We allow the drug pushers access to our kids because we are addicted.
16
Increasingly people are talking about robots. Robot cars, robot servants, robot elder care workers. Having Facebook , Google , Amazon create tech schooling will turn our living kids into robots. Parents need to rise up and get rid of these tech giants.
15
20 years ago, Clifford Stoll wrote a book exactly about this subject called,
'Silicon Snake Oil: Second Thoughts on the Information Highway'.
He knew, as did several others. Yet their expertise was ignored.
20
Tech gadgets can be addictive tools, this is well known. Schools have become another market for technology, meanwhile the children of Silicon Valley execs are being schooled without computers.
'In "Screen Schooled," Clement and Miles make the case that wealthy Silicon Valley parents seem to grasp the addictive powers of smartphones, tablets, and computers more than the general public does — despite the fact that these parents often make a living by creating and investing in that technology.' - World Economic Forum
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/10/why-gates-and-jobs-shielded-their...
8
What a pathetic sell-out. Tech should not drive education. Taken to excess (as here!) tech is a middle-man in many cases, shoving its way between the people and companies who do the real work (teachers and public schools as just one example) and consumers (children, and future society in this case!). It doesn't take a long time to develop expertise in computers; a focus in 6th or 8th grade would be effective. Earlier learning should be free of this commercial influence, or at least it should be very limited. We shouldn't let gleaming silver boxes displace face-to-face interaction between professional teachers and younger children, quiet time for reading, learning to write with fingers on pens and pencils and paper (proven to light up important areas of the brain like nothing else can!), and myriad other ways of learning that have been effective for centuries. Cheaper and more sustainable too!
14
Great! Instead of polluting children heads with this so called technological junk of useless games and apps, why not try teaching them core subjects so when they graduate from high school and even college, they can write a decent sentence and understand a bank statement. This is nothing but digital oxycontin.
13
Wee through the ruse by looking at the way Silicon Valley parents choose to educate their own kids.
6
Wow, we finally found a way to pimp kids during phonics. This is a moral disgrace. Kids don't need more machine interaction to learn. This is 100% about profit and the people pushing this should share jail cells with pedophiles. I started this comment in rage but already tears are falling. We are without compass as a nation and it's Duncan as well as DeVos, Gates as well as Pearson.
11
Almost as an afterthought, the last picture shows a heap of books and print materials (looks sort of like the basement) and the caption reads, "Students at Church Lane are also encouraged to read books offline." Oh? I did not see a single child in all of the other nice color photos reading a book.
This will end up being the next cut-and-paste generation with very weak spatial skills (since everything they do is now two-dimensional) who cannot do a research project, participate in a thoughtful debate, or formulate a hypothesis and test it out.
These districts are spending plenty of tax dollars on all this technology. But you don't think this is how the wealthy educate their children, do you?
13
Just think how many teachers, social workers, guidance counselors and other human support personnel could have been hired with all that money.
11
It is not surprising that a generation of parents who use gadgets as babysitters even when at home now accept the gadgetry world to babysit their children at school. In our rush to turn education into a job training program for corporations, we have forgotten that one of the main purposes established as our educational system developed was to educate citizens, to prepare Americans for their role as the ultimate authority in a democracy. As Trump's ignorance of civics demonstrates, in this we have failed.
Those who use Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, and others like them should keep in mind that these corporations are no different from Wells Fargo, Experian, ExxonMobil and their like. They are about profit, pure and simple. Publicly and most privately held corporations have no allegiance to America, its people, or its values despite many millions spent hiring ad companies and lobbyists to convince us otherwise. If we use their products, we are enablers. It becomes an "us", not merely "them" that is the problem, no different from a bartender who knowingly serves drinks to a drunk person about to drive off.
These corporations have plenty of money to spread around buying legislators and regulators, as well as ad companies to create "fake news" about their love of us and the virtues of their products. They have absolutely no reason to behave any differently than they have unless and until people just say no by not using their products and by acting as responsible parents.
6
Ever wonder how these tech CEO's treat their own kids?
They send them to the Waldorf School--where all computers, electronic learning devices etc. are scrubbed from the educational experience.
11
Even universities require professors to use technology in the classroom. They are reprimanded if they do not. Technology is a distraction and it is not even a reliable source for research. Now computers are used in education the same way television was used in homes: to keep children calm, distracted, and off our backs. It is frightening how the power of money is destroying humanity and our brains and hearts.
7
Just another attempt by greedy corporations to siphon public money into the pockets of shareholders and CEO bonuses.
6
If premise of the article is that the freebies from the tech companies subverted the impartial evaluation of the hardware scoring sheet, then the reporter understands nothing about the public procurement process.
I work in the (non-school) public sector IT and I served 6 years on my local school board. Based on my experience, this is what likely happened: The administration assembled a great team to evaluate the hardware including IT staff (who probably made the fancy spreadsheet) and a bunch of tech savvy teachers. Everyone who reviewed the hardware probably wanted to buy one of the higher scoring units. However, they were required to give the results of all the units that met the minimum score to the business office to put out to bid. The final selection came down to the unit that came in at the lowest cost. The best technology doesn't win.
1
"The administration assembled a great team"
That is fantasy. I have been to numerous Board of Ed meetings. It is very political. Someone makes up his mind long before the public meetings and the technology vetting. When parents press for answers, the "great team" responds with vague promises.
8
Red Mama: The article directly contradicts your premise. There was nothing objective about the recommendations.
Digital Promise only presented products that paid $25,000 to it to administrators. That is straight up pay to play. And Karen Cator, the head of Digital Promise, somehow thinks that requiring payment to be presented is somehow “void of conflict-of-interest?”
All I can say is that”void of conflict-of-interest” doesn’t mean what Karen Cator thinks it does.
5
Not Drinking the Kool-Aid is correct. You are naive if you believe superintendent consulting gigs (ERDI) and freebies like travel, wining and dining, etc. don't influence the buying process. It sure looks like superintendents are being bought and school boards need to stop it.
8
What is missing in this debate is this: the many conferences, course offerings at those conferences and elsewhere, educational outreach efforts, research efforts, and especially one-on-one and group meetings between tech "vendors' and K-12 staff and administrators are providing an immense amount of benefits to all our K-12 schools. And I’m talking about technology and pedagogical education and consulting that is being offered at no charge to the schools.
And consider: tech providers are very often frustrated that “selling” their tech solutions to K-12 schools involves endless “free” education and consulting for the K-12 folks. They would say that for every one instance you bring up of X administrator in X school getting some junkets to some conferences, there are 50 instances of the tech provider giving months and more often years of free mentoring, tech counseling, education, research, and more to K-12 or district folks in the hopes of a making a sale– but the result in no sale. An that net/net, the schools are benefiting by the tech vendors continued willingness to keep on pressing for more tech in the schools, and their continued willingness to provide– at the tech companies’ expense– the K-12 community considerable access to some of the most robust corporate and research community resources available today– with no moral or business obligation to purchase anything.
4
What value do you believe those tech companies are providing? As the article notes, their products have had limited to no positive effect on student performance. Nor is it at all clear that they offer any pedagogical expertise. If these companies are expending more time and money on the services you say they provide without making money in sales, why do they continue to make and market educational software and devices?
2
The companies have built into their business plans the cost of their "free" advice -- and also the "generous" grants, awards, etc. The costs are business expenses incurred in process of making sales, built into the prices of the products & services; they are not true freebies.
4
David, despite your laundry list of complaints, the tech companies have shown no reluctance to provide everything you whine about, and more. Why do you suppose that is? Because schools are providing tens of millions of future customers?
I would be perfectly happy if the tech companies took their toys and went away. Why do you suppose they don’t. Think about it...
