet that are fundamental to our lives, even if we could technically get by without it Anyway, I would think that having a simple, locked-down OS at school is preferable than having a laptop on which they can do whatever they want, at least to the issue of being distracted in class. Also, a related comment points out that not all is doom-and-gloom - surprisingly, schools can actually implement sane usage restrictions for laptops in class.
    - everdrive 10mo ago
      >Anyway, I would think that having a simple, locked-down OS at school is preferable than having a laptop on which they can do whatever they want, at least to the issue of being distracted in class. This may be true, but even more preferable than this would be no laptop.
    - immibis 10mo ago
      "computing" is not what today's internet is about. I think you'd actually have more success teaching computing if the internet was turned off.
  - alexfoo 10mo ago
    They still engage, possibly even more so, with the topic if it's setup and structured the right way. (It's all too easy for lazy teachers/schools to just shove work onto a laptop for the kids to do and then pay little attention, but this was also definitely true back in the days of work from books or sheets of paper.) My 15 year old can touch type(*) at about 60wpm, knows how to browse the Internet and drive a search engine effectively, can create reasonable presentations using Powerpoint or equivalent, can create nicely formatted docs, is comfortable with spreadsheets, not be fazed by online forms or similar, has a basic understanding of cyber-security/safety, password security and password reuse, spotting scams, etc. All of these are useful skills that my parents in their 70s struggle with. Having a phone means they're able to keep in touch with their friends far more effectively than I was when I was that age. They can keep in touch with us (parents) much more easily. They can see how much money they have as they've got a banking app on their phone. They can check the weather themselves. They can check the train and bus times themselves. I trust my kid to use the phone (and laptop) responsibly. In return they know that I will occasionally ask to check what they're doing just to make sure they're safe. I don't want to have to police it. Back to the school bit, they could be doing Maths questions from a piece of paper or in a book, which they do do some or most of the time, but their engagement levels seem good when doing it on a laptop via Sparx or MyMaths or whatever. Plus things can be a lot more interactive on a laptop/tablet. Being able to tweak values/variables/functions/etc and see how things change in real time, that's laborious to do again and again with pencil and paper. > They're not learning computing. No, but most will have that option to if they want. My kid wasn't interested and so didn't choose Computer Science as an option despite being able to do various simple things in python. Their interests lay elsewhere (sport, music, etc). * I remember watching when my kid sat down at my work computer and wasn't fazed at all by the entirely blank keyboard I use. There was just a "oh, that's cool" and off they went typing away.
- rescripting 10mo ago
  This is textbook survivorship bias. If you’ve spent any time in a classroom in the last 5 years you’d know there are some kids who manage it, and lots of kids who absolutely don’t.
  - squigz 10mo ago
    Maybe the past 5 years have some other variables that might have contributed to that, huh?
alexfoo 10mo ago
> Imagine being 14 and having an entire laptop to prevent you from ever needing to focus in class. Depends on the school obviously, but at my 15 year old's school they default to their laptops staying in their bag and only get them out for specific tasks when directed by the teacher. The rest of the time the laptop is in their bag. They don't just sit there staring at a laptop during every lesson and goofing around on the Internet. Also all of these school provided laptops have pretty extensive keylogging/etc installed. The laptops are not provided for personal use and the school picks up pretty quickly on any student browsing websites they shouldn't be looking at or typing things they really shouldn't be typing, even when at home and not on the school's wifi. The students are all aware of this and cope quite well.
- everdrive 10mo ago
  Leaving it in the bag sounds really reasonable. I'm not really worried about _where_ a kid goes on his laptop. Even if all you had was wikipedia that would be way more interesting than what you were being taught in your lecture. It's the opportunity for distraction here which is what I'm worried about rather than what the kid actually does online. (social media is its own problem, but I'm not addressing that here)

squigz 10mo ago

Probably because computers are and have been a fundamental part of living in society for decades now. I had a laptop in school at that age. I managed it.

