The Screen That Ate Your Child’s Education

[Anonymous]

I am a MoCo elementary teacher and we do not use the Chromebook except for projects that require research and tests. They have a writing lab or math coding and escape room challenges if they finish early. I also do not solely rely on slides but more often use it to project my camera and such. It really is better for kids.

[Anonymous]

lol now that you people banned phones and that didn't magically solve all problems you're looking for something else to blame.

hint - this isn't it either

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:lol now that you people banned phones and that didn't magically solve all problems you're looking for something else to blame.

hint - this isn't it either

Why are some parents so invested in their kids having smartphones at school?

[Anonymous]

It would help if my county actually provided paper to teachers — I don’t get paid enough to buy box after box of copy paper to get around needing to use the Chromebooks.

-ES teacher (not in MoCo but in MD)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It would help if my county actually provided paper to teachers — I don’t get paid enough to buy box after box of copy paper to get around needing to use the Chromebooks.

-ES teacher (not in MoCo but in MD)

I’ve never understood how the public schools are unable to provide basic supplies to teachers when the per-pupil spending is as high as it is. Our parochial’s per-pupil spending is probably half of what the public schools spend, yet we’re not at all short on supplies. I do wish the teachers were better-compensated, but I doubt that teacher salaries alone account for the difference. I’m guessing it’s the very high admin costs

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am a MoCo elementary teacher and we do not use the Chromebook except for projects that require research and tests. They have a writing lab or math coding and escape room challenges if they finish early. I also do not solely rely on slides but more often use it to project my camera and such. It really is better for kids.

If kids finish early, why not give them some paper to write on or draw? Or have them read a book? When kids pull out Chromebooks, it distracts the other kids who naturally want to know what they are doing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Naw. Screens are an integral part of our lives. They belong in schools.

Not going back to slate and chalk. Nope.

You will when you see the absolute morons that the next generation is turning out to be. They can't focus on anything at all.

The person to whom you are responding is simple minded and is absolutely the type to keep going with anything new, even if it ultimately proves to be inferior.

Those who care about results will shift to what actually works, even if it's more effort. It's easier to stick children in front of a TV for instance, so many families did that as soon as televisions became widespread. Others continued to read to their children. Everyone could see the outcome. Nevertheless, many parents still preferred the TV to the effort of reading books with their little ones.

This will be no different.

Insisting on no/low-tech, advocating for it in the schools and pulling for private or homeschool to make sure your children have that kind of education is effort and can mean sacrifice, and some parents feel like they have done enough by moving into a "good" school district, driving their children around in newer luxury vehicles and paying for camp.

It is what it is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would love to know whether people think that EdTech is more harmful during the elementary years or middle school years. I accept that screens will be ubiquitious by 8th grade, but trying to decide what to do up to that point. We pulled DS out of public school during early elementary school in large part due to EdTech. He's now in a religious private and learning with pencil and paper.

By 6th sixth grade our public schools use Chromebooks for some subjects. Obviously they use pencil and paper for math and paper back novels to bring home but some of the content on Chromebook is superior to just reading a textbook. One example I did with my son was from, not PBS but a similar type of programs on world geography. After studying the countries within each continent the studies ended with a program that had
15 to 20:minute summarizations of each country. This was followed by questions on the summary they just watched. There was no skipping around, no cheating, no copying.

There are some quality educational productions offered. I don’t understand why so many want to go back in time. A lot of projects they do are printed out and on Chrome.

And cursive needs to be abolished. I was trying to read my doctor’s note on a referral and couldn’t. It was chicken scratch cursive. Very few adults are good at making cursive legible.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would love to know whether people think that EdTech is more harmful during the elementary years or middle school years. I accept that screens will be ubiquitious by 8th grade, but trying to decide what to do up to that point. We pulled DS out of public school during early elementary school in large part due to EdTech. He's now in a religious private and learning with pencil and paper.

By 6th sixth grade our public schools use Chromebooks for some subjects. Obviously they use pencil and paper for math and paper back novels to bring home but some of the content on Chromebook is superior to just reading a textbook. One example I did with my son was from, not PBS but a similar type of programs on world geography. After studying the countries within each continent the studies ended with a program that had
15 to 20:minute summarizations of each country. This was followed by questions on the summary they just watched. There was no skipping around, no cheating, no copying.

There are some quality educational productions offered. I don’t understand why so many want to go back in time. A lot of projects they do are printed out and on Chrome.

And cursive needs to be abolished. I was trying to read my doctor’s note on a referral and couldn’t. It was chicken scratch cursive. Very few adults are good at making cursive legible.

Exhibit A lol

[Anonymous]

My kid is starting kindergarten next year. We are trying to give the kids a no screens childhood, with the exception of FaceTiming grandparents who live far away. We don’t own a TV and no tablets or other devices available for the kids.

I am so stressed about what I witnessed when I toured our local “good” public school. Smart boards in every classroom and a room full of kindergarteners on computers. I saw kids watching Numberblocks and others learning the alphabet through slides on the smart board. I just don’t understand why we as a society have accepted this as the norm.

We don’t have top private school money and are scrambling to find low cost options but we’re not religious and we’re also very liberal politically and multicultural so not a fit everywhere. I am typing this because I’m at the point of screaming into the void.

[Anonymous]

Sigh. It’s not the screens at school. It’s the screens at HOME.

I understand it’s more comfortable to blame teachers/schools when the actual culprits are the PARENTS, but let’s get real.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kid is starting kindergarten next year. We are trying to give the kids a no screens childhood, with the exception of FaceTiming grandparents who live far away. We don’t own a TV and no tablets or other devices available for the kids.

I am so stressed about what I witnessed when I toured our local “good” public school. Smart boards in every classroom and a room full of kindergarteners on computers. I saw kids watching Numberblocks and others learning the alphabet through slides on the smart board. I just don’t understand why we as a society have accepted this as the norm.

We don’t have top private school money and are scrambling to find low cost options but we’re not religious and we’re also very liberal politically and multicultural so not a fit everywhere. I am typing this because I’m at the point of screaming into the void.

I'm Republican and ended up friends with a lady with whom I have nothing in common except our screen free kids. It gets harder and lonelier.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sigh. It’s not the screens at school. It’s the screens at HOME.

I understand it’s more comfortable to blame teachers/schools when the actual culprits are the PARENTS, but let’s get real.

Well, we already don’t have screens at home, so wha do you suggest we do?

[Anonymous]

Kids aren’t even doing math on paper anymore. My middle school kids spend nearly all their time on Zearn and some other math ed tech programs

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am a MoCo elementary teacher and we do not use the Chromebook except for projects that require research and tests. They have a writing lab or math coding and escape room challenges if they finish early. I also do not solely rely on slides but more often use it to project my camera and such. It really is better for kids.

If kids finish early, why not give them some paper to write on or draw? Or have them read a book? When kids pull out Chromebooks, it distracts the other kids who naturally want to know what they are doing.

The writing lab is a center where students get to choose different types of writing projects. Escape room challenges are a set of cards that makes them have to solve multiple problems to solve the “case” and the Math coding is when they solve math problems on paper and use the answers that have different symbols to solve a riddle. Nothing is digital.