5
I taught for almost 40 years, long before the advent of technology in the classroom and quite a while after. In all that time, why hasn't technology solved one of the most problems, the achievement gap in reading in a number of demographics? The teaching of reading requires a human connection between a child and teacher, a connection that can only happen when the human meets the child where they are, believes they will succeed, and tailors the teaching technique to best suit that child. No program can ever do that. If it could, why has the gap persisted all these years?
10
Technology has a long history of fake promises. Thomas Edison predicted his phonograph and movies would make books obsolete.
Derek Muller, “This Will Revolutionize Education,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEmuEWjHr5c
5
The information age residents include those who have returned from the second world war through to millenials. We simply do not have sufficient empirical data to evaluate the down-side, if any, of information technology in education. I am an early Boomer. When I went to school - primary and secondary, personal computers and software did not exist in the ubiquitous numbers we have today. In school we learned arithmetic tables by rote memory. We used pencils to perform arithmetic and write. To this day, I can derive sums and products in my mind from basic arithmetic problems.
When I went to university in mid-1970s I studied computer science and a couple of maths at freshmen level. We shared an IBM 360 mainframe hidden in a building and secured by geeks that monitored 'systems' daily to maximize 'up-time' on precious computer use.
Trust me, I am NOT a 'math wiz'. I barely got through my math courses at university. But I do have the ability to conceptualize math problems at a fundamental level and use algebra to solve problems.
The problem with computer applications like spreadsheets with canned formulas, for those who haven't been through the 'old way' of learning arithmetic and math, is a loss of creative thinking. If you are given a formula in a drop-down menu, you need not think through the framing of the problem. Similarly, if a child doesn't learn to write using a pencil/pen instead of tapping letters on a keyboard, what happens when the electrical grid fails?
6
It is concerning to me that several children who are quite young are shown with headphones, which can permanently damage hearing if not scrupulously taken care not to use at either volume too high, or for extended periods.
I wonder how much this was addressed by the computer sales force?
8
It was not. As a parent who had a 6 year old wearing them, it was infuriating. We've since left the system for reasons just as this. Basic safety was not taken into consideration for our youngest students. Many parents do not know what is happening and those that do, assume that the schools have our kids' best interest in mind.
7
Sure, give kids computers to play on, use for homework.
But, do not slack off and let them or anyone else consider the use of a tool as "learning".
If you want to have students learn how to use technology, as in develop new functions or apply technology to new uses, then you must show them how to think and create and use focused effort requiring research and consistent effort, persistence and the ability to learn from mistakes and even take advantage of mistakes.
This is how we will keep our "edge" when compared with the strenuous rote learning and memorization focus used by foreign schools.
6
"But there is little rigorous evidence so far to indicate that using computers in class improves educational results. "
For your child's best educational results, raise them in a household with a $100,000+ annual income, in a neighborhood filled with folks who earn that level of household income, and send them to schools filled with children who come from similar family incomes. (This figure may be on the low side for NYC and surrounding areas, as well as for California's major cities.)
6
The integration of technology into K-12 public school education was well-planned, going back to the creation of the Common Core State Standards. If you read the standards, the need for technology is embedded as early as Kindergarten. It would be impossible to meet the standards without buying "technology tools." Unfortunately, child-development and best practices for children was discarded, and replaced by the business insight of the funders of the standards (like Bill Gates) who ensured that schools would need to provide children with a never ending supply of technology, just so they could say they were meeting the more "rigorous" common core. This push into unlimited tech use for children also helped "prepare" students for the online tests they would need to take. This has never been about the positive impact of technology on children, rather it is all about the positive impact of children on technology.
19
There is no need, none, for technology in kindergarten classes.
6
[Rupert] Murdoch said, “When it comes to K through 12 education, we see a five-hundred-billion-dollar sector in the U.S. alone that is waiting desperately to be transformed.” Amplify’s products include digital tablets loaded with instructional programs and games ... The company says that it has sold several hundred thousand tablets to schools across the country.
9
I think the cart carrying the students is way on down the road while a lot of the horses are sniffing around the fenceposts in a weed-filled field. Many districts change their internet platforms regularly (meaning new contracts with tech companies), teachers spend a lot of time using these platforms, getting Google and other educational APP training, and having part of their job evaluations based on their use of tech tools. Many teachers are also semi-entrepreneurs using technology to sell the instructional materials they create or put together, and many students fruitfully and much less so use these tools throughout the day. Technology is in the classroom, and students who don't have access are behind in certain aspects. However, many questions remain. How much time should young students in particular be on these platforms, and what should they best be used for? It's actually not bad to have young students take a brain break and do a three minute engaging dance video. Dreambox and Raz-Kids are excellent for homework or a twenty-minute center during remediation. Students should handwrite and use Googledocs. At what ages for how long needs more study. Older students need classes in media/tech literacy and the ethical use of technology. Actually, tech companies and school boards need these classes too. As for Superintendents, their boards need to be clearer on the quid pro quo, and not sell learning time for hardware branding rights. Teachers need a say. They have none now.
1
Dr, those are all nice platitudes, but where is the data, evidence?
No one wants to start with facts. No one wants testing and accountability.
Instead they want to experiment on children.
10
I am hopeful that the NYTimes will also look into the policy changes happening nationwide that are enabling this tech takeover. The Every Student Succeeds Act is jam packed with incentives to move public schools toward tech-based classrooms, with Wall Street's "Pay for Success" agenda driving much of the action. It's insidious, and often hidden behind progressive-sounding terms like "student-centered" learning (or, on the flip-side, conservative-sounding terms like "school choice") meant to appeal to engaged, caring parents and teachers. We need help exposing this before public education is fully decimated and children become nothing more than profit-machines for the nation's elite.
17
Emily, you are correct.
Surprisingly both the left and right agree here. Both parties in government are helping Silicon Valley.
5
Too late
1
People don't remember history. Tobacco companies got children addicted to tobacco. It took decades of pain before people woke up.
Now tech companies are getting children addicted to computers. Parents are spending more and working harder to help their children. And children too are working harder and learning less.
It's a crime.
13
Computers are great and useful tools but they are only tools. Traditional educational tools like textbooks, programmed learning kits and test and revise activities are mindless. Running software that more or less mimics traditional teaching tools is no answer. Kids need to be put in activities of loosely structured situations which challenge them to plan, think, struggle with competing ideas, discuss, analyse, evaluate and draw conclusions much as we all do in our daily professional and private lives is what is needed. Students need to learn to evaluate the quality of their own thinking and conclusions and that should be the concern of the classroom teacher. The problem is passive learning plays too large a role in our educational systems because they lend themselves to classroom management issues. We are using 19th century structures to prepare students for a future that looks nothing like the 19th century. This focus on the tool instead of the process is a major mistake that we as a society will continue to pay for. This article actually focuses on superficial and entirely the wrong issues.
3
I started teaching in 1959 and have seen a lot of educational fads. As for this one, all one needs to do is to look at the photos in this article. The children are not interacting with one another with the exception of one girl being shushed by another student. Sadly, these children miss out on an important learning experience, learning from other children.
12
I was a Special Education teacher in California for 9 years, mostly in Behavior Support classes. I wasn't perfect, but I'd like to believe that I put in a good-faith effort to help my students learn, develop skills they'll need as adults, and become better citizens, and I wasn't just there to collect a paycheck. I fully endorse students learning basic computer skills and especially learning research skills, such as how to distinguish a reliable on-line source from an unreliable one.
Last year I moved to North Carolina and took a job as an OCS teacher (high school program for high functioning SPED students who aren't college-bound). We were required to teach our English and Math classes through the North Carolina Virtual Public School and it was a joke. I didn't have enough laptops for all my students, the ones I did have were 6 years old, most were missing keys, and none could hold a charge more than 20 minutes.
The lessons were usually 20 minute, poorly produced videos going over concepts and sample problems. The student had to complete fill-in-the-blank notes (I printed more worksheets in that class than any other year I was a teacher), which they usually did with the sound off, so I knew they weren't really learning. We never read a whole book in English, only excerpts. I tried to teach how I knew I should, but there was no support from the admins, home, and no motivation to learn from most of the students. I was glorified IT support and not a teacher that year.
