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'Beware Silicon Valley's Gifts To Our Schools' (nationalreview.com)
schwit1 shares a National Review report: After three years, there is no proof that Apple's, Google's, and Microsoft's infiltration of the classroom is producing actual academic improvement and results. Take Facebook's efforts for an example. The company -- under fire for privacy breaches worldwide -- is peddling something called "Summit Learning," a web-based curriculum bankrolled by CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan. Last month, students in New York City schools walked out in protest of the program. "It's annoying to just sit there staring at one screen for so long," freshman Mitchel Storman, 14, told the New York Post. He spends close to five hours a day on Summit classes in algebra, biology, English, world history, and physics. Teacher interaction is minimal. "You have to teach yourself," Storman rightly complained. No outside research supports any claim that Summit Learning actually enhances, um, learning. What more studies are showing, however, is that endless hours of screen time are turning kids into zombies who are more easily distracted, less happy, less socially adept, and less physically fit. Standing up to the Silicon Valley Santas and asserting your family's "right to no" may well be the best long-term gift you can give your school-age children.
Michelle Malkin and National Review? Thanks msmash
*Disclaimer: I used to be a technology director for a school district.
Throwing technology at a social / political problem isn't a panacea. Never has been and never will be. The tech adds very little benefit to the learning process unless the teachers actively incorporate it into their existing lessons. Where many get it wrong is using the tech as a replacement for textbooks and paperwork and nothing else. Yes it's less paperwork to manage, and that's good for the teacher in multiple ways, but it harms the student when done incorrectly. Case in point: Auto-graded assignments.
Yes, many teachers would be up in arms over the idea of taking away auto-graded assignments, but most of those assignments are poor quality by necessity of the auto-grading system. I.e. Most are Multiple Guess. There are a few systems that accept fill in the blank answers, but many of those are very specific about what answers they will accept, and often just encourage the teachers using them to move to Multiple Guess only as a time saving measure. As for why Multiple Guess is bad: If you know the answers will be on your test, why bother studying beyond being able to pick the answer out of a group? The answer is always given to you, and even if you don't have the slightest clue as to what it is when presented with the choices, the answer can be lucked upon by the simple roll of a six-sided dice. This is one of the reasons younger generations cannot deal with complex issues in the workforce. They expect to be told exactly what is expected of them, and if exact instructions are not given, they often cannot come up with an answer on their own due to lack of practice and / or knowledge.
Another problem is the funding that tech eats up. Many school districts have their own budget for IT that is separate from their general fund. In some cases a school may not be able to afford safety equipment for science classes, but has plenty of money for the latest iPad or Chromebook. In other cases, the school may choose to replace working tech with the new shiny, even though it will cost the school more in the long run to support and maintain it, for nothing more than trying to one-up or emulate neighboring districts.This encouragement of tech being a separate budget drives funds away from areas that need it. Causing deficiencies in other areas of teaching, and in some cases can be dangerous. Like not being able to afford having a nurse on staff during the day. Or failing to pay for proper security.
Worse is when said school cannot afford the more expensive new shiny and buys it by the truckload anyway. In some worse case scenarios a school may not have a technology instructor, but is inundated with tech and clueless teachers / leadership. In those cases the tech is always a waste of money, because the students gain very little from it due to the clueless teachers' / leadership's inability to integrate the tech correctly. This last bit also causes the students to pick up bad computing behaviors as security and proper use always gives way to making something work during class.
Finally, most of these efforts made by the various companies are designed to lock-in the students to their products at a young age. Most of these schools won't be teaching technology as a general subject. Most of the time a task or goal that must be completed on tech is explained to a student as a series of menus or button presses. If you've ever encountered a student that could not make a slideshow presentation with anything beyond obviously cut and pasted bullet points in no particular grouping, or a student that couldn't manage their own files, this is why. When students are trained to specific programs / devices, they are fundamentally challenged when moving into the real-world outside of the classroom. As they go from being "experts" to "novices" simply by choosing a company to work for that uses a competing tech vendor as their primary provider, or by the vendor's latest revamp changing too much for them
Not only did you pen one of the most opinionated pieces of "journalism" ever, but you used a filler-word, um, in a formal written document.
People who use this phrase never show any, nor are worthy of any.
What are all these wires? What the hell's a mouse? How do I windows?
So much bias it's like all I have is a right speaker.
———
In short, go back to journalism school.
In long, how about you title opinion pieces accordingly and not pretend they are in any way news. Also, go back to any school you attended and demand a refund, then learn how to write a formal document.
...
[Disclamier: I'm a developer born in 70-something who doesn't think children need the internet in their pockets]
My kids are 5th, 7th, and 9th grade. We've felt that 2 hours of screen time (Netflix, computer/console gaming, tablet usage) was a healthy upper limit per day. This idea was based on how my wife and I were raised during the 80's and 90's where most of our childhood was spent outdoors with friends. I know it's quaint these days, but it seemed to work for us; our kids can hold a real conversation with adults while maintaining eye contact, and despite fighting amongst themselves like cats and dogs, we are always complimented on how engaging and polite they are. Not a brag, just context. Maybe they're just good kids and us limiting screen time has nothing to do with it.
...but...
Now that the school has them on Chromebooks 3-5 hours per day during instruction time, then an additional 30-minutes of them just watching Youtube during Resource/Study Hall, then doing "homework" on the Chromebook for an hour at night...screen time has exploded from 2 hours per day to 6.5 hours per day.
