Calculators perform basic arithmetic far more efficiently than humans, and were a major improvement the abacus and the slide rule. Just because the technology improved, however, we haven’t taught kids to use calculators instead of having them to math problems by hand. Elementary education is about building a fundamental understanding. If there is a concern that students don’t have a fundamental understanding of computers then students should be learning to program in Java or Python or something. Doing IXL learning, etc, doesn’t actually improve computer literacy. |
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We should go back to states and chalk, amrite?
Y’all are ridiculous. |
maybe we should. have you talked to a longtime teacher lately. the drop after 2012-15 or so is crazy ( when iphones/ipads really took off) |
and ed tech sorry |
Yes please. Chalk boards, chalk, and cursive. Paper and pencils. Computers should be a tool for typing and researching- not a teaching lessons babysitting, and entertaining in school. |
| What about IXL? Anyone's school uses it? I'm so over it. This is in a Catholic school. |
yes. our school is obsessed. give an award to the top leaderboard scores so the kids get more computer time trying to win |
One of the parochial schools we considered used it to provide enrichment to more advanced learners. We decided against that school in favor of a school that uses zero EdTech (and I mean absolutely none. It's wonderful!) IXL actually does publish some math workbooks that are pretty good. Bought one for my daughter and I've been pleased with the quality. |
Good for you. I’ve looked at every public and private school available in our area and they all use a significant amount of EdTech- even the catholic schools, though slightly less than public. |
What kind of school is this? There is a Waldorf school that does this in my area but aside from that it doesn’t seem like a great fit for my kid. |
St Anselm Abbey School uses zero edtech. |
Some of the supposed advantages of these devices don't even make sense. "Students learn to design and present material using their own creativity"? I guess all those dioramas and other projects I did in elementary school were not as creative as using a computer program. Also, it's telling that Google has a vision of teachers being "facilitators" while students use computers to learn. And it's total B.S. that the youngest children, who can't yet read or type yet, need to be "exposed" to these devices early because the standardized tests they're going to take in their distant future are going to be given online. |
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Google flooded schools with Chromebooks to gain Marketshare from Windows. Enough kids using Chromebooks through school, and needing them for school (completely locked into the google ecosystem) and you'll take a substantial marketshare from Microsoft. Thats the only reason why we have them. There was no study showing how effective they may be, they just hyped everyone up about computers for students and then left us with the problem.
Now that we have been working through this for a couple years, we are seeing how incredibly INEFFECTIVE chromebooks are for learning, and how frankly destructive they are to the learning environment. |
The government should really commission a study of socioeconomically comparable schools in which some have chromebooks and others do traditional learning, and look at the effect on learning outcomes. |