19
first it was televisions in the classroom, then cable TV, then calculators, then computer labs, then word processors and now computers in every classroom. every step along the way students became less competent, worldly and skilled.
the concern originally was that corporations were seeking to make the new citizens into good consumers. since this goal was accomplished, the next one is to make them programmed. semi-literate, sheep unable to form original thoughts and opinions based upon actual knowledge and critical thinking.
Look up Neil Postman, a brilliant educator who was quite concerned and warned us as to where we would be today.
15
As did Clifford Stoll 20 years ago with his book, 'Silicon Snake Oil: Second Thoughts of the Information Highway'. Take a look at his thoughts on this.
He knew where we were going and it was not a good place.
2
Technology is fine, I mean you can store all kinds of information and do not have to have cumbersome books to lug around and wait years before they are updated. When you give students an assignment they do not have to strategize or think about an answer or summon prior knowledge, they just look it up. They do not have to know grammar, punctuation, or any form of basic writing skills because the technology will do it for them. When given an assignment to answer questions to test their knowledge, they just find the answer on the web. In fact they do not need to think or go to school, just buy them a computer.
2
I remember when I first started teaching almost forty years ago, a teacher showed me some metal box sitting in a corner gathering dust. He said it was a "teaching" machine.
2
Tech companies with the help of some non-thinking teachers, administrators, and parents are pushing the phones and computers on students. The computer-based lesson plans are silly busy work. The students end up working more and learning less. It is also more work for parents.
But they push all of it will slogans and false promises.
Children are not adults and school is not work. Everything the children need is in textbooks - without the distraction of searching and finding videos, games, social media, and pornography.
Tech companies have sabotaged our children's education.
14
As a senior citizen, I would like to relate an old story which floated around during my college days, a long long time ago. A professor attended his first class lecture and on subsequent lectures students found a tape recorder at the podium with instructions to push the button to start. Mid semester the professor decided to show up to see how his class was progressing. To his surprise what he saw was 25 tape recorders and not a single human anywhere to be seen.
9
As a parent of two children, it is clear that the consequences of the ever increasing use of technology in the classroom is mostly bad. Research skills are being lost to googling, students do not look beyond their laptop for knowledge, and they do not know how to write and read in any depth. Kids having laptops and tablets is also not something a school or parents can keep an eye on enough, and children are getting addicted.
16
The methods used to sell products to schools are as bad IMO as the pharmaceutical industry and selling to schools needs to be regulated even more than drug sellers to doctors because kids are involved. If the states won't police the school vendors than Congress should and legislate no more freebies to superintendents and if superintendents get paid for outside work, it gets reported in a public online national registry. Then send the first violators to jail to send a strong message to others.
The Gates and Hewlett Foundations helped to fund Digital Promise. The outcome of companies paying to network with superintendents should have been expected.
9
Make no mistake -- the idea is two-fold: 1) to foster education (or at least a kind of education) and b) to make the species dependent on computers.
One anecdote will highlight the risks. But first, a little background. I'm 67. My boss is in his 20s. (Welcome to Silicon Valley.)
About a year ago my boss walked by me and noticed I was quickly adding up a string of numbers that I'd scribbled on a piece of scratch paper (in a column, the old-fashioned way like this --
126.77
416.31
012.89
191.05
He stopped, bent down to get good look at what I was doing, and said, "You can do that? I can't. I need a calculator."
These kids (I call them kinds) dance circles around me when it comes to using IT, but their productivity is almost entirely a function of their familiarity with a) computer keyboards -- man, can they type?! -- and b) software like Excel and Google Chat.
Where will they be when today's computer's are as obsolete as my pen and paper would seem to be? In a word, they'll be screwed. So will their country.
7
The only thing these myopic school administrators will have achieved is to give these students myopia. Look at these kids with their faces glued 6 inches from screens.
Students don't need laptops and tablets to learn. They are mostly a distraction, and are most likely stunting these kids learning abilities.
The one thing a student needs to learn is to learn how to learn, to be able to sit and focus, to slowly build one skill upon another, to master a subject.
These same Silicon Valley geniuses that work for these companies pushing this stuff into schools send their kids to so called enrichment schools, typically Waldorf or Montessori types.
No, not everyone needs to or should know how to "code." What everyone needs is basic reading, writing and math skills, to know how to think critically (e.g., how to distinguish "fake" news), basic science concepts, history, etc. Anyone can pick up how to code in a matter of weeks.
12
Shiny expensive things. Zero additional learning. This pattern keeps playing out year after year.
5
"...little rigorous evidence so far to indicate that using computers in class improves educational results...
Urban school districts routinely spend $20K/year on students - half of whom don't learn or do much of anything, in their dozen years in the classroom...
Yet - spending less than $1K on a device that can connect a student to every aspect of humanity's knowledge, creativity, and achievement - and in any language out there...
Which can be as usefully learned as the knowledge and the culture and language of the society itself...
This is being questioned???
Everyone yammers about the need to "learn to think critically"...
All I'm seeing are stealth anarchists scouring the young populace for people who are inclined to disrupt and destroy - the way sexual predators scour the season's new models and actresses for people who might just trade one favor for another...
2
What use is it to provide a laptop to a student who can not read and expect him to correctly type in a URL?
The accompanying pictures show numerous very young students wearing headphones, despite abundant evidence that they are at risk of permanent hearing loss if the adults in the room do not take scrupulous care in assuring the volume is not too high. There is also research indicating that even at “safe” volume levels, permanent hearing loss is a consequence of wearing headphones for extended periods of time.
2
tech belongs as a subject - it is not a way to teach anyone how to be a thinking, interacting, reasoning person out in the world among other people.
11
I have been to dozens of Board of Education meetings in several school districts. Teachers and parents do not understand the difference between teaching students to use computers and using computers to teach.
It's sort of the difference between teaching an adult 18 year hold how to drive a car and telling an 8 year old he has to drive himself to school.
16
Schools are strapped for cash thanks to our inequitable funding system, and now they are forced to prostitute themselves to the latest shiny technology. Yes, kids need to learn to use tech, but it is not going to fix many of the basic problems we have. Funny how people who actually work in tech instead send their kids to private school with small classes and exciting hands-on work instead of to a place where kids sit in rows and stare at their "personalized" screens. Another example of our separate and unequal society.
12
How Silicon Valley Plans to Conquer the Classroom: Bribery, the old fashioned way.
18
Disgusting.
Our district uses Google Apps e.g. Google's third-rate, not-ready-for-prime time spreadsheet etc applications which failed in the commercial marketplace. No employer would dream of using these buggy applications that hang, that are insecure, that deliver unreliable write-side outputs.
Why on earth are these being foisted on our children?
So that the Octopus can start building behavioral profiles of future consumers ... at age SEVEN?
Absolutely repulsive.
I don't expect better behavior from our tech oligarchs, but can't we at least preserve some degree of integrity in our public education system?
Rein in Google, NOW.
Break up this octopus.
13
Tech has too much say-so in our world.
10
can anyone provide any evidence that using computers helps kids learn? perhaps all that money that is lining the pockets of tech companies should be used to train and hire more teachers, you know, the humans who used to help kids learn..
18
Our child was in the first wave of tablet users in 1st grade. 6 year olds who were just learning how to read were expected to be typing in .url's, and spent lots of time with head sets on, not interacting with others. Even when it was time to "relax", the kids would dance in front of screens that had people dancing on them. Many kids use their tablets to play games during indoor recess and now, are required in library and physical education classes. These tablets and the tablets break often, the batteries don't hold their charge and because of the cost, there are less people to interact with children and even to fix the computers.
