Bring back computer labs. Seriously. You get one period a day to use the computer. Anything you want to look up has to be done in that timeframe. Bring back the analog classroom: you have to note...
Bring back computer labs.
Seriously.
You get one period a day to use the computer. Anything you want to look up has to be done in that timeframe.
Bring back the analog classroom: you have to note and ponder a question without the instant gratification of being able to search online immediately.
It's actually quite fun as an adult too. When you go grocery shopping, live like it's 1994:
Leave your phone at home. Bring a notebook and a pencil. Turn off your car's infortainment system (a blank menu screen works well), and just jot notes if you are curious about something.
Hard mode: Do this in a city at night.
One night, I meandered out my door to vent some anger. I ended up stumbling my way to an open mic poetry night at a freelance graphics studio. I wouldn't have ever ended up there if I had my phone to distract me.
I graduated high school a bit over 10 years ago and I am shocked that these seem to be gone already. In middle school our teachers would book time in one of several computer labs. In highschool, a...
Bring back computer labs.
I graduated high school a bit over 10 years ago and I am shocked that these seem to be gone already. In middle school our teachers would book time in one of several computer labs. In highschool, a significant portion of the library was the computer lab, and if teachers wanted students to use computers, they booked time in that. Even the argument that was made in the article about "tech is the future so kids should be learning it as soon as possible" doesn't hold water because there is a difference between being given a computer and the computer classes that I had back in elementary school (All the Right Type anyone?). There is a difference between learning a computer and using a computer, and I feel like now they are given computers, but do not understand it.
Leave your phone at home.
More people need to do this. People can wait a few hours to contact you
During dinner with my family of 4 every night, we use pen and paper to create a list of “inquiries” that come up in conversation. Questions we want answered, topics to research, facts to confirm,...
During dinner with my family of 4 every night, we use pen and paper to create a list of “inquiries” that come up in conversation. Questions we want answered, topics to research, facts to confirm, etc.
Our goal is to avoid phones at the table, but we still want to know certain things. Documenting those things to look up later forces us to hypothesize about them in the absence of technology. It keeps conversations more organic and makes us rely on the knowledge we already have. Then when we finally do use technology to look up our inquiries, it’s more intentional and all done at once rather than pulling technology out whenever curious about something.
Last night’s dinner inquiries:
Blue-tongued skink: what continents can it be found on? My son’s hypothesis turned out to be correct.
Battle elephants: what empires/civilizations actually used elephants in battle?
Tomorrow’s forecast: is it going to rain again / will we be able to spend the day at the beach?
Nice idea - I'm going to trial this in my own home. We're certainly far too willing to grab our phones at meals, although thankfully we don't allow people to sink into full-on...
Nice idea - I'm going to trial this in my own home. We're certainly far too willing to grab our phones at meals, although thankfully we don't allow people to sink into full-on nose-in-phone-in-silence at mealtimes!
I love the idea of bringing back computer labs! Leaving your phone at home, on the other hand, I am not a fan of, for so many accessibility reasons. Not the least of which is kids who take the bus...
I love the idea of bringing back computer labs! Leaving your phone at home, on the other hand, I am not a fan of, for so many accessibility reasons. Not the least of which is kids who take the bus home or kids who are diabetic and need to monitor their blood sugar with a CGM.
It's also so hard to make exceptions for those kids without upsetting the other kids and worst of all, their parents.
I'm all for the analog classroom, and most teachers I know have already done this for at least the last three years thanks to ChatGPT being an issue. They also all have phone "sleeping bags" where the phones go for each class and are removed as needed. But you can't eliminate phones from campus, but make exceptions for the kids who need them for satefy or health, or other accessibility reasons because "it's not fair!" cry the parents and the kids who aren't the exception.
My 'phone at home' was definitely geared more at independent adults than the kids. Bring back single purpose devices. Easier to make exceptions when those things can function without a mainline to...
My 'phone at home' was definitely geared more at independent adults than the kids.
Bring back single purpose devices. Easier to make exceptions when those things can function without a mainline to general internet.