everdrive 10mo ago
Kids get ChromeOS and learn how to navigate their school's UI. They're not learning computing. They're given a math question which could have been on a piece of paper or in book.
- squigz 10mo ago
  This seems like a really narrow perspective on kids' use of computers in schools, but even if that's the case, it seems to me the solution might be to... teach them computing, not take it away. Or, we might recognize that there's lots of technology we don't learn the ins-and-outs of and yet that are fundamental to our lives, even if we could technically get by without it Anyway, I would think that having a simple, locked-down OS at school is preferable than having a laptop on which they can do whatever they want, at least to the issue of being distracted in class. Also, a related comment points out that not all is doom-and-gloom - surprisingly, schools can actually implement sane usage restrictions for laptops in class.
  - everdrive 10mo ago
    >Anyway, I would think that having a simple, locked-down OS at school is preferable than having a laptop on which they can do whatever they want, at least to the issue of being distracted in class. This may be true, but even more preferable than this would be no laptop.
  - immibis 10mo ago
    "computing" is not what today's internet is about. I think you'd actually have more success teaching computing if the internet was turned off.
- alexfoo 10mo ago
  They still engage, possibly even more so, with the topic if it's setup and structured the right way. (It's all too easy for lazy teachers/schools to just shove work onto a laptop for the kids to do and then pay little attention, but this was also definitely true back in the days of work from books or sheets of paper.) My 15 year old can touch type(*) at about 60wpm, knows how to browse the Internet and drive a search engine effectively, can create reasonable presentations using Powerpoint or equivalent, can create nicely formatted docs, is comfortable with spreadsheets, not be fazed by online forms or similar, has a basic understanding of cyber-security/safety, password security and password reuse, spotting scams, etc. All of these are useful skills that my parents in their 70s struggle with. Having a phone means they're able to keep in touch with their friends far more effectively than I was when I was that age. They can keep in touch with us (parents) much more easily. They can see how much money they have as they've got a banking app on their phone. They can check the weather themselves. They can check the train and bus times themselves. I trust my kid to use the phone (and laptop) responsibly. In return they know that I will occasionally ask to check what they're doing just to make sure they're safe. I don't want to have to police it. Back to the school bit, they could be doing Maths questions from a piece of paper or in a book, which they do do some or most of the time, but their engagement levels seem good when doing it on a laptop via Sparx or MyMaths or whatever. Plus things can be a lot more interactive on a laptop/tablet. Being able to tweak values/variables/functions/etc and see how things change in real time, that's laborious to do again and again with pencil and paper. > They're not learning computing. No, but most will have that option to if they want. My kid wasn't interested and so didn't choose Computer Science as an option despite being able to do various simple things in python. Their interests lay elsewhere (sport, music, etc). * I remember watching when my kid sat down at my work computer and wasn't fazed at all by the entirely blank keyboard I use. There was just a "oh, that's cool" and off they went typing away.
rescripting 10mo ago
This is textbook survivorship bias. If you’ve spent any time in a classroom in the last 5 years you’d know there are some kids who manage it, and lots of kids who absolutely don’t.
- squigz 10mo ago
  Maybe the past 5 years have some other variables that might have contributed to that, huh?

alexfoo 10mo ago

> Imagine being 14 and having an entire laptop to prevent you from ever needing to focus in class. Depends on the school obviously, but at my 15 year old's school they default to their laptops staying in their bag and only get them out for specific tasks when directed by the teacher. The rest of the time the laptop is in their bag. They don't just sit there staring at a laptop during every lesson and goofing around on the Internet. Also all of these school provided laptops have pretty extensive keylogging/etc installed. The laptops are not provided for personal use and the school picks up pretty quickly on any student browsing websites they shouldn't be looking at or typing things they really shouldn't be typing, even when at home and not on the school's wifi. The students are all aware of this and cope quite well.

everdrive 10mo ago
Leaving it in the bag sounds really reasonable. I'm not really worried about _where_ a kid goes on his laptop. Even if all you had was wikipedia that would be way more interesting than what you were being taught in your lecture. It's the opportunity for distraction here which is what I'm worried about rather than what the kid actually does online. (social media is its own problem, but I'm not addressing that here)