When this was rolled out, it was labeled the STAT program, and at the same time, computer teachers were removed and a new role called the "STAT teacher" took their place. These STAT teachers only teach teachers, not students. Because of this, kids no longer are taught how to use the computers and how to type or anything that could be useful for their futures. Kids are only taught how to be consumers on these computers, playing math games, watching videos and being tested by these on-line curricula.
Many people have allowed this to happen in both the school system and on the County level. [And FYI, Michael Collins who is quoted in this article as stating that it "smelled bad", even approved the contracts mentioned while he was on the Board of Ed]. What will it take to stop STAT in Baltimore County Public Schools?
36
What this article fails to mention is whether this district is organized under the principles of policy governance or not. A superintendent carrying out a policy that is set by the board, generally, is a good thing. My guess is that this is not one where policy governance is successful, to be generous...at worst, the board has set the policy, and the superintendent
is accomplice, rather than serving as a check (or if his roles have been re-defined)...this failure of policy governance would confirm the boards’ complicity, too...their funding, their demographics...and yes, the invasive specie allowing me to make this comment, on this platform.
All of the monopolies presented in this article are pare of the problem, except that we can turn away from them...and probably should.
6
Let's not forget that most of the inventors of all this technology learned in classrooms with chalk and blackboards.
Perhaps it is time to embrace new technology, but there needs to be a Bill of Rights for Students with respect to Technology.
Some of these rights should include:
The right to privacy
The right to treat technology as a tool, not as an end in itself;
The right not to be tracked
The right not to have a dossier formed of students to be sold to the highest bidder.
The right to become bored, and not be stimulated all the time by technology.
The right to learn about cyber-ethics
The right to create new technology and content in order to learn how easy it is to create fake news, and how hard and important it is to create factual content.
The right to be free of online bullying and harassment.
The right to have complete control over one's technology footprint.
The right to have one's electronic information be forever forgotten.
The right to turn the damn thing off.
28
Amen!
I've been teaching English at the high school level since 1997. Every year since 2007, the students have relied more and more on technology and every year they grow more anxious, less willing to think independently, less creative, and just plain dumber. My students now admit that the only time they are not on the internet is when they are in the shower (for some of them that's not too often, unfortunately). They are almost never "in the moment"; even when they are experiencing something cool they are more worried about how it will look on social media as opposed to how it actually looks. Overall, very few of them can concentrate and focus - hallmarks of all succesfull people.
These are great tools. But they cannot replace a charismatic teacher who actually knows his or her stuff. They cannot empathize, exemplify, or inspire.
The iGeneration will be a lost bunch - forever beholden to the cheap thrill of a 'like' on social media, forever finding their 'facts' in the random corners of the internet, forever finding only a vapid connection to intimacy through dating apps.
The CEOs of these companies aren't that much different than the tobacco giants of the mid to late twentieth century, reaping huge rewards off of the idiocy and short-sightedness of the many.
93
Sili-con Valley. Reminds of the con man in the Musical "Music Man" trying to sell band instruments to the parents.
"Right here in River City.
"Trouble with a capital "T"
"And that rhymes with "P" and that stands for pool!"
3
Screen time doesn't teach the things you need to learn in elementary school. There will be plenty of time later to sit in a cubicle and stare at a screen.
8
As I'm riding on BART from my san francisco tech job home to San mateo, where my 2 kids are in public school - let me say this -- schools don't need silicon valley disruption or multi-million dollar recurring expenditures on tech.
They need significant dedicated funding for teachers to attract the best and the brightest, smaller classrooms, and parental involvement. What they don't need is the diversion of school funding to today's latest ed-tech startups.
18
Solid reporting; thanks NYT. Way more graft going on here and way more federal funds at stake than in the Puerto Rico power grid repair story. But because Silicon Valley is part of the liberal elite, there won't be any outrage in the media or special hearings demanded by democrats in Congress.
5
At both of my own children's pricey, selective private schools, tech was a tool and not the teacher.
Debate, discussion, writing, artistic expression, and human interaction shaped both the all-boys school my son attended and the all-girls school my daughter attended. My son even learned how to use actual power tools in a shop class (his first creation was a birdhouse) the same semester he took music appreciation (which required him to attend multiple recitals as an audience member).
In the district where I teach, however, online "lessons" and other programs are pushed as being the magic elixir for our low-income students. They generate data! They let teachers print out reports! The reports can be color-coded!
It's sickening. And joyless, ineffective, isolating, and sterile. But very profitable for the district leaders who get kickbacks from the tech companies.
The rich are indeed getting richer--they're getting much richer educations and experiences.
41
The introduction of computers into school systems is a fantastic idea. With the increase importance technology is playing in everyday life, the ability to become fluent with these systems is vital. However, I believe that the implementation of these devices is going to be the most crucial part. With the importance of teachers and the peer to peer interactions there will need to a better way to incorporate technology into the already established system.
2
As someone who lives in technology research, venture capital and innovation, I see no compelling case for thinking technology in itself will improve education. Technology has remade industries, businesses and how we live our daily lives in the past ten years. However. In each of these cases, technology was meeting a specific unmet need. What is the unmet need for technology in the classroom? What can a PC or tablet do that a teacher cannot do? This is the debate that is missing. I’m waiting for an answer
32
The hardware isn't unionized.
I am a firm believer of organic growth not relying on outside artificial stuff. Tech industry treat young school kids as future customers. The sooner kids hook up with the electronic gadgets, the better the tech companies will progress. My daughter has strict rules limiting her two 4-year old kids watching TV & playing tablets. Even when the two kids visiting us, we have to follow the strict rules watching closely what the kids are doing especially not spend too much time on tablets. I worry when kids at school ages and go to elementary school. They may be forced to accept learning everything online from tablets & computers. This will not be good for their organic growth.
5
‘Karen Cator, the chief executive of Digital Promise, said it was important for schools and industry to work together. “We want a healthy, void-of-conflict-of-interest relationship between people who create products for education and their customers,” she said. “The reason is so that companies can create the best possible products to meet the needs of schools.”’
If Cator was even remotely candid, then Digital Promise would have no need or desire to charge vendors $25,000 for access to school administrators. Instead, they only present products by vendors that pay to play.
Fully corrupt, and admittedly so.
8
Sad to see kids spending even more of their lives looking at screens.
Maybe the photos are supposed to impress the viewer with "technology," but I just see the stifling of creativity and children being prepped to become worker-drones.
How about a return to old-fashioned (and less expensive) ideas, like free-form play, music, art, and more social learning experiences?
6
I work as a substitute teacher in my school district. I see high school students reach for a calculator to multiply single digits. I see very little reading and writing; rather I see scanning, and cutting and pasting. I see few opportunities for students to speak at length and thus learn how to present themselves. Far from encouraging mastery, computers introduced at too young an age foster learned helplessness. The accustom students to a Pavlovian swipe-and-response rhythm that destroys their ability to be happily absorbed in exploration of an idea via their own wits. The mania for technology fails to see retrieval of information as stopping short of the application of knowledge.
All this swiping and retrieving is of course recorded, stored, and used by the tech giants, and not with the consent of the child. Yes, I'm a child of the 60s and 70s, so of course I wonder, how will we teach our children to question authority when we have surrendered their autonomy, and, ultimately, their privacy?
29
I don't trust the educational value of apps and computer programs as much as other types of learning.
Here's why: If my kids fail or are having a hard time in some kind of learning app or video game, they are very likely to try again. But if they fail or are having a hard time in a real-life activity (sports, homework on paper, etc) they are much more likely to give up, then it's up to my wife or me (or a teacher) to bring them back and have them try again.
My experience is that failure in real life followed by practice, repetition, and learning makes a person more resilient in real life. However, if you fail in a virtual environment, on a computer, screen, and then learn to bounce back, it may make you more resilient in a video game but does NOT translate over to real life, non-digital activities. In other words, patience, learning and resilience with screen-based apps does not translate into real world patience, learning, and resilience.
