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I worked in EdTech about a decade ago and our education/pedagogy experts were already talking about this. They also talked a lot about how handwriting is super

by pier25 7mo ago

I worked in EdTech about a decade ago and our education/pedagogy experts were already talking about this. They also talked a lot about how handwriting is super important for cognitive development. After working on that company for a couple of years I realized using tech in education (pre university) was a mistake. One of the reasons I left. In a decade or two the long term consequences of inundating kids with tech and then removing it will be quite obvious. This will be studied for decades to come. Reminds me of the Dutch kids that were borm during the 1944-1945 Dutch famine. https://www.ohsu.edu/school-of-medicine/moore-institute/dutch-famine-birth-cohort https://www.ohsu.edu/school-of-medicine/moore-institute/dutc...

fasterik 7mo ago
>I realized using tech in education (pre university) was a mistake. I think we should use tech in education, but in a targeted way. It's important that children gain basic technical literacy, like how to touch type and use basic software. I suspect there is a gap in the technical literacy of lower income students, whose parents are less likely to have a computer at home. The real problem is separating reading/writing skills from tech skills. We shouldn't stop teaching handwriting just because typing exists. And being able to read long books and essays teaches fundamental cognitive skills like attention, focus, and information processing.
- ajsnigrutin 7mo ago
  > It's important that children gain basic technical literacy, like how to touch type and use basic software. I suspect there is a gap in the technical literacy of lower income students, whose parents are less likely to have a computer at home. Some of us "a bit older" seem to have gone through a golden era of tech, where we actually learned that tech en-masse. In a class of maybe 30 students, around 20, 25 of them were able to configure dial up modems, come on IRC (servers, ports, channels needed to be configured) and do a bunch of other stuff our parents mostly considered "black magic" (except for a few tech enthusiasts), and the general concensus was, that every generation will know more and be "better" than the previous generation. A few decades have passed.. and kids can't type anymore on a keyboard, can't print, have no idea what can be changed in the settings on their smartphone, don't know how to block ads, can't cheat in games anymore (except via pay-to-win) and have no idea where to change their instagram password. So, now you have boomers, who can't use computers and kids, who can't use computers anymore.
  - TheOtherHobbes 7mo ago
    Boomers are split between a demographic that is very computer literate, having worked in/around science and tech for decades, and a demo that isn't remotely literate and may not even be online. The latter is a fairly small demo though - supposedly around a third. The split is more by education than by age. Kids can use computers - phones - as app appliances, but they don't understand computers. Peak literacy is young Gen X and older millennials.
- pier25 7mo ago
  > It's important that children gain basic technical literacy They certainly will at home. > I suspect there is a gap in the technical literacy of lower income students, whose parents are less likely to have a computer at home. In which country? I live in Mexico and even here you really need to go to the poorest families to find a home without a laptop. Even those families have multiple smartphones. Today a smartphone is not a good replacement for a laptop but maybe in a couple of years it will be.
  - fasterik 7mo ago
    Even if they have a computer at home, that doesn't mean they're practicing the relevant skills. Touch typing, word processing, researching a topic online, etc. are things that need deliberate practice. Based on my own experience, using a computer at home 99% of the time meant playing video games. The following article suggests that in the United States, about 59% of lower income households have a laptop or desktop computer, compared to 92% of upper income households. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/06/22/digital-divide-persists-even-as-americans-with-lower-incomes-make-gains-in-tech-adoption/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/06/22/digital-d...
    - graemep 7mo ago
      Yes. Kids can learn a lot of they do use computers to do things like research things.
    - mtlmtlmtlmtl 7mo ago
      Leaving aside the wealth gap factor, which I do agree is important: When I think back to using computers as a kid, both at school(starting in 1999) and at home I don't think it's all that black and white wrt just playing at home vs learning useful skills at school. At some point in the early 00s my underfunded elementary school acquired a bunch of old windows 95 computers. We would have classes where we mostly did basic touch typing, MS Office etc. At home, my middle class parents had also managed to find me some old outdated clunker. And yes, most of my time at home was spent playing games, chatting with friends on msn, pirating mp3s etc. But I'd say I learned orders of magnitude more from my frivolous activities than from whatever we did at school. At home I was learning things like: online research(into warcraft cheat codes or quest guides for Runescape etc); software troubleshooting(having to reinstall windows because I downloaded malware on limewire or otherwise borked my install somehow); fast typing(from chatting with friends about whatever 12 year olds like to discuss. Probably 90% of my typing practice back then came at home, not at school, and there was no touch typing. I could type 100+ wpm on just 4 fingers by the time I was in middle school. Never actually learned to properly touch type until I had force myself into it 5 years ago due to RSI); English as a second language(from various forums, irc, etc, hard to avoid back then); And I believe one of my first forays into programming was trying to get a cracked game with a broken .bat installer off TPB to work. I had a friend who got into it via Morrowind modding. Actually, come to think of it, most of computer class was also in reality spent sneakily playing flash games and/or messing around with the computer settings just to screw with the next student/teacher to use it. Even generalising beyond computers, I think a remarkable portion of the skills and interests that end up defining us as people, can be traced back to stuff we did trying to avoid boredom as children. To summarise though, I do think computers have a place in school. But especially at an elementary school level, I think play should be a significant portion of their use, because play is how kids explore the world and themselves.
