My children’s school went to a computerized format this year. Everyone got Apple Macbook Airs or whatever. Their textbooks are on the computer. They get their assignments on their computer. They turn in their assignments on the computer. They use something called Schoology.
I hate it. Prior to this the kids got text books which they kept at home and there were text books at school. Assignments were sometimes posted on the web, but school work was a pen and paper affair. It just worked better. According to my children, everyone’s grades have dropped. My children’s grades have been lower than they have ever been. My son has never had a B; this year he has two.
Oh, and the kids sit around and listen to music and watch videos during class. Having computers in the classroom is just about the worst thing that can happen to the learning process. So if anyone proposes this for your school, just say NO.
It is challenging for the teachers to learn the best ways to use technology in the classrooms. Some are very good at it, some are awful. Many of the teachers are probably delighted to have access to this technology, and many others probably resent being forced to use it by whoever above them decided it was time. I do feel sorry for everyone at that school as they are all going through a huge, steep learning curve.
All that said, technology is not the enemy. Your kids might have received those grades anyway. And, the people who have accurate data about “everyone’s grades” are the teachers and school administrators - not your kids. Likewise, unless you have actually been in the classroom all day long yourself, your impression that all the students are doing is listening to music and watching videos is probably not an accurate evaluation of what does go on in those classrooms.
“Having computers in the classroom is just about the worst thing that can happen to the learning process.” I agree. Our schools waste money on technology that isn’t used, or the teachers don’t know how to use it, or it just doesn’t make sense for that subject. Often the kids end up with busywork that is more about teaching them how to use the latest web fad (do they really need to learn how to use pinterest for a class?) than the actual subject material. A lot of busywork presentations ensue, where most of the time is spent searching the web for good graphics and little is learned.
Sit in on a lecture even at a top college and you will see many kids on facebook or whatever during class. If college students cannot stay focused, why is it reasonable to think that middle and high school kids, most of whom are not as academically inclined as those who ended up at the top schools we toured, are going to concentrate on academics instead of texting their friends and watching youtube?
Yes, there could be an appropriate place for it, but it doesn’t happen in our school. My kids weren’t taught to do anything in Photoshop in art classes. They weren’t taught how to use anything sophisticated with Word or Endnote for papers in English class. They weren’t taught to use Excel in math or science. But they did do all those beautifully illustrated presentations.
My 13 year old son has severe executive function issues and dysgraphia (writing learning disability) and the school provides him with an iPad. It is the only way he can survive, and a classroom that is all computerized sounds like a dream come true for a kid like mine. The problem is that most teachers do not know what to do with technology and many are intimidated. With the right training, however, it can really be a positive game changer. The number of things available for organization, presentation, learning - is staggering. We have only begun to scratch the surface of what it available and I am pretty excited by all the options. He really needs this technology. Had he been born 20 years earlier he probably would have dropped out of school.
If the kids are able to listen to music and watch videos then the staff have not really developed a good system. They should be able to control everyone’s computer and enable and disable computer programs/apps. Our district can control iPads from the central office and load/remove whatever they need. The hardware belongs to the school and they should have better control.
The reason my son is so successful with technology is that his school technology is completely separate from his home/fun technology. His school iPad is only used for school work. There is no facebook, games, texting. Period.
Technology can be a great thing in the right hands…
I’m not crazy about our school-provided ipads, but my kids already have ipads, a kindle, and an older ipod. However, my kids have class mates who have no technology at home, and although they don’t have Wi-Fi at home either they can go somewhere to find it and be able to access school materials. Our neighborhood library has computers supposedly available for use but in reality it is hard to get a spot and then someone else wants your spot after 30 minutes. So I think it is a great thing for some people, and I do appreciate some of the tech-related things the teacher are able to assign now.
My freshmen switched to Ipads this year. (Next year it will be frosh and sophs.) Tuition for the frosh went up for each of the next 4 years to cover the cost of the Ipad. The same apps were downloaded for each of the kids, including the appropriate ebooks. So the kids have the Ipads with them all day, and bring them home (hopefully to recharge after homework) each night.
To be honest, I see no difference in grades, or in anything else other than logistics. Then again, I teach math-- I can see how there would be a significant difference if I were teaching, say, science.
Our kids have ebooks downloaded. So they do have textbooks. They had homework every night, as always… but they always had a textbook and notebook with them in the form of that Ipad. The app we used enabled them to break down their notes into sections for each subject, then to further break down those subjects into individual folders (say for classwork, homework and so on.)