The world that video screens present is shallow, easy to maneuver, and mildly addictive.
8
Interesting that the study the authors linked to suggest that computers are not effective in the classroom focuses on notetaking. Taking notes while listening to a lecture is not an effective practice. How can technology improve a learning strategy that is ineffective from the start? Instead, let's explore how digital tools can help educators rethink instruction and improve student learning.
4
So many of these comments are against the use of computers for education. I would like to point out that not all of Silicon Valley is about securing contracts and making money. Khan Academy is a non-profit based in Mountain View that offers free education throughout the world to many who don't have access to good schools as well free tutorials and SAT Prep courses.They seek to support what takes place in the classroom, not to replace more traditional methods and have been recommended by teachers to those students who may need more help as well as to students whose intelligence and curiosity enable them to move ahead. Let's not be too quick to put down technology in the classroom.
7
Thank you for your insight. Khan Academy is a tremendous blessings for students. As a college student who struggled with preforming well in math during my K-12 Education, online resources such as Khan Academy and ThatTutorGuy.com have helped me earn high marks in advance level mathematics courses in college. Having the ability to replay and pause the videos gives me the opportunity to clear up difficult concepts. That being said, it’s important that technology in the classroom is treated as a tool for students instead of the primary method of learning.
4
The Times ran an article about the number of Silicon Valley executives who send their own kids to the local Waldorf School, which prohibits electronic screen use. I think that is relevant.
5
Of course, those free videos have been quite lucrative for Mr. Khan (who pays himself more than half a million dollars annually) and have been widely critiqued for errors in the mathematics presented. Being thoughtful and well-informed about the use of technology in the classroom does not preclude the careful use of it.
1
It's never a good sign when a school division asks parents to participate in a national survey (ProjectTomorrow) but then refuses to share the results (SpeakUp) with the very parents who answered the questions about access and usage of technology. Not sure what to make of this.
11
There is a difference between taking a class on how to use a computer and having tech take over the classroom. We are talking about putting children in front of screens, without any independent research on the effectiveness of the program, without any respect for parents' wishes that their child be taught by a human teacher, textbooks, rather than a robot. There are NO age appropriate safety guidelines for screen use in schools. School children (as young as kindergarten or preschool) are being exposed to glowing screens, regardless of known health concerns of increased ADHD, obesity, screen addiction, retinal damage, blue light interfering with sleep and melatonin, decreased social skills and oh yes, cancer. The American Academy of Pediatrics warns that emissions from wireless devices cause cancer and children should limit or avoid exposure since children's skulls are thin and more prone to absorb radiation. Then, studies show children learn better when they read from books; they retain less information from a screen.
Finally, online, competency based education or "personalized learning" is code for DATA collection. These algorithms are opaque, no way for parents to check for accuracy, see how the data are profiled, shared (or marketed). Student data is a trillion dollar market. Yes, children should know how to use tech but tech should not replace teachers nor should it be creepy. We need laws protecting privacy, security and safe screen use for students.
8
We moved my daughter this year from a small private school where she had grown weary of the same small cohort and where she wasn't being challenged. One virtue of that otherwise rather ingrown setting--there was little emphasis on tech. We moved her to a celebrated local magnet school, where she is now struggling. Everything everything everything happens online; it is a dismal situation, especially with a kid we work hard to keep offline in her daily life. So many poor districts especially are mesmerized by the technology, and sell it to poor parents as an asset. I emailed the history teacher to ask if we could print out the chapters; he never answered my emails.
12
I've been following the series by Natasha Singer and her colleagues and appreciate their invaluable work in documenting the ethical breaches, and their contexts, by tech companies seeking to serve themselves at the expense of the public educational system. Public housing, public transportation and now public education are seen as a means of last resort; increasingly, "public" equals "poor." These articles are assigned reading in my ethics class. Thank you for your efforts!
14
I've been deeply concerned and very troubled about this issue for years. And raising a child, as well as being a college professor, here in Silicon Valley I've seen concerning trends in this regard at all levels of education from preschool to college graduate. We deserve evidence based educational instruction free from conflicts of interest and pressures for profits and perks in my book.
6
The businessmen running the school systems are driven by financial considerations. When schools stopped being run by teachers , they stopped being schools. The computer companies are running businesses and seek profit, fair enough. The motives of the school administrators should not be profit or personal pleasure.
8
To all the commenters who are complaining that we should instead pay teachers more and shrink classroom sizes:
Once every student has a laptop with learning software, mass firings of teachers will be the end result. Public schools will become online schools. Districts will hire new people to babysit auditorium sized rooms of students for minimum wage.
There is no going back. There’s only charter schools with actual teachers for the rich and warehoused low-quality online school for the masses.
13
We are currently undertaking one of the biggest genetic and biological experiments in the history of humanity and our children are the guinea pigs. We are putting computers in the hands of adolescents with developing brains, but quite honestly, we have no idea what the long-term impact of constant digital input and interaction with screens has on brain development.
Like pharmaceutical companies, tech companies have their bottom line, not the well being of the end users as the top priority. But unlike pharmaceuticals that go through stringent testing, computer technology is welcomed with open arms and without question. If technology was considered with the same scrutiny as new pharmaceuticals under testing, they would not have yet passed the FDA guidelines of proving that they don't cause harm.
Many schools now have students from elementary school age do virtually all of their work and homework on laptops. I appreciate how the Internet has made the sharing of information and access to research easier. However, I can say without hesitation based on our family experience that this technology is absolutely addictive, often not used for school work or other productive reasons, and its effect on the brain seems very similar to other abused substances, including drugs and alcohol.
If we eventually find out there are problems, and some early signs are suggesting there may be, it will be too late for an entire generation or two to do anything about.
22
There's always been technology in the classroom. Blackboards are a technology and so are pen and paper. Kids will rebuff learning if the technology provided them is outdated and inconvenient (imagine asking a student to type a paper on a typewriter at school when they have a laptop at home). What's more importat is the ends the educator hopes to achieve with the technology. What's schools need more of are technologies that empower teachers rather than replace them. Check out www.booksthatgrow.com as an example of technology that improves a teachers practice. It's not helpful to declare all tech in schools good or bad. Let's first set the goals for our student and choose the technology that helps us get their fastest and with the most equity, especially for students with disabilities and English language learners.
4
No one is asking students to type papers on computers. Making that accusation is the kinds of tactics the tech companies use. They also couch their bogus arguments in the language of fear and guilt.
1
In addition to influence peddling by tech companies - which needs to stop, nationwide and quickly - the biggest issue I see is studying the usefulness of tech in the classroom, especially for pre high school kids.
I spent most of my career in the tech industry and use all sorts of software daily. I (along with millions of tech worker bees) and most of the people who built the current crop of tech giants were educated without benefit of technology yet had the ability to bring this all into being. How did we all do that?
The important things for students to learn and think about can be taught without technology. Wonderful as tech is, it's also a massive consumer of time and energy dealing with its glitches. Having watched my local school district use technology for my kids (youngest now a junior in high school), most consumed valuable time with minimal educational benefit.
Classroom time and a teacher's direct interaction with students are scarce resources drained by time spent coaxing balky technology or instructing in yet another software tool.
It's easy to learn to code, use a spreadsheet, browser, etc. if you have a solid education at your back. Introduce computer tools the last year of middle school to prepare kids for high school and have online resources in school libraries for student use for research.
Silicon Valley's need for customers doesn't make them necessary for our kids' educations
12
This is very sad. There’s so much to be learned in the “real” world with tactile interfacing of actual people and things. Ask any top tech exec with kids and you’ll discover they send them to private schools that ban device use altogether—for very good reasons.
7
As a community college teacher with works primarily with students from lower- and working class family, I can tell you definitively that personal technology is primarily about making students stupider, lazier and less creative and, thus, easier to manipulate.