So many people fall for the screen meme when figuring things out. As a professional web developer (but not a designer) sketching out a page or component on paper is the best way to figure things...
So many people fall for the screen meme when figuring things out. As a professional web developer (but not a designer) sketching out a page or component on paper is the best way to figure things out. I've seen a handful of people assume they need to jump right into Figma. It's a waste of time. Pen and paper is the most intuitive way to accomplish quite a lot of tasks. I love computers, but don't put silicon between you and your ideas unless it's actually necessary. Kids need computers the least of all of us.
Just a few years ago, America’s public schools were rushing to get every child a laptop. Los Angeles middle school teacher Anna Soffer remembers it well: “The idea was that technology is the future, so we need to put tech in every child’s hands.”
Now, the conversation has flipped. After pouring billions of dollars into laptops, tablets and learning apps, many schools are facing a digital reckoning. Classrooms have become saturated with screens, and a growing number of parents, teachers and school districts are saying it is time to scale back.
A sweeping resolution passed last month by the Los Angeles school board requires the district to eliminate devices until second grade; set daily and weekly screen limits for all higher grades; block YouTube on school devices; and ban the use of devices at lunch and recess in elementary and middle school. The district will also audit its education technology contracts, which the teachers union says amount to $1.6 billion.
The Los Angeles crackdown is adding momentum to calls for reform emerging around the country. In many cases, parents lobbied a few years ago for school cellphone bans, which have now become the norm. Realizing phones weren’t the only classroom distraction, they pivoted to a new target: school-issued devices.
YouTube shouldn't have been allowed on school devices in the first place. In the article, it seems like most of the issues stem from "school"devices being used for all kinds of entertainment. If...
block YouTube on school devices
YouTube shouldn't have been allowed on school devices in the first place. In the article, it seems like most of the issues stem from "school"devices being used for all kinds of entertainment. If it's a school device it should be used for educational stuff and nothing else.
Back in my day (when we walked uphill both ways), even flip phones weren't allowed in schools. It's pretty insane to me that kids these days are apparently watching YouTube and playing Minecraft...
Back in my day (when we walked uphill both ways), even flip phones weren't allowed in schools. It's pretty insane to me that kids these days are apparently watching YouTube and playing Minecraft in class. While valuable tools, class is... for listening to a teacher and learning, no?
Yeah, to exaggerate a bit, this feels like banning books in class because kids were reading ahead instead of listening or banning paper because kids were drawing.
Yeah, to exaggerate a bit, this feels like banning books in class because kids were reading ahead instead of listening or banning paper because kids were drawing.
Yeah, it was like that as recently as 2020 in my country as far as I'm concerned. If you were caught with a phone it usually would be confiscated by the teachers. Or at least that's what I know...
Yeah, it was like that as recently as 2020 in my country as far as I'm concerned. If you were caught with a phone it usually would be confiscated by the teachers. Or at least that's what I know second-hand from the youths.
Can't say around half of my teachers were any good at their job, though...
In properly managed schools this already happened 20 years ago. It’s a pretty easy problem to solve except for the whole “is confiscation legal” and parents complaining about it. In primary...
In properly managed schools this already happened 20 years ago. It’s a pretty easy problem to solve except for the whole “is confiscation legal” and parents complaining about it.
In primary schools they often have these pockets at classroom doors where you need to leave your phone when you enter.
Absolutely but unrestricted YouTube, which it sounds like what they got, is just asking for kids to be distracted. If they don't have a way to filter the videos kids can access it's better to not...
Absolutely but unrestricted YouTube, which it sounds like what they got, is just asking for kids to be distracted. If they don't have a way to filter the videos kids can access it's better to not allow it at all.
YouTube can be pretty educational but it’s also designed to keep you watching (and especially watching ads). This means videos get padded in length, we see sponsorships, clickbait, etc. That is...
YouTube can be pretty educational but it’s also designed to keep you watching (and especially watching ads). This means videos get padded in length, we see sponsorships, clickbait, etc.
That is truly different from actual education where focus is almost entirely on content alone.
