Schools across the U.S. are starting to rethink the abundance of digital devices in classrooms. After pouring billions of dollars into laptops, tablets and learning apps, a growing number of schools say it is time to scale back.
Tech shouldn’t be allowed in the classroom until high school.
Kids need to learn how to think, use their hands, eye hand coordination, basic reading and most importantly … have a freakin ATTENTION SPAN!!!
The modern computer, internet culture and social media are all designed to shorten a person’s attention span as much possible to turn their brain into pudding and market anything to them.
One of the greatest skills in life in being able to think for yourself, to wonder, to imagine and to question the world with just your own mind rather than in occupying every waking moment to a digital device.
What if I wondered, and questioned said digital device? One of the very reason I’m so much into computers is that I can actualy get shit done with them, give me a pen and a piece of paper and I’ll scribble totaly useless illegible shit, since that whole “hand eye coordination” simply never worked out for the decades I’ve been at school.
On the other hand, I spent most of my free time since early childhood tinkering with those devious “digital devices”, I’m pretty sure I’m able to think by myself, my current linux distro didn’t magicaly appear by itself on my drive I guess.
Not sure if joking/trolling, but school computers don’t generally ALLOW social media or chat apps like Discord and such, as well as harshly limit internet usage with guardrails. They’re pretty locked down and even when at home monitor network usage.
I don’t like laptops and such in schools, but kids ARE going to need to know how to use them to be successful and that’s something a lot of parents can’t teach.
When I was growing up, we had to learn how to type, how to use the Dewey Decimal System and library terminals to look up where books were for research and such. Later, we had Computer Labs to do this work and write reports and such… This is no different. Don’t confuse a smartphone internet experience and its constant advertising and social aspects with what kids get on these laptops.
I don’t like laptops and such in schools, but kids ARE going to need to know how to use them to be successful and that’s something a lot of parents can’t teach.
they won’t learn from a chromebook how to use computers. They’ll only learn how to be a good slave in google’s cloud based walled garden. those devices are too locked down to be used for teaching computers.
I’d argue that they can still learn typing, researching, google docs (which, lets be honest, are close enough to microsoft, open or libre office to count), navigating the web, learning how to detect scams, AI and things like that… even on a Chromebook.
That said, my kid is about to go to college and hasn’t used a chromebook since 6th grade. I don’t currently know anyone whose kid has either. They’re just not used for schools much anymore. Their huge selling point was simplifying the OS support and battery life, but her current Lenovo lasts all day already as do most normal laptops at this point and GPO’s and AD are a things.
indoctrination to the rent seeking and privacy invading lifetime cloud scam
navigating the web
with chrome, teaching them to accept all the forms of enshittification are normal that the chrome browser does not protect against but even support
That said, my kid is about to go to college and hasn’t used a chromebook since 6th grade. I don’t currently know anyone whose kid has either. They’re just not used for schools much anymore. Their huge selling point was simplifying the OS support and battery life, but her current Lenovo lasts all day already as do most normal laptops at this point and GPO’s and AD are a things.
It sounds like we are part of the same generation (honestly, I don’t know or care what generation that is called, I just have a feeling you were born in the 70s and grew up in the 80s and 90s)
We got to see the internet come into being little by little over the 90s and early 2000s. At the time, we weren’t kids anymore and we did just fine keeping up with the technology. And I believe it was all down to our ability to be able to think, act and do things ourselves without any outside help. We grew up in an education system that forced us to think, to read, to write and to understand using nothing but our growing brain. We didn’t have the luxury of having a device show us pretty pictures or immediately calculate something for us. There is a lot to be said for a child that grows up and learns how to just write ideas, questions, answers and thoughts on an empty piece of paper with just a pencil or a crayon.
You can mimic all that on a tablet but the the process of using a tablet is partly entertainment because at one point, you start playing with the tablet rather than in learning how to draw a picture. When you have a pencil and a blank piece of paper, you have no choice but to use your mind and put something down on the sheet.