No one has summed up the needs of my students better than Professor of English Lori Isbell: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/06/10/degrees-of-separation
26
The hucksters pushing computers promise to teach "critical thinking, etc" as if the previous generation hadn't learned anything without computers.
The parents who believe that don't even have critical thinking skills.
2
Greed drives corruption. And this is happening in the world of school officials, seduced by hi-tech companies.
The seducers and the seduced should be driven out of their positions, to drums beating and trumpets blaring, with the children victims of corruption observing the ceremony.
2
I have found that Superintendents, and any else up the ladder past
Principal have no real idea what goes on in the classroom and how
students actually learn.
There is too much money being spent for anyone to be fully honest throughout the process.
At least let the Teachers have a slice of the "not-quite-legal" pie.
6
We should just go for it and see what happens.
1
Tech options can be great, but the costs of the Baltimore County Public Schools program, and the way it has been implemented here as a national model, is a travesty. The laptop-per-student digital initiative known as STAT is actually running close to $300 million, including related infrastructure, professional development, and other line items noted in BCPS' own six-year STAT/Digital Conversion budget. Former Superintendent Dallas Dance told the county council in a 2016 memo that STAT was costing at least $275 million. And that did not even include tens of millions in software and licensing fees revealed under numerous contract spending authorities, including DreamBox Learning ($3.2 million); Curriculum Associates/iReady ($3.2 million); Discovery Education ($10 million); Middlebury Interactive Languages (MIL) ($7 million) and millions more.
The superintendent and administrators here have done numerous videos, promotional talks, and testimonials for school vendors' products. For one example, see various links on the MIL website for 'Dallas Dance.' https://www.middleburyinteractive.com/search/site/Dallas%20Dance
For additional info on costs, contracts, studies, "personalized learning" and related, see a local coalition blog following the issue here---in one of the nation's largest school districts: STAT-Us BCPS https://statusbcps.wordpress.com
Ask questions in your schools.
6
To me, the thing that says it all, is that the companies are referred to as "thought partners" - not vendors, or contractors. This shows just how influenced, and how conflicted, school district leaders are.
34
"Thought partners."
It is all propaganda and slogans . Usually the technology comes with promises to teach 5 Cs" critical thinking, collaboration, communication, creativity, and character - as if students in the past never learned this and there is something special about a computer for teaching it
If the first wave of slogans doesn't hook the parents, then they use the fear tactics: "Your child will be left behind."
3
This is why I am so grateful to send my kids to public school in NYC. In this case, less is more, i.e., less money is more independence for my kids. I know too may kids in the suburbs in expensive suburbs where each child is issued a Chromebook at 6th grade or younger. These kids are completely plugged into the matrix. The levels of anxiety already appearing in middle school is alarming as these kids look at screens too much.
I truly hope Carmin Farina displays the good sense and pedigree of the NYC public school system of years past to refuse to let these devices into NYC public school until there are multiple longitudinal studies on the effects of digital devices on pre teens and adolescents in education from major universities, i.e., labs at MIT, e.g.. In Europe and Asia, digital devices are being outlawed and limited for children and teens. In America, gaming is being pushed as a college sport.
I think these students' right to privacy under the constitution must be imperiled because all keystrokes are being recorded and kept and will be retrieved as needed. Why isn't the ACLU filing a suit on behalf of children? This is exactly like the pharma industry.
Teachers are so overwhelmed, they will use any technology to just keep their noses above water unless principals and the superintendent protect and guide them.
Please let Carmin Farina set an example of independence and good sense. NYC schools could take a turn in the right direction in this way.
10
One of my former teaching friends from a large, poor school district on the East Coast, has described for me how its scandal- ridden executive leadership has gone for one corporate shiny toy or blandishment after another, to the serious detriment of the teachers and students. The job is hard, most of the teachers are dedicated, the students are needy, and bells and whistles do not fill that need. Why is it that so many wealthy tech. giants send their children to schools with no technology at all yet are happy to follow a profit motive that foists their products on our poorest students?
45
I sit at a computer over eight hours a day and have worked in the software industry for nearly 30 years. You don’t need computers in classrooms. Eliminate them.
63
Technology is the downfall of education, it's of no help. ZERO. It makes a few people a lot of money and has turned our kids into extras on "The Walking Dead". Just roam the halls of the high school where I work.
Doctoral Degrees in Education these days are pretty much toilet paper. Any idiot can get one if you have the time and money. Easy prey for tech companies. Decline of the western civilization. I've got a front row ticket and there's nothing I can do to stop it.
38
I know its hard to believe, but I actually think these companies are mostly telling the truth that these meetings are about getting feedback and talking about new features of the software.
I downloaded “prodigy math” just to kinda see what tech math looked like. In two months it’s gone through three major updates. The whole entire system is revamped from when I started.
Schools move slow. Tech moves fast.
So, I’m willing to give the tech people the benefit of the doubt that most of the meeting is stuff like “please make sure Every Student has the latest security patch downloaded”. It looks bad, but, it probably isn’t this giant conspiracy.
That schools don’t just buy military issue unbreakable laptops and bypass hardware entirely — that I might agree is a conspiracy.
3
Eli, try to square that belief with this:
‘Karen Cator, the chief executive of Digital Promise, said it was important for schools and industry to work together. “We want a healthy, void-of-conflict-of-interest relationship between people who create products for education and their customers,” she said. “The reason is so that companies can create the best possible products to meet the needs of schools.”’
In the paragraph before, Cator explained that companies paid $25,000 apiece to her company for the right to have their products presented to participating educators. This is the very essence of “pay to play.” Those paying to play (pun intended) includes Lego.
2
I agree there should be a standard of ethics, perhaps legal, applied to public organization and private providers. However, this article seems to assert that any relationship between the two is morally corrupt. You insinuate that a company soliciting feedback on product and service offerings is negative, that school administrators telling their story of how they brought technology to the classroom to others considering the same is wrong. There are no parts of this article that speak to what's actually happened in the classroom except to say there is no proof that laptops help education. That is an absurd statement. This article lacks an exploration, beyond surface-level quotes, of the other side's opinion. I'm dissapointed the Times has turned a technology success story by one of the nation's most inequitable cities into a seeming witch hunt. Technology in the classroom is a good thing, particularly for those without technology at home, so let's not throw admirable progress by people who have dedicated their lives to education, out due to the gray areas of one person. Go after the person or company, not the industry.
13
NH, right here in the article is this:
‘Karen Cator, the chief executive of Digital Promise, said it was important for schools and industry to work together. “We want a healthy, void-of-conflict-of-interest relationship between people who create products for education and their customers,” she said. “The reason is so that companies can create the best possible products to meet the needs of schools.”’
This comes in the paragraph right after the description that Digital Promise charges vendors $25,000 apiece to have its products presented to educational administrators.
How can that be characterized as anything other than “pay to play?” Those paying include, of course, educational innovator Lego.
1
I agree with your impressions and would like to add that computers are tools of every occupation these new generations may persue. Computers are no different than pens, pencils and slide-rulers of the 20th century.
1
Mike, would you have tried to teach a kindergartner or first grader how to use a slide rule?
There is a concept, absent here, of age appropriate tools. This is not applied here, at all.
1
It's important to delve into the specifics of school contracting for the purposes of rooting out evil. However, this reporter's total lack of awareness on how business gets done with schools on a day-to-day basis is a little frightening. In this case, we are dealing with contracts for computers, thirty years after their introduction into the educational market place. Statements like, "there's little rigorous evidence so far that using computers in class improves educational results" is silly considering every person would now consider a cell phone with internet access indispensable to daily life. So what is this exercise all about? Businesses finding ways to identify killer apps and promote use, by evangelizing and subsidizing technology in schools to sell more products? We are talking about tools here, folks. Just like pens, paper and books. Stop acting like computers are some useless paperweight. Or that tech sellers are like pushers duping helpless addicts into discordant lives. Save that for the soda makers.