Anecdotally, when my 3rd grader has access to school computers, they're looking up stuff about video games or whatever Poppy Playtime monster their friends told them about, on YouTube. YouTube can...
Anecdotally, when my 3rd grader has access to school computers, they're looking up stuff about video games or whatever Poppy Playtime monster their friends told them about, on YouTube.
YouTube can be good, but both of my kids only get a small amount, if any at all, a week and under the close supervision (ie, we choose the videos) of their parents. Otherwise, YouTube is completely banned in the house.
I 100% agree with you and wish it were that easy, but we’ve found the problem with trying to block YouTube is that too much of the web relies on it for video delivery. Including Google Classroom...
I 100% agree with you and wish it were that easy, but we’ve found the problem with trying to block YouTube is that too much of the web relies on it for video delivery. Including Google Classroom and the rest of the Google Suite apps.
There’s an option to allowlist certain videos only, but trying to manage that across an entire K-12 school system is quite the feat.
A chromebook can be a complete brick, a fully functional computer, and everything in between depending on the software. I have a hard time understanding why it sounds like schools are operating on...
A chromebook can be a complete brick, a fully functional computer, and everything in between depending on the software. I have a hard time understanding why it sounds like schools are operating on an opt-out model vs an opt-in model for access. It seems to me that by default a school-issued laptop should only have access to office suite (AI disabled), specific course content (text/video/audio), specific course support pages/apps (like quizzes, zoom, or duolingo), and maybe a drawing program (similar MS paint). Basically what we had in the past, but in computer form that's more compact than a stack of books and can take advantage of the advances in edtech. Access to anything else should only be added as needed. I don't think it's really necessary to have curriculum that depends on access to the entire internet in grade school, even possibly through high school.
Why do young children get to play games, watch non-course-related videos, and access the entire internet on their school devices? That should be a separate device, if the parents decide to provide it, and used outside school hours.
The opt-in method starts failing when it comes to research and creative class projects that walk the line of keeping students engaged in productive ways while also trying to filter that content...
The opt-in method starts failing when it comes to research and creative class projects that walk the line of keeping students engaged in productive ways while also trying to filter that content for everyone else.
The most recent example I had was class project where students were asked to research a country and design an itinerary of notable landmarks and things to do in that country. Only to discover that 90% of search results are travel and recreation websites which were blocked by our filter.
The secondary problem with opt-in is that the Internet is an incredibly complex web, so you can never really tell what services, CDNs, and domains one website relies on that will become non functional if one of its dependencies are blocked.
I'm thinking that we don't need kids to do projects like that involving random internet searches, favoring something like a library model instead, where kids can do research from a collection of...
I'm thinking that we don't need kids to do projects like that involving random internet searches, favoring something like a library model instead, where kids can do research from a collection of vetted sources. Maybe this is a sign of me getting old and thinking the old ways are better (kids don't need more than a stick and a ball of yarn!), but I'm young enough to have had some combination of library research and internet research projects in school. I'm just not sure that it has high educational value to expose students to things like travel and recreation websites (or equivalent for other types of projects) that are mostly AI generated advertisements, despite the fact that it would allow for a broader and more flexible assignment.
Regarding the second point, I feel like that's even more reason to go with the opt-in model where only specific sites and their dependencies are whitelisted, rather than something like general internet access with a content filter, which is likely to break things.
You're right that I'm kind of ignoring the student engagement part though. I wonder whether it's better to play into the kinds of media and interaction style kids are used to based on their device usage at home or to create more of an environment at school where the usual distractions are removed, sacrificing some engagement. I don't have a good answer for that.
This is actually really interesting to me because, while I didn't grow up in the US, where I'm from and while I was still in school (around 12 years old I wanna say), the government here decided...
This is actually really interesting to me because, while I didn't grow up in the US, where I'm from and while I was still in school (around 12 years old I wanna say), the government here decided to give everyone in school a fully-functional laptop, if they couldn't afford one. This was part of a big push at the time to get everyone used to the internet and how computers work.