- ninalanyon 7mo ago
  > how to touch type What for? I've been writing computer programs and documentation since 1969 and I can't touch type. I've never felt enough pressure to do it. I can still type faster than I can think. When I'm writing most of my time is spent thinking not tapping the keys.
  - datsci_est_2015 7mo ago
    You typed out this message by hitting individual keys as your eyes searched for them? Isn’t that mentally exhausting?
    - alecbz 7mo ago
      > Although [touch typing] refers to typing without using the sense of sight to find the keys ... the term is often used to refer to a specific form of touch typing that involves placing the eight fingers in a horizontal row along the middle of the keyboard (the home row) and having them reach for specific other keys. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touch_typing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touch_typing I think they're referring to the latter.
      - datsci_est_2015 7mo ago
        With such a strict definition the OP’s comment becomes basically meaningless. They could be referring to using index fingers only. They could be using an alternative keyboard layout. They could mostly be using left-hand only. Pretty much any WPM between 1 and 200 seems possible with the statement: “I don’t keep my fingers on home row in between key presses.”
      - nostrademons 7mo ago
        The strict definition of touch typing reminds me of how when I was a kid, my parents would always tell me that there’s a specific way of holding chopsticks. You gotta hold the top one like a pencil, and rest the bottom one between the crook of your fingers and your ring finger, and make sure they’re the same length and the bottom one isn’t moving and you’re just using it as a base to press against. And then I became an adult and visited China and met actual Chinese immigrants and married a native chopstick holder. And half of them don’t hold chopsticks “the real way”. Somehow it all works out. As long as you can eat a peanut with them, you pass. As an adult I learned that there’s also a whole lot of prescriptive bullshit that basically nobody pays attention to. The strict definition of touch typing seems like one of those. If you can type without looking at the keys, you can touch type.
- kpw94 7mo ago
  That's not using tech that you're describing here. You're talking about literally learning some basic computer skills (such as word processor, excel, reading email, some basic website building, use printer, and some amount of programming) For those, obviously you need a computer and completely agree that those are important skills to learn... But you maybe need to spend 1h/week during last 2 years of middle school on those at the computer lab (as it's been done since the 90s in many schools around the world) But for any other course such as Math, English (or whichever primary language in your country), second languages, history, etc. : that's where using tech is a mistake A bit of tech is ok, but it cannot be "everyone does their homework and read lesson on a iPad/Chromebook"
  - fasterik 7mo ago
    Would it be a mistake to use Desmos in a math classroom, or 3Blue1Brown style animations, to build up visual intuition? Should we not teach basic numerical and statistical methods in Python? Should kids be forced to use physical copies of newspapers and journal articles instead of learning how to look things up in a database? I'm all for going back to analog where it makes sense, but it seems wrongheaded to completely remove things that are relevant skills for most 21st century careers.
    - graemep 7mo ago
      Those are great examples. Not familiar with Desmos, but 3Blue1Brown style animations are great. The problem is that people seem to want to go to extremes. Either go all out on doing everything in tablets or not use any technology in education at all. its not just work skills, its also a better understanding that is gained from things such as the maths animations you mentioned.
      - bpt3 7mo ago
        > The problem is that people seem to want to go to extremes. Either go all out on doing everything in tablets or not use any technology in education at all. I think the latter is mostly a reaction to the former. I think there is a way to use technology appropriately in theory in many cases, but the administrators making these choices are largely technically illiterate and it's too tempting for the teachers implementing them to just hand control over to the students (and give themselves a break from actually teaching).
- fodkodrasz 7mo ago
  Touch typing is not a basic tech skill, and also pretty useless on the long term. I expect dictation to take over very soon, as finally voice recognition is getting to be usable, and commonplace.
- theSuda 7mo ago
  Just wanted to point out that you and other people who responded to you basically do agree on same points, you are just presenting it differently. I just find it amusing/endearing that we argue with each other even when we do agree on the core issue. :D
raxxorraxor 7mo ago
Using tech also meant you got an iPad because otherwise teachers and IT would be overwhelmed. That the kids were already much more apt at using such devices was secondary. In the context of general education I can understand the strategy, it could be a useful learning environment, but certainly not if it is about digital education, tech knowledge or general engineering. Nobody becomes an engineer in a prison, you need to give your users freedom.