I was able to quiz them electronically. (I’m still a little gun-shy when it comes to tests-- they were on paper.) That meant they got the quizzes back as soon as I graded them and didn’t have to wait for the next day.
Probably the biggest real advantage I was able to see was communications. When it became clear that it was going to be a winter full of snow days, I let them know that, for each snow day, they were to check for a message from me-- it would be on their Ipad by 8 am. Each time we lost a day, I recorded a short lesson and gave them practice problems to do-- maybe 20 minutes total. But what that meant was that we haven’t lost any review time for finals. Yes, I hate to see the loss of those snow days… I LOVE snow days, as do my own children. But having the Ipads meant that we didn’t lose 5 or 6 days of review at the end of the year. My students are very happy now for the time they put in on those snow days.
If your kids are listening to music and watching videos during class, this is not about technology. It’s about poor teaching. (Assuming, of course that the music isn’t during music class and that the videos aren’t shown to complement the syllabus. It sounds as though your kids are watching Disney videos instead of learning.) If that’s the case, I would have been on the phone months ago, speaking to a teacher and/or administrator.
What has been happening is that some products from these technology companies could include well too many functions that the users are expected to know or use. Even at many more properly managed companies, whenever they want their employees to start adopting a new technology, the training is always a part of the ramp-up efforts before it adopts a new technology (and maybe months of careful internal evaluation of the new technology before its adoption.)
Many schools may not have enough qualified persons (and/or allocated time or money resources) to do the needed training/supports. The school therefore occasionally “forces” the students to learn it all by themselves or from their parents. Or, the school may send several links on the Internet or school’s own site to some tutorial materials that the students are expected to look up and learn by themselves (parents could be drawn to this effort if the teachers are not computer literate enough.)
Re: iPad: My child’s grad school actually gave each student an iPad to “save money” several years ago. (They had done a research on this: too much learning materials to be handed out over four years could actually cost more money than an iPad.) I heard if the students have access to their own macbook pro, it is easier for them to set it up or it is less likely to have a problem. Granted, the highly secured computer network in their computer environment is kind of “special” (A much higher security than most campus’s security is required as demanded by some “privacy” law, as I heard.) But I heard some students who stay on iPad tend to have more “troubles” than those who switch to a more “professional” computer equipment (macbook pro) than iPad. Only the bravest ones (almost nobody – they would rather spend their precious time to study) dare to try the garden variety of Windows PC on their mostly Mac environment. Some even chooses to switch to iPhone if their original smartphone is an Android phone.
Note that these students have been beyond the college level – and they may have been using computers since their elementary school (maybe even preschool!) Most of them would rather spend their precious time on studying (they may be required to study, say, 11+ hours in a day everyday, especially in their second year. They do not have extra time to deal with their potential computer/network setup problems, if there are any.)
In one year, at my previous company, an executive decided to adopt a “new” groupware technology. Eventually, it started to work. But for months, they managed to slow down everybody’s computer (mostly its networking) significantly. This is a technology company that can afford the IT supports.
Also, at one time, I had a chance to visit a nearby computer technology company (due to some work.) The employee I talked to and worked with actually had to tell us that because their company had recently forced everyone to switch to a brand new OS (yes, that version had been released by this well-known company (named after some fruit) for the general public to use already, so it was not still a premature “beta” version.) they probably could not “build” some test software we need to use as fast as it is used to. They said most of their computers became much slower – and they wish their company could give them new computer hardware to ease their pain . Note that these are computer engineers!)
I agree. In one of our child’s high school science classes, the teacher used some web site at a local college to assign the homework. It could also grade it automatically so the students would know whether they have done it right immediately. All of this is great.
However, the problem was: The teacher assigned well too few problems. Also, I heard this teacher most time only uses 1/2 of their class time and he does not care what the students do during the other 1/2 of the class time. The teacher is qualified (he used to be a chemical engineer so he knows the science) but he does not want to teach too much (or he may think most of the students at this school are not good enough so he settles by teaching just “barely enough”.)
I actually do not care if the lecture time is not long enough. I have more problems with too few assigned problems in a semester. Maybe only a dozen or two only during the whole semester. The parents then have a hard time in convincing their child to learn more when the expectation is so low. (But I also heard some parents would protest if too many problems are assigned. So the teacher can not please everyone.)