So 12 year old me had free rein on a windows laptop (this was the vista days, for context), which I want to say is far more permissive than the chromebooks of today. (and as far as I know the program still exists as my younger sister got a laptop for free as well).
However, and this is the crucial difference: these laptops were never used in class. They were meant as tools for students to have at home to learn how to use the office suite, create and hand in assignments, and just generally get used to how a computer and the internet works. (And I will defend that program with my teeth because without it I would for sure not be where I am today, as we couldn't afford computers back then.) We also had complementary computer classes in school where we learned how to use the office suite and stuff, but those were done on school computers, not our laptops.
That's really what I feel the US is missing with going as far as to digitize a lot of classroom work (and also partially using Chromebooks instead of proper x86 laptops. Because Chromebooks practically behave the same as smartphones and are equally as limiting. Now the same device students are using at home for entertainment is being used for everything school related.)
Kids don't seem to be mentally separating the device they use when necessary for school and the device they're using for entertainment.
So I, who had a laptop at a young age with no restrictions, learned how to navigate the internet and operate a full x86 computer. But when in class, I just had to go back to pen and paper. Kids in the US are only learning how to operate a glorified Android tablet to do virtually everything in class and it's clearly not working properly. It feels like this was just a ploy by Google to get every school to buy tons of Chromebooks with little regard to how it actually impacts kids.
The current (parts of) internet are designed to be addictive or 'maximize engagement' and the issued devices are locked down, unconfigurable and unexplorable. I started with digital devices...
The current (parts of) internet are designed to be addictive or 'maximize engagement' and the issued devices are locked down, unconfigurable and unexplorable.
I started with digital devices exploring them. Simply booting the os of the time and seeing what was there and what I could make happen, though the lack of social media also played a part of course. Doing that today on even Windows is close to impossible while chromebooks lose the close part.
So losing the possibility of exploring, figuring out and learning on their own for those that inclined that leaves TikTok, Youtube and whatever. It doesn't help that the likely one personal device they may or may not have is a smartphone which is terrible for anything other than consumption.
Bring back computer labs.
Seriously.
You get one period a day to use the computer. Anything you want to look up has to be done in that timeframe.
Bring back the analog classroom: you have to note and ponder a question without the instant gratification of being able to search online immediately.
It's actually quite fun as an adult too. When you go grocery shopping, live like it's 1994:
Leave your phone at home. Bring a notebook and a pencil. Turn off your car's infortainment system (a blank menu screen works well), and just jot notes if you are curious about something.
Hard mode: Do this in a city at night.
One night, I meandered out my door to vent some anger. I ended up stumbling my way to an open mic poetry night at a freelance graphics studio. I wouldn't have ever ended up there if I had my phone to distract me.
I graduated high school a bit over 10 years ago and I am shocked that these seem to be gone already. In middle school our teachers would book time in one of several computer labs. In highschool, a significant portion of the library was the computer lab, and if teachers wanted students to use computers, they booked time in that. Even the argument that was made in the article about "tech is the future so kids should be learning it as soon as possible" doesn't hold water because there is a difference between being given a computer and the computer classes that I had back in elementary school (All the Right Type anyone?). There is a difference between learning a computer and using a computer, and I feel like now they are given computers, but do not understand it.
More people need to do this. People can wait a few hours to contact you
As a single parent, no way am I leaving my phone at home. I don't feel like having my ex berate me because I didn't have my phone on me.
During dinner with my family of 4 every night, we use pen and paper to create a list of “inquiries” that come up in conversation. Questions we want answered, topics to research, facts to confirm, etc.
Our goal is to avoid phones at the table, but we still want to know certain things. Documenting those things to look up later forces us to hypothesize about them in the absence of technology. It keeps conversations more organic and makes us rely on the knowledge we already have. Then when we finally do use technology to look up our inquiries, it’s more intentional and all done at once rather than pulling technology out whenever curious about something.
Last night’s dinner inquiries:
Nice idea - I'm going to trial this in my own home. We're certainly far too willing to grab our phones at meals, although thankfully we don't allow people to sink into full-on nose-in-phone-in-silence at mealtimes!