- hn_throwaway_99 7mo ago
  An iPad absolutely doesn't make kids "better at technology", if anything it makes them worse because it just wraps everything up in a braindead simple package for consumption. Ironically, Gen Z was supposed to lead the way as "digital natives", but in many ways they are (speaking broadly) much less technically adapt than, say, Gen Xers, because Gen Xers had to struggle to figure stuff out because it hadn't been all wrapped up with a bow yet, and thus we got to understand the details of how thing worked at a deeper, more fundamental level. I recall reading some articles about how many Gen Zers new to the workplace didn't even understand how file systems or directories worked, because things like iPads largely hide those details from the end user. And to emphasize, I'm not dumping on Gen Z - they're, like everyone, just a product of the environment they grew up in. But I strongly disagree that getting access to an iPad makes anyone more technologically adept.
  - pmontra 7mo ago
    20 year olds are bewildered when they see me opening a computer and replacing stuff instead of bringing it to a shop. "Where did you learn to do that?" It used to be the only way, everybody with a computer did it. The strange thing is that it's still possible but they don't think about it.
    - casey2 7mo ago
      It's simply not true at all that everyone who owned a (i'll be generous and assume you're talking about PCs) computer serviced their own computer upgrades and part swaps. In the 80s and 90s most people would take the whole PC to the store and get a whole new PC. The consumer market has always been dominated by pre-builts. About as neat a trick as opening a slot machine, pulling out the mech and fixing a jam. There is a massive qualitative difference between API knowledge and foundational knowledge. The former is tied to the usefulness of the platform, the person with a macbook or an iphone looks at you the same way you look at a person fixing their car or slot machine. I for one am sick of the gross fetishization nerds do of cheap knowledge. The same thing that makes your knowledge useful (usable) is the same thing that makes it useless (negative utility). You can only change your likely PC parts because it's long been standardized and a whole industry has ossified around those standards. You've confused learning about computers with learning about a standard. Someone else would roll their eyes at your statement, "well duh of course you can't take an IBM 360/40 to the shop"
zer00eyz 7mo ago
> After working on that company for a couple of years I realized using tech in education (pre university) was a mistake. I have several friends who work in education. At one point there were computer labs in school, there was education around computing. The pervasiveness of computing killed these programs, along with various kinds of skill based classes, like wood/auto/home economics (cooking and or sewing). All of them tend to agree that the losses of these programs is, in hindsight, problematic. Many of them think that a return to computer education (and conveying deeper insight) would be a net positive. > EdTech To a person, every one I know thinks their EdTech platforms suck. One of them is in a support role as part of their job and often tells me stories of how lamentable the software and faculties interactions with it is/are. "Progress is at fault" is a tale as old as time: https://xkcd.com/1227/ https://xkcd.com/1227/
- chowells 7mo ago
  "Progress is at fault" only is a criticism of the criticism if it's actually progress. What if actually being forced to slow down and think about a thing is what actually makes you learn it, and anything designed to optimize a process removes its educational value? If that were true, would "EdTech" still be progress?
  - fc417fc802 7mo ago
    I imagine it would depend case by case on exactly what parts were optimized and how. Presumably it's possible to optimize for more time spent thinking as well as for thinking about more useful things.
- fc417fc802 7mo ago
  > "Progress is at fault" is a tale as old as time Worth noting that all of those examples are adjacent to the industrial revolution. At least personally I don't know enough to have perspective on cottage production but I imagine daily life must have been quite different 1000 years ago.
qurren 7mo ago
> They also talked a lot about how handwriting is super important for cognitive development. Is it possible that there are alternative ways than handwriting for cognitive development? Probably in 500 BC they said you had to hack at stone with a chisel for cognitive development, and then someone invented the pen and paper. The difference is the task had to change as well. People were able to write thousands of pages (rather than a few stone blocks) over their education, and making full use of that ability in order to "keep the brain CPU close to 100%" was a necessary concurrent change in order to preserve cognitive devolpment.
- Swizec 7mo ago
  > Probably in 500 BC they said you had to hack at stone with a chisel for cognitive development, and then someone invented the pen and paper. You are forgetting that in 500 BC literacy rates were well under 10%. Nobody optimized for anyone’s cognitive development. The only cognitive development people cared about was for the rich (aristocrats, royalty, some merchants, etc). Much of that happened orally through hands-on tutoring by an army of people specifically employed to create the next generation of leaders. Anyone would thrive with that much resources thrown at them. And I’m pretty sure many of them considered reading and writing beneath them. They got people for that.
- Barrin92 7mo ago