They don't have smartphones (yet), but they are literally in the 1% of kids in their schools that don't have smartphones. I think beyond a reasonable amount like 2 hours, time that children spend looking at a screen is time they are not learning how to interact with the world with their senses. Some of their peers can't string 3 sentences together in a single conversation without drifting into looking at their phone or talking about what they saw on their phone.
I may be a minority even here, but I think the school (and these organizations) are doing a huge disservice to these kids...and for what, automated learning with built-in KPIs and a fatter bottom line?
...when everything is a crime, everyone is a criminal.
"After three years, there is no proof that Apple's, Google's, and Microsoft's infiltration of the classroom is producing actual academic improvement and results."
ITYM 40 years, because that's how long that story has been spun . Tech can be a useful adjunct, same as a library. But it does nothing to actually educate. Setting someone down in the Library of Congress doesn't educate them, despite the volume of knowledge present. Medium vs. content.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
The objective of these efforts isn't to enhance learning in any meaningful way, it's to create customers. Chromebooks, for example, are really only relevant because they gained a foothold in schools which has led to a user base raised on chromebooks continuing to use chromebooks. This is like the old tobacco and alcohol ads that appealed to children; target your customers early and create customers for life... kids that grew up on Joe Camel and Spuds Mackenzie became adults who smoked Camels and drank Bud Lite. Kids who grow up on iPads become Apple users, kids who grow up on Chromebooks become Google users... same early addiction model, only the product has changed.
I’m curious if you have children of your own if school age? I agree that being able to learn on your own is a valuable skill. I also agree that need for instant gratification can be a big problem with -ahem- kids these days. However, being able to learn for oneself generally assumes a grasp of the basics. The basics can be learned without outside help, but this is horribly inefficient. I have definitely seen a tendency in some of my own kid’s teachers to learn too heavily on computer-based education. I think this is sometimes because it’s assumed to be “cutting edge” and sometimes (as some of their teachers have confessed) because it is easier. Less prep, less fuss. But not necessarily better. I am not against computer/based education in general, but SOOOO much these days is done without any kind of research to prove effectiveness. It is often assumed it is better because it’s newer. My problem with this stuff is that we as a culture are not patient and methodical in our education research so instead we end up experimenting on a generation of kids. It’s rushed in because Chromebooks are shined and cool, but teachers aren’t taught how to guide kids to use them best. I think too much screen time is probably not great on its own. But my bigger issue is that the curriculum is far from well thought out and studied.
"Let your heart soar as high as it will. Refuse to be average." - A. W. Tozer
How about some REAL life skills: like how to grow and prepare food, how to build and maintain machinery, how to build a house, how to drill a water well, how to build and maintain a sanitary sewage system, etc? Basic life skills have been completely left blank in favor of creating a helpless clone army of future tax paying mules that are 100% reliant on the system for all their essential needs.
You're looking for vocational education, which many schools still offer, but it's a different track than college level education. In my school, in 9th grade you could choose to go to the vo-tech program to learn what you call a "Real life skill". Though you still had to choose a specialty, the program wasn't designed to create a general renaissance man who can farm, fix machinery, build a house, drill a well, etc.
And it's not even clear why you think it's neccessary -- I spent summers from age 12 to 18 helping out on my uncle's farm, I can drive a tractor, run a combine, milk a cow, kill and butcher a hog, etc.... furthermore, while I haven't built a house myself, but helped my brother build his, I can set concrete, hang drywall, sweat a copper plumbing joint, install electrical, etc. And while some of the homebuilding skills have come in handy while remodeling, most of the skills I developed haven't really helped me.
There's an endless parade of 'tech solutions' for education, most of which are shameless cash grabs.
However, an educational system which encourages self-learning isn't inherently bad. For example, Sudbury schools use this model. In old schools that didn't use the 'grade' stratification of students, older students would help teach the younger students. It's said that you need to comprehend a topic three times as well in order to teach it rather than merely understand it, so encouraging students to teach one another would likely improve comprehension.
Furthermore, self-learning allows for an ideal version of the 'track' system used in Germany and elsewhere, where thinkers learn about more abstract subjects, whereas those who prefer to work with their hands learn more practical hands-on subjects. It's very easy for someone to say "all children should know X", and different people will have different opinions on what X is. Add those all together, and students end up with a bloated curriculum of stuff they really don't want or need to know in order to be effective and happy citizens and workers.
That said, there are so many models/ideas for education, that A/B testing and frequent reference to the What Works Clearinghouse should be utilized in order to determine efficacy, rather than ideologues saddling students with their pet system even if it never works.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
What school won't prepare you for is endless hours of pointless meetings, and political machinations that have no basis in reality.
Ah, someone else who works at a university!
#DeleteChrome
TFA is just a smear piece that doesn't even pretend to present a balanced view.
From TFA: What more studies are showing, however, is that endless hours of screen time are turning kids into zombies.
Yet NONE of these "studies" are cited, and TFA does not give any scientific criteria for what constitutes a "zombie".
I have no idea if Zuck's program works or not, but TFA is garbage journalism that sheds no light. The editors at National Review should be ashamed of themselves for publishing it. They are better than that.
THOSE are your examples of "REAL life skills"?!? THOSE?
You could have said budgetting/banking, cooking, cleaning & tidying, critical thinking, running a business, taxes, knitting, job interviewing, public speaking, ethics, voting/government, life sciences (camping, fishing, etc), wood/metal/construction shop, electronics, etc.
All of which are far more useful and things most people run into everyday!
TFA was written by Michelle Malkin who is a Filipina-American clone of Ann Coulter.