Too many screens in schools? No textbooks?
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}
Anonymous
I believe you. It’s too bad. |
Anonymous
We know how to discipline, but our hands are tied. Teachers aren’t allowed to discipline, either because admin won’t support it or parents fight back. I’ve gotten in major trouble for simply telling students to put their phones away. I’ve been teaching 20 years. It’s harder now than when it started. Yes, teachers check out. It’s self preservation. When you are set up to fail like so many teachers are now, you don’t have a lot of options. |
Anonymous
This happened to us too. my ES son was rushing through work in class, doing bare minimum, to play around on the laptop ; kids around him too. We tried sending books, having talks about finishing work, trying your best etc, but it was not enough to overcome the environment and pull to play random games. We left. |
Anonymous
Could you share where you teach? Do all of the area’s Catholic schools take the same approach re screens? |
Anonymous
Where did you go? |
Anonymous
The NBER study on laptops given to kids in Peru found that a major result of the study was that kids put less effort into their schoolwork. |
Anonymous
Fun detail I remember from the Romanian free laptop study: children assigned free laptops were less likely to major in computer science vs. non-recipients. IMHO that the laptopers had weaker math skills was probably a significant contributer. Uruguay's study -- with the familiar academic declines everyone else had -- tried to offer a slight ray of hope because their free laptop recipients were less likely to major in music and the arts, and hypothesized children were looking up salaries on the internet. I think it more likely that doing art or music practice at home got crowded out by gaming. |
Anonymous
Screens > books, period. Books are old fashioned, heavy and expensive. They're also frequently out-of-date. Why on Earth would you advocate for text books. Are you stupid? Or just old? |
but this doesn't ring true to me. There is research that shows kids don't absorb content as well when learning from screens as opposed to books, too. I am not 100% anti-screens, I get the world we live in, but any parents or teachers have thoughts/feedback about this?
Anonymous
This is a joke, right? Chemistry and biology aren't changing so fast that a textbook is useless. Algebra hasn't changed in more than 300 hundred years. Laptops are heavy too. And expensive. Software is very expensive and often not based in the science of learning. |
Anonymous
|
I'm an old elementary school teacher. I started teaching in 1992. At that time students in Grades 3-6 still had proper math, science and social studies textbooks. We mostly did away with Reading/Language arts textbooks in the 90s and students were more likely to be reading trade books.
In my opinion, schools moved away from using textbooks for the content areas because fewer and fewer students could read at grade level. To read a typical 6th grade science textbook and answer the questions at the end of the chapter (a common HW assignment in the 1990s) students had to be reading at at least a 4th or 5th grade reading level. When 1/3 of your students can't really read the text, you can't assign it as independent work. Teachers needed to come up with accommodations for the students who couldn't read the text. Now with the textbooks all online, students can click and have the text read out loud to them. However, they have lost that valuable reading practice of actually having to read the text. Reading chapter 6 and answering questionis 1-10 at the end of the chapter may never have been a very engaging assignment, but I was an ESOL teacher and I would sit and help my ESOL students read the text, read the questions at the end, and locate the answer in the text. It was actually a valuable practice and helped expose them to a lot of science and social studies vocabulary and knowledge they may not have picked up in the class. Nowadays students miss a LOT of that. They do watch some videos and pretend to listen to the read aloud text, but it just isn't the same thing. |
Anonymous
I could buy my own textbooks and workbooks and the principal would go bananas if she saw my kids using them. Principals have been taught that textbooks = BAD. The exact same text on a computer screen = ENGAGING! |
Anonymous
|
Children, data, money
Tragedy of the commons |
Anonymous
| The Economist had a supplement on education last month. It reported that multiple studies have that the traditional methods of teaching (i.e., textbooks, workbooks, hand writing not typing, direct instruction, no screens in the classroom, and regular hand written homework) are more effective for all regular students - possibly excepting only the special needs students. |
Anonymous
|
Same Economist issue also reported that Finland dropped visibly in recent PISA scores after introducing/increasing screens in the classroom. In multiple countries now, more screens in the classroom has led to lower academic achievement.
Local schools, public and private, should drop all the educational fads and go back to the old-fashioned traditional teaching approach -- because it is the one actually works to teach the children. |
Anonymous
One specific type of activity I have found is very effective is used by quill.org. The program gives students two or three sentences and asks them to combine the sentences using transition words. The program gives immediate, individual feedback to the student. It almost replicates having a human tutor. I can teach grammar, and reinforce paying attention to mechanics like capitalization and punctuation, to many students at once using this program, because of the individualized, immediate feedback. It IS possible to use "screens" for effective instruction IMO. Here's an example of what I mean:
https://www.quill.org/connect?_gl=1*10yyae8*_gcl_au*MTc0NDgzOTY2OC4xNzIyNzE1MjMy*_ga*MTIzNDc2MDg3OS4xNzIyNzE1MjMy*_ga_C0FB3VEGYR*MTcyMjcxNTIzMS4xLjEuMTcyMjcxNTI4My44LjAuMA..#/play/lesson/-KnoWhUWhtxvet4_bi4r |