  >Is it possible that there are alternative ways than handwriting for cognitive development? there are countless of ways to develop fine motor skills, but handwriting replacing a chisel was not a step down because handwriting is a demanding task in contrast to the, by nature, impoverished interaction with digital rather than analog devices. I help in a maker-space and you can literally tell young people apart who only ever interacted with a phone compared to kids who play an instrument, work with tools etc. Additionally a pen and paper come cheap compared to a tablet. It was always the perfect example of a kind of "digitalism". "oh we're so cool, we use technology, let's give everyone tablets, we're a modern country". Just expensive nonsense in the absence of educational standards and physical development.
- graemep 7mo ago
  Maybe not that early, but writing did eventually undermine the ability to memorise things. It used to be common for people to memorise long works - it is one reason why epic poetry was popular and designed to be memorable. Memorising even a few hundred lines is unusual now. I wonder whether it has contributed to the evolution of smaller brains: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240517-the-human-brain-has-been-shrinking-and-no-one-quite-knows-why https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240517-the-human-brain-...
JKCalhoun 7mo ago
Kind of why Khan Academy makes me cringe.
seawsurf 7mo ago
Tech can save you from a bad educational environment. I think kids need extreme amounts of freedom with guidance on what are the best tools to be used for learning. From visualizing linear algebra and analytic geometry problems to piracy. If anything, the teachers need to improve their tech literacy. There is no way to be done away with tech on school, but some balance and freedom must be achieved.
- bpt3 7mo ago
  > I think kids need extreme amounts of freedom with guidance on what are the best tools to be used for learning. Why an "extreme" amount of freedom? > There is no way to be done away with tech on school, but some balance and freedom must be achieved. Yes there is. Students were educated just a couple decades ago without it. We can easily return to that style.
  - seawsurf 7mo ago
    >Why an "extreme" amount of freedom? As dangerous as this sounds, with guidance, I think it could be done. Government and public institutions love to lock the environment into something safe but useless for further learning and adaptability
    - bpt3 7mo ago
      I don't know that it sounds dangerous. I am wondering what you mean by it and why you think it's needed.
dtdynasty 7mo ago
I do think the general purpose screens of today are doing a disservice for education. There are too many possible distractions a child isn't prepared to resist yet. But it could enable more advanced workflow for personalized learning. I think the k-shaped economy where some people are financially succeeding while the rest go through hardship is a reflection of a k-shaped education system where those who are able to ignore the distractions and succeed are doing well. The top of the k can use more edtech as they just need tools for further educational attainment. Things modern edtech can bring. The bottom of the k has different needs.
Suffocate5100 7mo ago
You're assuming tech will ever be removed.
_wsbb 7mo ago
Meanwhile today Dutch kids get these extremely large screens at the front of the class to stare at all day for every little thing, the day's schedule, everything. Huge screens, some stretch nearly the entire width of the classroom, with about a third of desks within just three meters of it. All day.
rendaw 7mo ago
How is handwriting important for cognitive development?
- elric 7mo ago
  Presumably the combination of concentration, fine motor skills, and language use.
  - rendaw 7mo ago
    GGP presented it as if there's something unique to handwriting that's important for cognitive development. I have guesses too, but I'd like to know what research etc led to this claim, and if there's more details or nuance.
uduni 7mo ago
Written language is deep tech itself. There's evidence it changed our brain morphology even. So ya it deeply affected kids abilities, for example memorizing long poems or whatever. Digital tech is here to stay...
chunpaiyang 7mo ago
I'm curious about the true logic behind the claim that tablet use lower grades. What is the underlying logic ? For my own kid, I do limit screen time just because their eyes are still fragile before age 9, not because the above reason. I asked an AI about the reasoning and the answer comes down to: kids need real-world interaction to support brain development. But if that's the case, aren't these two seperate issues? Using a tablet doesn't damage your brain ... it's just a low-value activity that fails to build the good skills (like video games?) that other activities do. It is not that screens make you dumber, it is that they crowd out the things that make you smarter.
ghighi7878 7mo ago
I mostly agree with you. But... I have very bad handwriting due to dysgraphia. I suffered a lot in older years of school due to lack of ability to use Word/Latex homework to submit homework. Handwriting is not as important. But what is exttenely important is ability to think with writing/drawing. Because at the end, paper is still the most free form of writing/drawingyou can do and actually creates and reinforces that individuals own style. Computers, however good you have them, at the end force students into one style of exposition which is the software you are using. Whether word or latex. Paper allow you and force you to develop you own style of writing/organization information which is essentially what teaching is all about.
geysersam 7mo ago
I'm a bit torn on this. The world changes and education needs to evolve with it. There was a time when recitation was considered a critical part of education. I'm sure there's a ton of cognitive development to be had by learning the entire bible by heart, but we seem to do fine without it. I do think that digital technology was introduced a bad way in most schools. In my own experience it was less "digital technology education" and more "navigate Microsoft windows UI education". The teachers didn't know much about computers, of course the result was mostly a waste of time. I think the first thing kids should be taught in computer class is touch typing.