I think that a part of the issue is that this is a LOT of info to throw at teachers. It’s a huge shift in how we do the most basic tasks in our day, and has the potential to change a lot. And of course the first year or two will have a huge learning curve, with lots of errors and AHA! moments. There were any number of days when I put a problem on the board and had the kids do it while I fought to get the classroom computer online… or when I put the IPad onto the projector and used it like paper, simply because I didn’t want to waste the classtime fighting with the technology.
But technology doesn’t change a good teacher into a bad one, and it doesn’t transform a poor teacher into a good one. All it does in change the mechanics, not the attitude, the subject knowledge, the work habits or the way we deal with our kids.
The amount of technology K-12 students use astounds me. iPads? Laptops? iPods? My school only had a set number of laptops that had to be checked out by a teacher months in advance. We had computer labs that we sometimes used for research, but mainly everything was done by writing and using physical textbooks.
I wish the technology was better integrated. Less of an “all-or-nothing” mindset. Students should still be writing and looking at physical books, not just screens all day. In college, I know some students have just jumped into using technology at every chance they get. Perhaps I’m a bit old-fashioned. I can’t stand e-books or online homework.
Goodness, I can only imagine the penmanship of the future generation.
In my class, at least, they ARE writing… the few who choose to type the notes find them lost in the math symbols.
And there are any number of apps used in elementary school that supplement the work that’s being done on penmanship.
The problem, of course, is that there’s so much out there to wade through. It’s going to take a few years before each school can decide what works best. But that’s always the case in education-- it’s always in flux as new practices and technologies and ideas come up.
It’s actually been wonderful for my youngest. He has dysgraphia and while 14, still has the penmanship of a 3rd grader even with consistent effort and training. The digital classroom has allowed him to flourish where in our day, he’d be severely stunted and considered stupid despite his IQ saying otherwise. Of course, he has a disability. I’m not saying the tech classroom it’s right for all. My eldest is very old fashioned. Maybe the only millennial left who still hand writes her essays before typing them out. She hates her computer, reads digital books with disdain… her mechanical pencil is as high tech as she wants. She had tech in her class but it was not as present as it has been for my son.
I will say that a big positive of the digital classroom is that I see a marked different between how my children handle internet information and how their older cousins do (about 6 to 12 years older.) I feel that generation X’rs and before have a natural distrust of the internet and the information found on it which makes us more likely to take what we see with a grain of salt. The youngest millennials and gen Z are being taught critical thinking in regards to the internet in school. However, older millennials (like all my nieces and nephews who are an intelligent lot) have a lot more trouble deciphering what is trustworthy and what isn’t. They don’t filter all the info thrown at them quite as well and it’s a major frustration to those around them… particularly in regards to parenting choices and the like.
So, for me, I think tech in the classroom is crucial not only because it’s the world our kids live in but because it’s another way to get information to kids who maybe need another way. Striking a good balance is key to me.
I fall on the side of the haters. For years, schools have been preaching to parents and kids about limiting screen time–and then they turn school into non-stop screen time, apparently without noticing the contradiction. It’s very hard for parents to curb social media and teach kids time management skills when we can’t take away iPads because they’re used for homework. Studies are showing that we internet users are becoming more and more shallow in our knowledge. And there are ample studies about what a useful study aid writing (preferably, with a pencil) is. Homework is seldom written out by my kids anymore. And that also means I seldom get a chance to examine what they’re learning and what they’re producing.
I think cost has driven this teaching “innovation.” Cheaper to buy a set of iPads and a textbook subscription than to buy and replace old textbooks.
Yes, I really object when the technology is being handed to middle schoolers. It takes parenting decisions out of the hands of the parents. I’ve also heard complaints from elementary school parents that teachers are requiring their kids to sign up for accounts on sites which they are not old enough to be using, even by the site rules, much less the parent’s discretion.
When the school handed my kids laptops–which I had made a parenting decision not to buy for them–I lost the ability to monitor their web use and to make sure that they were focused on their homework, not chatting with friends or stopping work every few minutes to select a new youtube video. My kids are exceptionally motivated students, but even for them, it was noticeably distracting, and there was a significant loss of efficiency/increase in “I can’t do that because I haven’t finished my homework yet” when those computers entered our house. I know from their comments that some of their friends are really struggling to get work done, staying up too late, yet somehow seem to have plenty of time to make many facebook posts and check out new music on youtube while they are “working”.
We used to have teachers in our school who turned the desks around because their students–and these were honors students–found their cell phones so distracting that they would be texting their friends inside the desks during class. Our school used to have a ban on using cell phones during class. Now they have mandates to use technology and actively encourage their use. I’ve even been told by school administration that if I want to contact my child in a class, I should just text them. Not bother the office.
