Screens/Tech in Schools: iReady

[Anonymous]

Ok Christina Henderson removed her proposal to cancel the iReady contract. But everyone is open to a longer conversation about screen usage in schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can we use it just 3x a year for diagnostics, not as a routine classroom thing, and somehow pay less money?

+1000

Why can’t we do this? Get the data but then have students learn without iReady lessons? It’s ridiculous.

It's fine to only use iReady for diagnostics, but it's foolish to think that getting rid of iReady lessons will magically result in less screentime.

You need better policy around technology use as a whole and you need to fund things that will enable teachers to do differentiation and small groups without the need for screens.

+1, most of my kid's screen time in class isn't iReady. It's used pretty minimally at my kid's school already. I'm more concerned with other tech use like:

- Kids having access to messaging apps and inappropriate content on school issued devices, or kids figuring out how to hack these devices to watch YouTube or engage in other tech consumption during school that is not appropriate

- Overuse of Youtube in classrooms for activities that could be done tech free (i.e. the use of YouTube in ECE and early grades for things like learning letters, colors, Spanish or French language instruction, etc.) Made worse when the kids are also exposed to a lot of advertising via YouTube.

- Use of AI in school technology, including predictive text in writing programs

- Use of programs like Epic for reading content instead of investing in print materials

That's off the top of my head. iReady is really not the biggest issue with tech and screens in schools. Some schools are likely overusing it and they need to be reigned in -- I support that. But very little iReady use is actually required by the district beyond the diagnostic testing. If you addressed the problem of incentives by addressing the use of iReady testing in teacher IMPACT scores, you could mostly fix the overuse problem without touching the contract.

Lol iReady can be 40-60 minutes a day.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can we use it just 3x a year for diagnostics, not as a routine classroom thing, and somehow pay less money?

+1000

Why can’t we do this? Get the data but then have students learn without iReady lessons? It’s ridiculous.

It's fine to only use iReady for diagnostics, but it's foolish to think that getting rid of iReady lessons will magically result in less screentime.

You need better policy around technology use as a whole and you need to fund things that will enable teachers to do differentiation and small groups without the need for screens.

+1, most of my kid's screen time in class isn't iReady. It's used pretty minimally at my kid's school already. I'm more concerned with other tech use like:

- Kids having access to messaging apps and inappropriate content on school issued devices, or kids figuring out how to hack these devices to watch YouTube or engage in other tech consumption during school that is not appropriate

- Overuse of Youtube in classrooms for activities that could be done tech free (i.e. the use of YouTube in ECE and early grades for things like learning letters, colors, Spanish or French language instruction, etc.) Made worse when the kids are also exposed to a lot of advertising via YouTube.

- Use of AI in school technology, including predictive text in writing programs

- Use of programs like Epic for reading content instead of investing in print materials

That's off the top of my head. iReady is really not the biggest issue with tech and screens in schools. Some schools are likely overusing it and they need to be reigned in -- I support that. But very little iReady use is actually required by the district beyond the diagnostic testing. If you addressed the problem of incentives by addressing the use of iReady testing in teacher IMPACT scores, you could mostly fix the overuse problem without touching the contract.

What schools officially have student-facing AI? I know there’s something of a push to get teachers trained on it but I thought AI tools weren’t implemented for students (though students do access them since DCPS is shitty about regulating what the Chromebooks have access to)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Deal teachers just had an internal survey showing they want to dial back computer use.

That's great!

Yeah but will DCPS and Principal Neal listen?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can we use it just 3x a year for diagnostics, not as a routine classroom thing, and somehow pay less money?

+1000

Why can’t we do this? Get the data but then have students learn without iReady lessons? It’s ridiculous.

It's fine to only use iReady for diagnostics, but it's foolish to think that getting rid of iReady lessons will magically result in less screentime.

You need better policy around technology use as a whole and you need to fund things that will enable teachers to do differentiation and small groups without the need for screens.

+1, most of my kid's screen time in class isn't iReady. It's used pretty minimally at my kid's school already. I'm more concerned with other tech use like:

- Kids having access to messaging apps and inappropriate content on school issued devices, or kids figuring out how to hack these devices to watch YouTube or engage in other tech consumption during school that is not appropriate

- Overuse of Youtube in classrooms for activities that could be done tech free (i.e. the use of YouTube in ECE and early grades for things like learning letters, colors, Spanish or French language instruction, etc.) Made worse when the kids are also exposed to a lot of advertising via YouTube.