by pier25 7mo ago

fasterik 7mo ago

>I realized using tech in education (pre university) was a mistake. I think we should use tech in education, but in a targeted way. It's important that children gain basic technical literacy, like how to touch type and use basic software. I suspect there is a gap in the technical literacy of lower income students, whose parents are less likely to have a computer at home. The real problem is separating reading/writing skills from tech skills. We shouldn't stop teaching handwriting just because typing exists. And being able to read long books and essays teaches fundamental cognitive skills like attention, focus, and information processing.

ajsnigrutin 7mo ago
> It's important that children gain basic technical literacy, like how to touch type and use basic software. I suspect there is a gap in the technical literacy of lower income students, whose parents are less likely to have a computer at home. Some of us "a bit older" seem to have gone through a golden era of tech, where we actually learned that tech en-masse. In a class of maybe 30 students, around 20, 25 of them were able to configure dial up modems, come on IRC (servers, ports, channels needed to be configured) and do a bunch of other stuff our parents mostly considered "black magic" (except for a few tech enthusiasts), and the general concensus was, that every generation will know more and be "better" than the previous generation. A few decades have passed.. and kids can't type anymore on a keyboard, can't print, have no idea what can be changed in the settings on their smartphone, don't know how to block ads, can't cheat in games anymore (except via pay-to-win) and have no idea where to change their instagram password. So, now you have boomers, who can't use computers and kids, who can't use computers anymore.
- TheOtherHobbes 7mo ago
  Boomers are split between a demographic that is very computer literate, having worked in/around science and tech for decades, and a demo that isn't remotely literate and may not even be online. The latter is a fairly small demo though - supposedly around a third. The split is more by education than by age. Kids can use computers - phones - as app appliances, but they don't understand computers. Peak literacy is young Gen X and older millennials.
pier25 7mo ago
> It's important that children gain basic technical literacy They certainly will at home. > I suspect there is a gap in the technical literacy of lower income students, whose parents are less likely to have a computer at home. In which country? I live in Mexico and even here you really need to go to the poorest families to find a home without a laptop. Even those families have multiple smartphones. Today a smartphone is not a good replacement for a laptop but maybe in a couple of years it will be.
- fasterik 7mo ago
  Even if they have a computer at home, that doesn't mean they're practicing the relevant skills. Touch typing, word processing, researching a topic online, etc. are things that need deliberate practice. Based on my own experience, using a computer at home 99% of the time meant playing video games. The following article suggests that in the United States, about 59% of lower income households have a laptop or desktop computer, compared to 92% of upper income households. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/06/22/digital-divide-persists-even-as-americans-with-lower-incomes-make-gains-in-tech-adoption/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/06/22/digital-d...
  - graemep 7mo ago
    Yes. Kids can learn a lot of they do use computers to do things like research things.
  - mtlmtlmtlmtl 7mo ago
    Leaving aside the wealth gap factor, which I do agree is important: When I think back to using computers as a kid, both at school(starting in 1999) and at home I don't think it's all that black and white wrt just playing at home vs learning useful skills at school. At some point in the early 00s my underfunded elementary school acquired a bunch of old windows 95 computers. We would have classes where we mostly did basic touch typing, MS Office etc. At home, my middle class parents had also managed to find me some old outdated clunker. And yes, most of my time at home was spent playing games, chatting with friends on msn, pirating mp3s etc. But I'd say I learned orders of magnitude more from my frivolous activities than from whatever we did at school. At home I was learning things like: online research(into warcraft cheat codes or quest guides for Runescape etc); software troubleshooting(having to reinstall windows because I downloaded malware on limewire or otherwise borked my install somehow); fast typing(from chatting with friends about whatever 12 year olds like to discuss. Probably 90% of my typing practice back then came at home, not at school, and there was no touch typing. I could type 100+ wpm on just 4 fingers by the time I was in middle school. Never actually learned to properly touch type until I had force myself into it 5 years ago due to RSI); English as a second language(from various forums, irc, etc, hard to avoid back then); And I believe one of my first forays into programming was trying to get a cracked game with a broken .bat installer off TPB to work. I had a friend who got into it via Morrowind modding. Actually, come to think of it, most of computer class was also in reality spent sneakily playing flash games and/or messing around with the computer settings just to screw with the next student/teacher to use it. Even generalising beyond computers, I think a remarkable portion of the skills and interests that end up defining us as people, can be traced back to stuff we did trying to avoid boredom as children. To summarise though, I do think computers have a place in school. But especially at an elementary school level, I think play should be a significant portion of their use, because play is how kids explore the world and themselves.