1
More overpriced, oversold, untested junk sold to school officials who spend no time in classrooms with students and are never held accountable. Nothing new. After teaching for a few years I re-read Catch-22. It was nothing compared to the malarky imposed on students and teachers in every school everywhere all the time. People knowingly selling nonsense to willfully stupid people.
10
It is actually sold at near cost, fully tested in pilots for over a year. And if you don't service to the contract, you lose the business. that's accountability.
Computers in the class room improves computer sales, but there is no evidence it improves educational results and ample evidence it creates social problems, a lack of spatial awareness, failure to judge scale, impaired facial reading and so empathy, memory impairment.
The smartest minds in Silicon Valley send their kids to a nearby school where there are NO computers until middleschool. This teaches the kids to think and become masters of the technology, with which they can control other people. These kids cannot live without a gadget. I a certain way they have become colonized.
8
The educational benefits of technology are doubtful at best -- and there are plenty of negative assessments. Consider this eye-opening article from the NY Times, "Steve Jobs Was a Low-Tech Parent," 9/10/14, which quotes the late Apple CEO as saying, “We limit how much technology our kids use at home.” Or another from the Times, "A Silicon Valley School That Doesn’t Compute," 10/22/11, about a Waldorf School favored by tech execs for the education of their children, where screens are not allowed in the classroom.
Something is indeed fishy when the children of executives from Silicon Valley behemoths like Google, Apple, Yahoo, and Hewlett-Packard are cloistered away from computer screens and educated the old-fashioned way with hands-on play, books, blackboards, and pencils, while children in poor and working class districts are urged to adopt the latest in laptop and tablet technology. What gives? It's easy to see -- another con-game is being run on the beleaguered American parent, and new requirements rammed down her throat. "If your children don't have computers in the classroom, they'll be disadvantaged!" That's not the way Steve Jobs saw it.
32
When SOME Silicon valley kids go to technology-free schools, that's the only area where there is no access. the other 16 hours a day are full speed, constant access.
Over half the country has no access at home. The ONLY access is at school.
Steve Jobs was seeing from a perch of privilege. And he didn't hire kids who couldn't code.
"Negative assessments"
Watch what the children are doing with the computers: playing games, watching videos, reading/posting social media, downloading pornography, ...
And when they are not doing that, they are searching the internet for the teacher's assignment and reading material.
The computers are just a big waste of time.
2
Social engineering at its finest.
3
i could not bear to finish the article.
The math 'chair' at my son's high school declared that the school's goal for 2017-18 was to increase the geometry pass rate from 18 percent to - get this - 30%.
In a recent blurb from somewhere (perhaps the NYTimes) a teacher lamented - how can I teach Geometry when these kids can't add 67 + 17 in their heads?
We have an economic 1% in this country and - increasingly - an academic elite as well.
The STEM people have won the day, but the vast majority of students in this country are going to be totally, totally screwed.
But as long as we have 'face recognition' on our iPhones - it's all good.
35
Right, poor school districts are wasting money on computers and new electronic textbooks and new curricula.
Has math changed that much in 1000 years that we need new electronic textbooks to teach math?
2
Disappointing that the article made scant mention of the benefits of education technology in improving education outcomes. This is the future for improving our education system.
I work w children and families in Silicon Valley and have put my son through private schools. Interestingly, the parents I know limit their kids own use of technology and put strong emphasis on imagination play and reading. The outstanding librarian at my son's elementary school confirmed this for me.....Trinity (Episcopal) School is on Sand Hill Road in the heart of Venture Capitalist Offices and less than a mile from Stanford University.
5
There is little evidence that technology influences learning outcomes. This is simply the corporate world pulling the wool over school districts eyes.
13
Devices were never touted to make students smarter. Just as writing on a laptop doesn't make a writer better than one who writes by longhand,
Devices help you learn or produce faster with greater access to information.
So, if you had only one library growing up, and it was a poor one with limited resources, you were out of luck. Now, all info is at your fingertips, assuming access. For most kids, this means school.
The key is teachers who know how to leverage technology to teach students to be prepared for a digital world.
As a retired teachers, we are strong proponents of the arts, vocal music and instrumental music, science, hands-on learning. Think of what could be done with a commitment in every school to yearly artists in residency in poetry, theater, dance, drumming, painting for each grade level. Physical education twice a week. Smaller class sizes. Organic nutritional breakfasts and lunches, classroom libraries for every classroom (cost $3,000.00) to staff a library with all genres. Field trips for every classroom. Outdoor education for every middle school for a week. Totally funded after school education in the school's computer lab, drama clubs, debate clubs, Destination Imagination in every school. Our deepest fear, is this lack of human connection and over-reliance on technology, without the basic love of reading books in place. Critical thinking, and oral discussions and speeches in class are super important. If you consider how much screen time children will have in these tech savvy schools, then on their computers at home, then on television we say enough is enough and too much is too much!
27
Yes, technology provides an important learning tool. BUT SO DOES science laboratory work, playing musical instruments and singing, group conversation and brainstorming, role-playing, discussions about mathematics, creating art (clay, pencil/paint and paper, collage, etc.), debate over points of view on history and social issues, and on and on.
We LIVE in reality. Digital reality should only be an adjunct.
Ask any teacher of middle school, high school, or university students how over-use of cell-phones has changed the brains of young adults. We know that adding an extra five hours of screen-time to the days of children and adolescents is not a good idea.
But Silicon Valley knows all. What do teachers know about educational development? After all - this is America, follow the money.
48
laboratory work is completed using sensors and data analysis software.
playing musical instruments and singing is produced and published digitally.
group conversation and brainstorming, role-playing, discussions are now bigger and more diverse using technology.
mathematics has graphing calculators
creating art (clay, pencil/paint and paper, collage, etc.) is 3D
debate over points of view on history and social issues - see my comment on brainstorming
and on and on - and on and on.
It's a digital world in reality.
Even all the way through college, students spend a small percentage of their time doing research. You can't justify a computer just because a student can google "funniest cat video."
1
Silicon Valley's entrepreneurs and some school officials are being enriched by the drive to have our kids continually "connected," but it may take years to know the price kids will ultimately pay for being deprived of opportunities to develop their ability to get along with, learn from, and share experiences with other flesh and blood human beings.
6
DG - "ability to get along with, learn from, and share experiences with other flesh and blood human beings" is exactly right. If I were a parent now, I'd seek a school that had an organic garden outside, real science experiments, art and music, and lots of chances for the students to move around.
7
Interestingly, the quality school you cite is exactly the kind of school the Silicon Valley “leaders” and owners and VCs make sure their children attend. They keep their kids away from tech during precious learning hours. And limit its use during other times of the day and week. But for other kids, who’ll be consumers or worker rats someday? Well, these devices are essential. Clearly something rotten all over this.
1
Regardless of the unethical shenanigans of Silicon Valley's corporate predators, students younger than grade 3 would be far better off with hands-on materials rather than laptops. These computers are geared to students who can type, not those struggling with letters and sounds. Much of the instructional time for young students - especially in primary grades should be spent on phonics and basic math concepts through play and meaningful activities. Computers are far too abstract for most primary students and should be left for older grades. Tablets might be of some value but parents need to be educated that computers are not a magic short-cut to learning.
16
Public education is over. It's been ruined and corrupted beyond repair.
Private schools only sell their students to tech companies for data mining if the parents agree to it. Private schools who ignore their parents can't stay open, which is how it should be.
It's time for vouchers in urban districts. Some kids will finally be able to attend established private schools, while others will attend new private schools that are formed to meet demand. Some will use their vouchers for religious schooling. So be it.
The only way to stop this selling out of children is to shut off the money and give it to parents to choose the school for their child.