- Use of AI in school technology, including predictive text in writing programs

- Use of programs like Epic for reading content instead of investing in print materials

That's off the top of my head. iReady is really not the biggest issue with tech and screens in schools. Some schools are likely overusing it and they need to be reigned in -- I support that. But very little iReady use is actually required by the district beyond the diagnostic testing. If you addressed the problem of incentives by addressing the use of iReady testing in teacher IMPACT scores, you could mostly fix the overuse problem without touching the contract.

Lol iReady can be 40-60 minutes a day.

Only if the teacher chooses that and the school condones it. Get rid of iReady and the teacher putting kids on it for 40-60 minutes a day will just fill that time with a different screen. Do you think iReady is the only EdTech in schools? Go into your kid's Clever account and look at all the applications. Your child of has access to all of those at school via devices.

It would be far more effective for schools to establish formal rules around screen use in general that to ban a single piece of EdTech. Especially if that one of gram also happens to serve an essential purpose for which we do not currently have an alternative (and oh fyi the alternative will also be EdTech -- if DCPS switched to MAP for placement testing, that would also be administered on screens).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can we use it just 3x a year for diagnostics, not as a routine classroom thing, and somehow pay less money?

+1000

Why can’t we do this? Get the data but then have students learn without iReady lessons? It’s ridiculous.

It's fine to only use iReady for diagnostics, but it's foolish to think that getting rid of iReady lessons will magically result in less screentime.

You need better policy around technology use as a whole and you need to fund things that will enable teachers to do differentiation and small groups without the need for screens.

+1, most of my kid's screen time in class isn't iReady. It's used pretty minimally at my kid's school already. I'm more concerned with other tech use like:

- Kids having access to messaging apps and inappropriate content on school issued devices, or kids figuring out how to hack these devices to watch YouTube or engage in other tech consumption during school that is not appropriate

- Overuse of Youtube in classrooms for activities that could be done tech free (i.e. the use of YouTube in ECE and early grades for things like learning letters, colors, Spanish or French language instruction, etc.) Made worse when the kids are also exposed to a lot of advertising via YouTube.

- Use of AI in school technology, including predictive text in writing programs

- Use of programs like Epic for reading content instead of investing in print materials

That's off the top of my head. iReady is really not the biggest issue with tech and screens in schools. Some schools are likely overusing it and they need to be reigned in -- I support that. But very little iReady use is actually required by the district beyond the diagnostic testing. If you addressed the problem of incentives by addressing the use of iReady testing in teacher IMPACT scores, you could mostly fix the overuse problem without touching the contract.

What schools officially have student-facing AI? I know there’s something of a push to get teachers trained on it but I thought AI tools weren’t implemented for students (though students do access them since DCPS is shitty about regulating what the Chromebooks have access to)

You are thinking too narrowly about what AI is. It's not just chat bots (but yes also kids do figure out how to access those anyway which is very concerning).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can we use it just 3x a year for diagnostics, not as a routine classroom thing, and somehow pay less money?

+1000

Why can’t we do this? Get the data but then have students learn without iReady lessons? It’s ridiculous.

It's fine to only use iReady for diagnostics, but it's foolish to think that getting rid of iReady lessons will magically result in less screentime.

You need better policy around technology use as a whole and you need to fund things that will enable teachers to do differentiation and small groups without the need for screens.

+1, most of my kid's screen time in class isn't iReady. It's used pretty minimally at my kid's school already. I'm more concerned with other tech use like:

- Kids having access to messaging apps and inappropriate content on school issued devices, or kids figuring out how to hack these devices to watch YouTube or engage in other tech consumption during school that is not appropriate

- Overuse of Youtube in classrooms for activities that could be done tech free (i.e. the use of YouTube in ECE and early grades for things like learning letters, colors, Spanish or French language instruction, etc.) Made worse when the kids are also exposed to a lot of advertising via YouTube.

- Use of AI in school technology, including predictive text in writing programs

- Use of programs like Epic for reading content instead of investing in print materials

That's off the top of my head. iReady is really not the biggest issue with tech and screens in schools. Some schools are likely overusing it and they need to be reigned in -- I support that. But very little iReady use is actually required by the district beyond the diagnostic testing. If you addressed the problem of incentives by addressing the use of iReady testing in teacher IMPACT scores, you could mostly fix the overuse problem without touching the contract.

What schools officially have student-facing AI? I know there’s something of a push to get teachers trained on it but I thought AI tools weren’t implemented for students (though students do access them since DCPS is shitty about regulating what the Chromebooks have access to)

You are thinking too narrowly about what AI is. It's not just chat bots (but yes also kids do figure out how to access those anyway which is very concerning).