ninalanyon 7mo ago
> how to touch type What for? I've been writing computer programs and documentation since 1969 and I can't touch type. I've never felt enough pressure to do it. I can still type faster than I can think. When I'm writing most of my time is spent thinking not tapping the keys.
- datsci_est_2015 7mo ago
  You typed out this message by hitting individual keys as your eyes searched for them? Isn’t that mentally exhausting?
  - alecbz 7mo ago
    > Although [touch typing] refers to typing without using the sense of sight to find the keys ... the term is often used to refer to a specific form of touch typing that involves placing the eight fingers in a horizontal row along the middle of the keyboard (the home row) and having them reach for specific other keys. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touch_typing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touch_typing I think they're referring to the latter.
    - datsci_est_2015 7mo ago
      With such a strict definition the OP’s comment becomes basically meaningless. They could be referring to using index fingers only. They could be using an alternative keyboard layout. They could mostly be using left-hand only. Pretty much any WPM between 1 and 200 seems possible with the statement: “I don’t keep my fingers on home row in between key presses.”
    - nostrademons 7mo ago
      The strict definition of touch typing reminds me of how when I was a kid, my parents would always tell me that there’s a specific way of holding chopsticks. You gotta hold the top one like a pencil, and rest the bottom one between the crook of your fingers and your ring finger, and make sure they’re the same length and the bottom one isn’t moving and you’re just using it as a base to press against. And then I became an adult and visited China and met actual Chinese immigrants and married a native chopstick holder. And half of them don’t hold chopsticks “the real way”. Somehow it all works out. As long as you can eat a peanut with them, you pass. As an adult I learned that there’s also a whole lot of prescriptive bullshit that basically nobody pays attention to. The strict definition of touch typing seems like one of those. If you can type without looking at the keys, you can touch type.
kpw94 7mo ago
That's not using tech that you're describing here. You're talking about literally learning some basic computer skills (such as word processor, excel, reading email, some basic website building, use printer, and some amount of programming) For those, obviously you need a computer and completely agree that those are important skills to learn... But you maybe need to spend 1h/week during last 2 years of middle school on those at the computer lab (as it's been done since the 90s in many schools around the world) But for any other course such as Math, English (or whichever primary language in your country), second languages, history, etc. : that's where using tech is a mistake A bit of tech is ok, but it cannot be "everyone does their homework and read lesson on a iPad/Chromebook"
- fasterik 7mo ago
  Would it be a mistake to use Desmos in a math classroom, or 3Blue1Brown style animations, to build up visual intuition? Should we not teach basic numerical and statistical methods in Python? Should kids be forced to use physical copies of newspapers and journal articles instead of learning how to look things up in a database? I'm all for going back to analog where it makes sense, but it seems wrongheaded to completely remove things that are relevant skills for most 21st century careers.
  - graemep 7mo ago
    Those are great examples. Not familiar with Desmos, but 3Blue1Brown style animations are great. The problem is that people seem to want to go to extremes. Either go all out on doing everything in tablets or not use any technology in education at all. its not just work skills, its also a better understanding that is gained from things such as the maths animations you mentioned.
    - bpt3 7mo ago
      > The problem is that people seem to want to go to extremes. Either go all out on doing everything in tablets or not use any technology in education at all. I think the latter is mostly a reaction to the former. I think there is a way to use technology appropriately in theory in many cases, but the administrators making these choices are largely technically illiterate and it's too tempting for the teachers implementing them to just hand control over to the students (and give themselves a break from actually teaching).
fodkodrasz 7mo ago
Touch typing is not a basic tech skill, and also pretty useless on the long term. I expect dictation to take over very soon, as finally voice recognition is getting to be usable, and commonplace.
theSuda 7mo ago
Just wanted to point out that you and other people who responded to you basically do agree on same points, you are just presenting it differently. I just find it amusing/endearing that we argue with each other even when we do agree on the core issue. :D

raxxorraxor 7mo ago

Using tech also meant you got an iPad because otherwise teachers and IT would be overwhelmed. That the kids were already much more apt at using such devices was secondary. In the context of general education I can understand the strategy, it could be a useful learning environment, but certainly not if it is about digital education, tech knowledge or general engineering. Nobody becomes an engineer in a prison, you need to give your users freedom.