Plus, vouchers in the urban areas will lure families back to cities, which will decrease sprawl and ecosystem destruction. A win for climate change.
4
While we would be horrified to stick our kids in physical boxes for 6 hours a day, tech is more than happy to put our kids' brains and thoughts in boxes.
Yes, the internet is great for research. But all the diff. "learning tools" simply demand that every thought be given a pre-determined numerical value, or put in a certain pre-determined category, and will thus be judged by the designers of the program.
I work in a large public school. Tech has made some tasks more convenient. But that convenience is not worth millions of tax-payer's dollars, and it is certainly not worth entrapping our children's brains.
6
We really don't know if that being around electricity has an effect on our children. And there's more and more electricity all the time with cell phone towers, cell phones, electric cars, etc. My understanding is that more and
more people have cancer and other maladies (Certainly it's showing up in breast cancer.) Might be an interesting study to compare the amount of cancer, if known, before the advent of electricity and the present time.
Shameful and freaking scary!
2
Hmmmm. So giving money to people - public employees - who in turn decide whether to buy your company's products and services, that isn't a red flag?
It's truly pointless to ask any industry to police itself, I wish we would stop embarrassing everyone by doing so, and then painting the outcome as somehow positive.
One thing that should happen though, is that the purchase of any goods or services, or even those used for free - should be evaluated for effectiveness in the learning outcomes with students. Why not use what's working?
Such measurements may not be perfect, but its got to be more trustworthy than the assurances of company spokespersons.
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IMHO, this is great work by The Times. Look at all the scandals in public school testing, like Atlanta.
Lot of smoke here. Time for state's attorneys to monitor this.
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... school districts are not transparent. They make it difficult to attend Board of Ed meetings. They all speak in bureaucratic-speak which no literate person can understand. Their reports and pronouncements are designed to give the appearance of progress.
That said, most parents do not even pay attention to what is going on in the administration.
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Rest assured, none of the tech giant's kids have any technology in their classrooms or hands. But our kids are free game. Every keystroke and thought written on a Google Chromebook, (or whatever your public schools have contracted), is recorded for theirs to use what ever way they wish.
Be wary of tech corporations dangling and luring your school superintendent or Board of Ed to accept their free, shiny stuff.
Does anyone ever read the legal part before checking "I ACCEPT"? I asked my local board this and all's I got was both crickets and nervous laughter.
People are so ignorant of what is going on with this, even the educators seem oblivious. Anything that makes their job easier is a o.k. by them. Lazy classrooms produce lazy students. Let the dumbing down commence or continue.
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I am a teacher and have been saying that Big Tech is wasting tax payers’ money for years. I want students who come to class prepared with pencil and notebook and motivated to learn. I don’t need anythig else to teach them. Big Tech is lying to everybody to get their money. Kids who don’t put any effort into learning, studying, and doing homework will NEVER learn no matter what kind of software you use. Kids who care learn anyway, anywhere, anyhow.
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Student data is federally protected. If schools do not do so, they lose erate funding. You won’t chirps if a district loses erate, you’ll hear the howls from Internet-deprived classrooms.
Check out Houston ISD and Baltimore’s privacy requirements.
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This is just another example of how the Public Education Monopoly, desperate for the next "silver bullet/fluff of the moment," ignores the real issue -- quality of parenting.
No hardware/software can replace high standards and expectations for parenting. And trillions cannot. IMHO, only parents (or some human facsimile) can make a serious impact on a child.
And BTW, NYTimes: how many of those students are getting taxpayer-subsidized meals? What's more important -- paying the bills, or "fluff of the moment?"
Also absurd: using one supplier. Most large firms use multiple vendors, to avoid a sole-source disaster, and to keep vendors attentive.
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This is the worst-possible thing that has happened to the public education sector and to millions and millions of kids here in the U.S., and internationally.
The most important role of education is to help pupils develop critical thinking skills they can then apply to the life-long effort to understand the true nature of the society they live in.
This is critical because only when citizens are fully aware of the true nature of the system, that's when they'll be equipped to fulfill their civic duties in every sphere, whether government, academia, or the private sector.
When it comes to "Silicon Valley's Playbook," the overwhelming influence are both neoliberalism, and libertarian ideology, which in the final analysis are antithetical to the development of critical thinking skills.
Skills needed to understand important issues related to democracy, the role of government, the private sector, anti-democratic influences that develop from concentration of wealth and power; issues like government corruption, monopolies, oligopolies, business cartels, equal justice under the law (or lack thereof).
I guarantee you that none of that will ever be found inside "Silicon Valley's Playbook."
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Just curious - Did you write this response on the back of a rock with a sharpened flint?
Whoa, L. These are small children. And after 27 years of "The Simpsons," the USA is plenty critical, IMHO.
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Look around you. I mean really look around you. Walk through any Walmart, then a supermarket, then a Home Depot, followed by a big box crafts store and finally get an oil change at a ten minute oil change place. Then come back on here and make a cogent, persuasive argument for how we need to teach critical thinking and justify the expense that goes along with that. You can't. While a few high level folks will call upon those skills some time in their work lives, most will not. And when the average year of educating one student is north of $25k, we need to provide that sparingly.
Okay. So tech companies are paying school officers, indirectly, to use their products in classrooms.
And, the school officers, in turn, can choose that tech company's product, and use property taxpayer money to buy tech products.
What a nice set up. How about flying PTO members to conferences at resorts. Raffle tickets to select interested parents?
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Despite the name PTO (Parent Teacher Organization), these are just fund raising organizations for the principal. If the principals says, "Buy me a computer," the PTO responds, "How many?"
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These guys should stay of of our classrooms. The ability to think critically is always at odds with any engineer's world view. As well, teaching kids to do real research is also at odds with computerized programming, er, uh, "learning".
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It reminds me of the pill pushers who show up at the doctor's office :-(
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This is a fantastic, deep dive into what is happening in Baltimore County, and how things are being influenced around the country by the ed tech industry. There is NO trustworthy evidence this initiative is effective, and the opportunity costs for the district are staggering. I believe teachers have lost autonomy, and many view a 1:1 initiative in first grade as developmentally inappropriate. What are the opportunity costs of all this money going to the ed tech industry? We need more teachers to have smaller class sizes. We need to pay our teachers and people in the classroom with our student better, and we need to provide more resources towards increasing numbers of all the humans that help children learn and thrive - this includes more bus drivers, more reading specialists, more social workers, more and better paid staff who help students who are struggling, among others. Children do need to learn to use technology, but that can be accomplished without personalized learning and technology taking over public education and without using up scarce resources better spent on people.
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...and free, healthy, breakfast and lunch for kids who need it the most. Big Tech should donate that money to schools to serve better food for their students.
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Just like copiers destroyed the book industry??? I don’t think so. Just ask all the HR departments of school boards in desperate need of computer science and engineering teachers. The media center is back as a Makerspace, employing revamped librarians. Students have more class course diversity than ever.
The opportunity cost of NOT preparing our for their digital futures consigns them to a life of very limited choices.
1
What we need is transparent costing that is paid directly from the pockets of those who cause the classrooms to fill. What we need is to focus our limited resources on those who truly need certain skills and move the rest into jobs as soon as they quality for them (ie, it doesn't take a K-12 education to stock toilet paper on a shelf). What we need is aptitude testing coupled with business groups to accurately identify current age future employment needs so we can efficiently channel students and their educations into the jobs they will hold.
The public schools in this country are a mess and in need of silicon valley style disruption. Every child needs a solid training in technology. From where I sit this is not bad.
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Where exactly do you sit? You got kids in the school system?
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David from California - you advocate "solid training in technology" for every child from where you sit? Do you sit in Silicon Valley by chance?
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I do, and he's correct. The system is archaic and is not serving students for the future. Do you think it is? If so, name the school.
Education as business and not human development. No big surprise here. We all sold ourselves down this river long ago.
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