Copilot is integrated into Word, so the kids are AI suggestions on their written work. My DCPS elementary schooler mentioned this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can we use it just 3x a year for diagnostics, not as a routine classroom thing, and somehow pay less money?

+1000

Why can’t we do this? Get the data but then have students learn without iReady lessons? It’s ridiculous.

It's fine to only use iReady for diagnostics, but it's foolish to think that getting rid of iReady lessons will magically result in less screentime.

You need better policy around technology use as a whole and you need to fund things that will enable teachers to do differentiation and small groups without the need for screens.

+1, most of my kid's screen time in class isn't iReady. It's used pretty minimally at my kid's school already. I'm more concerned with other tech use like:

- Kids having access to messaging apps and inappropriate content on school issued devices, or kids figuring out how to hack these devices to watch YouTube or engage in other tech consumption during school that is not appropriate

- Overuse of Youtube in classrooms for activities that could be done tech free (i.e. the use of YouTube in ECE and early grades for things like learning letters, colors, Spanish or French language instruction, etc.) Made worse when the kids are also exposed to a lot of advertising via YouTube.

- Use of AI in school technology, including predictive text in writing programs

- Use of programs like Epic for reading content instead of investing in print materials

That's off the top of my head. iReady is really not the biggest issue with tech and screens in schools. Some schools are likely overusing it and they need to be reigned in -- I support that. But very little iReady use is actually required by the district beyond the diagnostic testing. If you addressed the problem of incentives by addressing the use of iReady testing in teacher IMPACT scores, you could mostly fix the overuse problem without touching the contract.

What schools officially have student-facing AI? I know there’s something of a push to get teachers trained on it but I thought AI tools weren’t implemented for students (though students do access them since DCPS is shitty about regulating what the Chromebooks have access to)

You are thinking too narrowly about what AI is. It's not just chat bots (but yes also kids do figure out how to access those anyway which is very concerning).

Copilot is integrated into Word, so the kids are AI suggestions on their written work. My DCPS elementary schooler mentioned this.

Does DCPS have a contract with any of the other companies to provide like, CLI access, the desktop chat, or API? The useful stuff- I mean where kids can do a lot of damage- is pretty prohibitively expensive (and I doubt anyone in central can define the standard usage of the word bedrock, let alone the Amazon platform).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can we use it just 3x a year for diagnostics, not as a routine classroom thing, and somehow pay less money?

+1000

Why can’t we do this? Get the data but then have students learn without iReady lessons? It’s ridiculous.

It's fine to only use iReady for diagnostics, but it's foolish to think that getting rid of iReady lessons will magically result in less screentime.

You need better policy around technology use as a whole and you need to fund things that will enable teachers to do differentiation and small groups without the need for screens.

+1, most of my kid's screen time in class isn't iReady. It's used pretty minimally at my kid's school already. I'm more concerned with other tech use like:

- Kids having access to messaging apps and inappropriate content on school issued devices, or kids figuring out how to hack these devices to watch YouTube or engage in other tech consumption during school that is not appropriate

- Overuse of Youtube in classrooms for activities that could be done tech free (i.e. the use of YouTube in ECE and early grades for things like learning letters, colors, Spanish or French language instruction, etc.) Made worse when the kids are also exposed to a lot of advertising via YouTube.

- Use of AI in school technology, including predictive text in writing programs

- Use of programs like Epic for reading content instead of investing in print materials

That's off the top of my head. iReady is really not the biggest issue with tech and screens in schools. Some schools are likely overusing it and they need to be reigned in -- I support that. But very little iReady use is actually required by the district beyond the diagnostic testing. If you addressed the problem of incentives by addressing the use of iReady testing in teacher IMPACT scores, you could mostly fix the overuse problem without touching the contract.

Lol iReady can be 40-60 minutes a day.

Only if the teacher chooses that and the school condones it. Get rid of iReady and the teacher putting kids on it for 40-60 minutes a day will just fill that time with a different screen. Do you think iReady is the only EdTech in schools? Go into your kid's Clever account and look at all the applications. Your child of has access to all of those at school via devices.

It would be far more effective for schools to establish formal rules around screen use in general that to ban a single piece of EdTech. Especially if that one of gram also happens to serve an essential purpose for which we do not currently have an alternative (and oh fyi the alternative will also be EdTech -- if DCPS switched to MAP for placement testing, that would also be administered on screens).

Uh huh. Everything is ‘the teacher’s fault.’