Because I grew up with new technology and the internet, I got to appreciate it all and I started tinkering with it all. I never turned into any kind of hacker or computer wiz but over the past 20 years, I’ve learned how to use/tinker/adjust/crack/tweak Windows, MacOS and Linux systems as well as build my own PC, recover old parts, mash together parts, keep laptops alive and recover tablets and devices. All done without any technical training other than what I learned from others online. In all that time, I got to meet and see so many young people who either didn’t know, didn’t care or were just ignorant as to how a computer even worked.
Tech shouldn’t be allowed in the classroom until high school.
Kids need to learn how to think, use their hands, eye hand coordination, basic reading and most importantly … have a freakin ATTENTION SPAN!!!
The modern computer, internet culture and social media are all designed to shorten a person’s attention span as much possible to turn their brain into pudding and market anything to them.
One of the greatest skills in life in being able to think for yourself, to wonder, to imagine and to question the world with just your own mind rather than in occupying every waking moment to a digital device.
What if I wondered, and questioned said digital device? One of the very reason I’m so much into computers is that I can actualy get shit done with them, give me a pen and a piece of paper and I’ll scribble totaly useless illegible shit, since that whole “hand eye coordination” simply never worked out for the decades I’ve been at school. On the other hand, I spent most of my free time since early childhood tinkering with those devious “digital devices”, I’m pretty sure I’m able to think by myself, my current linux distro didn’t magicaly appear by itself on my drive I guess.
Not sure if joking/trolling, but school computers don’t generally ALLOW social media or chat apps like Discord and such, as well as harshly limit internet usage with guardrails. They’re pretty locked down and even when at home monitor network usage.
I don’t like laptops and such in schools, but kids ARE going to need to know how to use them to be successful and that’s something a lot of parents can’t teach.
When I was growing up, we had to learn how to type, how to use the Dewey Decimal System and library terminals to look up where books were for research and such. Later, we had Computer Labs to do this work and write reports and such… This is no different. Don’t confuse a smartphone internet experience and its constant advertising and social aspects with what kids get on these laptops.
they won’t learn from a chromebook how to use computers. They’ll only learn how to be a good slave in google’s cloud based walled garden. those devices are too locked down to be used for teaching computers.
I’d argue that they can still learn typing, researching, google docs (which, lets be honest, are close enough to microsoft, open or libre office to count), navigating the web, learning how to detect scams, AI and things like that… even on a Chromebook.
That said, my kid is about to go to college and hasn’t used a chromebook since 6th grade. I don’t currently know anyone whose kid has either. They’re just not used for schools much anymore. Their huge selling point was simplifying the OS support and battery life, but her current Lenovo lasts all day already as do most normal laptops at this point and GPO’s and AD are a things.
most chromebooks are touch screen only
indoctrination to the rent seeking and privacy invading lifetime cloud scam
with chrome, teaching them to accept all the forms of enshittification are normal that the chrome browser does not protect against but even support
didn’t know that, interesting
It sounds like we are part of the same generation (honestly, I don’t know or care what generation that is called, I just have a feeling you were born in the 70s and grew up in the 80s and 90s)
We got to see the internet come into being little by little over the 90s and early 2000s. At the time, we weren’t kids anymore and we did just fine keeping up with the technology. And I believe it was all down to our ability to be able to think, act and do things ourselves without any outside help. We grew up in an education system that forced us to think, to read, to write and to understand using nothing but our growing brain. We didn’t have the luxury of having a device show us pretty pictures or immediately calculate something for us. There is a lot to be said for a child that grows up and learns how to just write ideas, questions, answers and thoughts on an empty piece of paper with just a pencil or a crayon.
You can mimic all that on a tablet but the the process of using a tablet is partly entertainment because at one point, you start playing with the tablet rather than in learning how to draw a picture. When you have a pencil and a blank piece of paper, you have no choice but to use your mind and put something down on the sheet.
Because I grew up with new technology and the internet, I got to appreciate it all and I started tinkering with it all. I never turned into any kind of hacker or computer wiz but over the past 20 years, I’ve learned how to use/tinker/adjust/crack/tweak Windows, MacOS and Linux systems as well as build my own PC, recover old parts, mash together parts, keep laptops alive and recover tablets and devices. All done without any technical training other than what I learned from others online. In all that time, I got to meet and see so many young people who either didn’t know, didn’t care or were just ignorant as to how a computer even worked.