hn_throwaway_99 7mo ago
An iPad absolutely doesn't make kids "better at technology", if anything it makes them worse because it just wraps everything up in a braindead simple package for consumption. Ironically, Gen Z was supposed to lead the way as "digital natives", but in many ways they are (speaking broadly) much less technically adapt than, say, Gen Xers, because Gen Xers had to struggle to figure stuff out because it hadn't been all wrapped up with a bow yet, and thus we got to understand the details of how thing worked at a deeper, more fundamental level. I recall reading some articles about how many Gen Zers new to the workplace didn't even understand how file systems or directories worked, because things like iPads largely hide those details from the end user. And to emphasize, I'm not dumping on Gen Z - they're, like everyone, just a product of the environment they grew up in. But I strongly disagree that getting access to an iPad makes anyone more technologically adept.
- pmontra 7mo ago
  20 year olds are bewildered when they see me opening a computer and replacing stuff instead of bringing it to a shop. "Where did you learn to do that?" It used to be the only way, everybody with a computer did it. The strange thing is that it's still possible but they don't think about it.
  - casey2 7mo ago
    It's simply not true at all that everyone who owned a (i'll be generous and assume you're talking about PCs) computer serviced their own computer upgrades and part swaps. In the 80s and 90s most people would take the whole PC to the store and get a whole new PC. The consumer market has always been dominated by pre-builts. About as neat a trick as opening a slot machine, pulling out the mech and fixing a jam. There is a massive qualitative difference between API knowledge and foundational knowledge. The former is tied to the usefulness of the platform, the person with a macbook or an iphone looks at you the same way you look at a person fixing their car or slot machine. I for one am sick of the gross fetishization nerds do of cheap knowledge. The same thing that makes your knowledge useful (usable) is the same thing that makes it useless (negative utility). You can only change your likely PC parts because it's long been standardized and a whole industry has ossified around those standards. You've confused learning about computers with learning about a standard. Someone else would roll their eyes at your statement, "well duh of course you can't take an IBM 360/40 to the shop"

zer00eyz 7mo ago

> After working on that company for a couple of years I realized using tech in education (pre university) was a mistake. I have several friends who work in education. At one point there were computer labs in school, there was education around computing. The pervasiveness of computing killed these programs, along with various kinds of skill based classes, like wood/auto/home economics (cooking and or sewing). All of them tend to agree that the losses of these programs is, in hindsight, problematic. Many of them think that a return to computer education (and conveying deeper insight) would be a net positive. > EdTech To a person, every one I know thinks their EdTech platforms suck. One of them is in a support role as part of their job and often tells me stories of how lamentable the software and faculties interactions with it is/are. "Progress is at fault" is a tale as old as time: https://xkcd.com/1227/ https://xkcd.com/1227/

chowells 7mo ago
"Progress is at fault" only is a criticism of the criticism if it's actually progress. What if actually being forced to slow down and think about a thing is what actually makes you learn it, and anything designed to optimize a process removes its educational value? If that were true, would "EdTech" still be progress?
- fc417fc802 7mo ago
  I imagine it would depend case by case on exactly what parts were optimized and how. Presumably it's possible to optimize for more time spent thinking as well as for thinking about more useful things.
fc417fc802 7mo ago
> "Progress is at fault" is a tale as old as time Worth noting that all of those examples are adjacent to the industrial revolution. At least personally I don't know enough to have perspective on cottage production but I imagine daily life must have been quite different 1000 years ago.

qurren 7mo ago

> They also talked a lot about how handwriting is super important for cognitive development. Is it possible that there are alternative ways than handwriting for cognitive development? Probably in 500 BC they said you had to hack at stone with a chisel for cognitive development, and then someone invented the pen and paper. The difference is the task had to change as well. People were able to write thousands of pages (rather than a few stone blocks) over their education, and making full use of that ability in order to "keep the brain CPU close to 100%" was a necessary concurrent change in order to preserve cognitive devolpment.

Swizec 7mo ago
> Probably in 500 BC they said you had to hack at stone with a chisel for cognitive development, and then someone invented the pen and paper. You are forgetting that in 500 BC literacy rates were well under 10%. Nobody optimized for anyone’s cognitive development. The only cognitive development people cared about was for the rich (aristocrats, royalty, some merchants, etc). Much of that happened orally through hands-on tutoring by an army of people specifically employed to create the next generation of leaders. Anyone would thrive with that much resources thrown at them. And I’m pretty sure many of them considered reading and writing beneath them. They got people for that.
Barrin92 7mo ago
>Is it possible that there are alternative ways than handwriting for cognitive development? there are countless of ways to develop fine motor skills, but handwriting replacing a chisel was not a step down because handwriting is a demanding task in contrast to the, by nature, impoverished interaction with digital rather than analog devices. I help in a maker-space and you can literally tell young people apart who only ever interacted with a phone compared to kids who play an instrument, work with tools etc. Additionally a pen and paper come cheap compared to a tablet. It was always the perfect example of a kind of "digitalism". "oh we're so cool, we use technology, let's give everyone tablets, we're a modern country". Just expensive nonsense in the absence of educational standards and physical development.
graemep 7mo ago
Maybe not that early, but writing did eventually undermine the ability to memorise things. It used to be common for people to memorise long works - it is one reason why epic poetry was popular and designed to be memorable. Memorising even a few hundred lines is unusual now. I wonder whether it has contributed to the evolution of smaller brains: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240517-the-human-brain-has-been-shrinking-and-no-one-quite-knows-why https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240517-the-human-brain-...