I love the idea of bringing back computer labs! Leaving your phone at home, on the other hand, I am not a fan of, for so many accessibility reasons. Not the least of which is kids who take the bus home or kids who are diabetic and need to monitor their blood sugar with a CGM.
It's also so hard to make exceptions for those kids without upsetting the other kids and worst of all, their parents.
I'm all for the analog classroom, and most teachers I know have already done this for at least the last three years thanks to ChatGPT being an issue. They also all have phone "sleeping bags" where the phones go for each class and are removed as needed. But you can't eliminate phones from campus, but make exceptions for the kids who need them for satefy or health, or other accessibility reasons because "it's not fair!" cry the parents and the kids who aren't the exception.
My 'phone at home' was definitely geared more at independent adults than the kids.
Bring back single purpose devices. Easier to make exceptions when those things can function without a mainline to general internet.
So many people fall for the screen meme when figuring things out. As a professional web developer (but not a designer) sketching out a page or component on paper is the best way to figure things out. I've seen a handful of people assume they need to jump right into Figma. It's a waste of time. Pen and paper is the most intuitive way to accomplish quite a lot of tasks. I love computers, but don't put silicon between you and your ideas unless it's actually necessary. Kids need computers the least of all of us.
What about tablet and stylus?
I love sketching, drawing diagrams, writing notes on paper. But sometime I miss possibility to erase or move..
Sounds like a more expensive and fallible version of pen and paper.
Oh, you win!
YouTube shouldn't have been allowed on school devices in the first place. In the article, it seems like most of the issues stem from "school"devices being used for all kinds of entertainment. If it's a school device it should be used for educational stuff and nothing else.
I'm kind of playing the devil's advocate here, but youtube can be pretty educational, no?
Back in my day (when we walked uphill both ways), even flip phones weren't allowed in schools. It's pretty insane to me that kids these days are apparently watching YouTube and playing Minecraft in class. While valuable tools, class is... for listening to a teacher and learning, no?
Yeah, to exaggerate a bit, this feels like banning books in class because kids were reading ahead instead of listening or banning paper because kids were drawing.
Yeah, it was like that as recently as 2020 in my country as far as I'm concerned. If you were caught with a phone it usually would be confiscated by the teachers. Or at least that's what I know second-hand from the youths.
Can't say around half of my teachers were any good at their job, though...
In properly managed schools this already happened 20 years ago. It’s a pretty easy problem to solve except for the whole “is confiscation legal” and parents complaining about it.
In primary schools they often have these pockets at classroom doors where you need to leave your phone when you enter.
Absolutely but unrestricted YouTube, which it sounds like what they got, is just asking for kids to be distracted. If they don't have a way to filter the videos kids can access it's better to not allow it at all.
Not to he flippant, but a saw can be very educational as well for carpentry, but you don't give every 10 year old one to use for whatever.
YouTube can be pretty educational but it’s also designed to keep you watching (and especially watching ads). This means videos get padded in length, we see sponsorships, clickbait, etc.
That is truly different from actual education where focus is almost entirely on content alone.
Anecdotally, when my 3rd grader has access to school computers, they're looking up stuff about video games or whatever Poppy Playtime monster their friends told them about, on YouTube.
YouTube can be good, but both of my kids only get a small amount, if any at all, a week and under the close supervision (ie, we choose the videos) of their parents. Otherwise, YouTube is completely banned in the house.
I 100% agree with you and wish it were that easy, but we’ve found the problem with trying to block YouTube is that too much of the web relies on it for video delivery. Including Google Classroom and the rest of the Google Suite apps.
There’s an option to allowlist certain videos only, but trying to manage that across an entire K-12 school system is quite the feat.
A chromebook can be a complete brick, a fully functional computer, and everything in between depending on the software. I have a hard time understanding why it sounds like schools are operating on an opt-out model vs an opt-in model for access. It seems to me that by default a school-issued laptop should only have access to office suite (AI disabled), specific course content (text/video/audio), specific course support pages/apps (like quizzes, zoom, or duolingo), and maybe a drawing program (similar MS paint). Basically what we had in the past, but in computer form that's more compact than a stack of books and can take advantage of the advances in edtech. Access to anything else should only be added as needed. I don't think it's really necessary to have curriculum that depends on access to the entire internet in grade school, even possibly through high school.