I see a lot of good and bad for my kids. On the one hand, they are using to learn a very powerful educational tool. Our society increasingly depends on technology and knowing how to properly use it to answer questions is vital to success in just about every field. On the other hand, there are so many tools and teachers’ ability to use them so varied, I am not sure they always see the value.
Some teachers use Edmodo, some use Google Classroom, some use email, etc.
One thing my kids have learned the hard way is to find ways to keep digital receipts of their work whenever possible. Technology glitches, their lack of experience with a tool or teachers’ lack of experience have created a lot of confusion and more than one zero.
My D, currently in 9th grade, has used an Ipad or mac for 3 years at her school. IPads for middle school, Macs for HS. Unbelievable what a well trained teacher can do with these devices. The kids can work collaboratively in class using these devices. Using them to see how changing values in algebraic equations changes the curve, in real time. I wish I had that feature in college! Running experiments using electronic labware. Incredible. I think it all comes down to training and oversight. I have sat in many classes at my D’s school and I guarantee, the student on FB, snapchat or whatever during class is far and few between. Students are now allowed to just sit and not contribute during class.
I was shocked at what I saw happening with edmodo. Kids were writing English assignments without punctuation or even capitalization. The quality of the writing was just awful, because they regarded it more like an online chat with their friends than an English assignment. Huge waste of time, and it hurt my daughter’s writing style.
"Students are now allowed to just sit and not contribute during class. " That may work in a private school, but in a public school with 30+ kids in the class it’s a different story. There were a few teachers who attempted to make all the kids participate and this failed badly. The kids would receive a bad grade if they didn’t speak three times during class, so there was a lot of jockeying and interruptions. 90+ thoughtful comments during a 90 minute class? Not happening.
This conversation reminds me of my college days in the late 80s. One professor announced to the class that she expected her students to use typewriters to write all papers and reports, because nobody should be using computers. Computers are too much trouble and should be banned.
Our school gives Chromebooks to 8th graders but they are kept at school. They are still issued textbooks but don’t use them very much. I know he still does a lot of work with actual pen and paper!
The chromebooks have a lot of sites blocked (youtube, any shopping sites, most game sites, adult sites). Still there are some sites where you can find games to play etc during class. Haven’t noticed a big drop in grades.
The computers are mostly used for writing and sharing documents, reviews/practice tests etc.
D’s school is one that uses technology quite well. Students are issued a laptop when they begin school in 6th grade (it’s a 6 - 12 school), but they stay at school. Most of the work is done in class, there is very little homework, unless kids are not doing their class work. It’s also a school with many low-income kids, so it’s found ways to keep the playing field level. Some kids get special permission to bring school laptops home for major projects. The administration has also found a program that provides free internet. Sometimes teachers stay late for kids who need to access the computers after school, and so on. There is SERIOUS blocking technology at work-I can’t even access some sites from my own phone in the parking lot! No shopping online here!
The benefits to this kind of school are many-no excuses about “lost” or “forgotten” homework or having written the assignment in the planner. No overzealous janitor erasing the assignment off the board-if there’s homework, it’s there online, and “the dog ate my paper” excuse is long gone. It’s also great that kids can work together to access group work from wherever they are on any computer, and track changes by student, so that everyone knows who did what. And as has been mentioned, they can do this work even when school is cancelled due to weather.
The school does still have text books, but they are rarely used, though some assignments are done by pencil/pen on paper. The kids have access to all kinds of online learning tools, and are encouraged to research to find more. Last semester one class was to read a paper book (classics like Brave New World) and make a video as if it actually happened. D’s group was unhappy with the editing software provided, so one girl who plans to major in video production offered a link to a better program. You could see the difference in the quality once they switched.
Computer technology is here to stay. Kids today use it for everything-need to know how to make a clip-in hair extension? It’s online. Want to talk face to face with your classmate visiting Japan? Facetime or Skype is there for you. Need to share a class project among 6 kids in three cities? Upload it to the cloud. Delayed on a trip and an important paper is due? Type it up in the airport and upload it to the teacher from across the country.
If kids’ grades are dropping and they’re watching videos, the teachers aren’t doing it right. I’ve seen kids at D’s school who were failing and/or at risk for dropping out become excellent students destined for college because of the tech access they have. Paper and pencil and “real” books will never be replaced, but In schools, at least, I think they will become the exception, not the rule.