JKCalhoun 7mo ago

Kind of why Khan Academy makes me cringe.

seawsurf 7mo ago

Tech can save you from a bad educational environment. I think kids need extreme amounts of freedom with guidance on what are the best tools to be used for learning. From visualizing linear algebra and analytic geometry problems to piracy. If anything, the teachers need to improve their tech literacy. There is no way to be done away with tech on school, but some balance and freedom must be achieved.

bpt3 7mo ago
> I think kids need extreme amounts of freedom with guidance on what are the best tools to be used for learning. Why an "extreme" amount of freedom? > There is no way to be done away with tech on school, but some balance and freedom must be achieved. Yes there is. Students were educated just a couple decades ago without it. We can easily return to that style.
- seawsurf 7mo ago
  >Why an "extreme" amount of freedom? As dangerous as this sounds, with guidance, I think it could be done. Government and public institutions love to lock the environment into something safe but useless for further learning and adaptability
  - bpt3 7mo ago
    I don't know that it sounds dangerous. I am wondering what you mean by it and why you think it's needed.

dtdynasty 7mo ago

I do think the general purpose screens of today are doing a disservice for education. There are too many possible distractions a child isn't prepared to resist yet. But it could enable more advanced workflow for personalized learning. I think the k-shaped economy where some people are financially succeeding while the rest go through hardship is a reflection of a k-shaped education system where those who are able to ignore the distractions and succeed are doing well. The top of the k can use more edtech as they just need tools for further educational attainment. Things modern edtech can bring. The bottom of the k has different needs.

Suffocate5100 7mo ago

You're assuming tech will ever be removed.

_wsbb 7mo ago

Meanwhile today Dutch kids get these extremely large screens at the front of the class to stare at all day for every little thing, the day's schedule, everything. Huge screens, some stretch nearly the entire width of the classroom, with about a third of desks within just three meters of it. All day.

rendaw 7mo ago

How is handwriting important for cognitive development?

elric 7mo ago
Presumably the combination of concentration, fine motor skills, and language use.
- rendaw 7mo ago
  GGP presented it as if there's something unique to handwriting that's important for cognitive development. I have guesses too, but I'd like to know what research etc led to this claim, and if there's more details or nuance.

uduni 7mo ago

Written language is deep tech itself. There's evidence it changed our brain morphology even. So ya it deeply affected kids abilities, for example memorizing long poems or whatever. Digital tech is here to stay...

chunpaiyang 7mo ago

I'm curious about the true logic behind the claim that tablet use lower grades. What is the underlying logic ? For my own kid, I do limit screen time just because their eyes are still fragile before age 9, not because the above reason. I asked an AI about the reasoning and the answer comes down to: kids need real-world interaction to support brain development. But if that's the case, aren't these two seperate issues? Using a tablet doesn't damage your brain ... it's just a low-value activity that fails to build the good skills (like video games?) that other activities do. It is not that screens make you dumber, it is that they crowd out the things that make you smarter.

ghighi7878 7mo ago

I mostly agree with you. But... I have very bad handwriting due to dysgraphia. I suffered a lot in older years of school due to lack of ability to use Word/Latex homework to submit homework. Handwriting is not as important. But what is exttenely important is ability to think with writing/drawing. Because at the end, paper is still the most free form of writing/drawingyou can do and actually creates and reinforces that individuals own style. Computers, however good you have them, at the end force students into one style of exposition which is the software you are using. Whether word or latex. Paper allow you and force you to develop you own style of writing/organization information which is essentially what teaching is all about.

geysersam 7mo ago

I'm a bit torn on this. The world changes and education needs to evolve with it. There was a time when recitation was considered a critical part of education. I'm sure there's a ton of cognitive development to be had by learning the entire bible by heart, but we seem to do fine without it. I do think that digital technology was introduced a bad way in most schools. In my own experience it was less "digital technology education" and more "navigate Microsoft windows UI education". The teachers didn't know much about computers, of course the result was mostly a waste of time. I think the first thing kids should be taught in computer class is touch typing.