Why do young children get to play games, watch non-course-related videos, and access the entire internet on their school devices? That should be a separate device, if the parents decide to provide it, and used outside school hours.
The opt-in method starts failing when it comes to research and creative class projects that walk the line of keeping students engaged in productive ways while also trying to filter that content for everyone else.
The most recent example I had was class project where students were asked to research a country and design an itinerary of notable landmarks and things to do in that country. Only to discover that 90% of search results are travel and recreation websites which were blocked by our filter.
The secondary problem with opt-in is that the Internet is an incredibly complex web, so you can never really tell what services, CDNs, and domains one website relies on that will become non functional if one of its dependencies are blocked.
I'm thinking that we don't need kids to do projects like that involving random internet searches, favoring something like a library model instead, where kids can do research from a collection of vetted sources. Maybe this is a sign of me getting old and thinking the old ways are better (kids don't need more than a stick and a ball of yarn!), but I'm young enough to have had some combination of library research and internet research projects in school. I'm just not sure that it has high educational value to expose students to things like travel and recreation websites (or equivalent for other types of projects) that are mostly AI generated advertisements, despite the fact that it would allow for a broader and more flexible assignment.
Regarding the second point, I feel like that's even more reason to go with the opt-in model where only specific sites and their dependencies are whitelisted, rather than something like general internet access with a content filter, which is likely to break things.
You're right that I'm kind of ignoring the student engagement part though. I wonder whether it's better to play into the kinds of media and interaction style kids are used to based on their device usage at home or to create more of an environment at school where the usual distractions are removed, sacrificing some engagement. I don't have a good answer for that.
This is actually really interesting to me because, while I didn't grow up in the US, where I'm from and while I was still in school (around 12 years old I wanna say), the government here decided to give everyone in school a fully-functional laptop, if they couldn't afford one. This was part of a big push at the time to get everyone used to the internet and how computers work.
So 12 year old me had free rein on a windows laptop (this was the vista days, for context), which I want to say is far more permissive than the chromebooks of today. (and as far as I know the program still exists as my younger sister got a laptop for free as well).
However, and this is the crucial difference: these laptops were never used in class. They were meant as tools for students to have at home to learn how to use the office suite, create and hand in assignments, and just generally get used to how a computer and the internet works. (And I will defend that program with my teeth because without it I would for sure not be where I am today, as we couldn't afford computers back then.) We also had complementary computer classes in school where we learned how to use the office suite and stuff, but those were done on school computers, not our laptops.
That's really what I feel the US is missing with going as far as to digitize a lot of classroom work (and also partially using Chromebooks instead of proper x86 laptops. Because Chromebooks practically behave the same as smartphones and are equally as limiting. Now the same device students are using at home for entertainment is being used for everything school related.)
Kids don't seem to be mentally separating the device they use when necessary for school and the device they're using for entertainment.
So I, who had a laptop at a young age with no restrictions, learned how to navigate the internet and operate a full x86 computer. But when in class, I just had to go back to pen and paper. Kids in the US are only learning how to operate a glorified Android tablet to do virtually everything in class and it's clearly not working properly. It feels like this was just a ploy by Google to get every school to buy tons of Chromebooks with little regard to how it actually impacts kids.
The current (parts of) internet are designed to be addictive or 'maximize engagement' and the issued devices are locked down, unconfigurable and unexplorable.
I started with digital devices exploring them. Simply booting the os of the time and seeing what was there and what I could make happen, though the lack of social media also played a part of course. Doing that today on even Windows is close to impossible while chromebooks lose the close part.
So losing the possibility of exploring, figuring out and learning on their own for those that inclined that leaves TikTok, Youtube and whatever. It doesn't help that the likely one personal device they may or may not have is a smartphone which is terrible for anything other than consumption.