Again, the school networks DO block most of those. Kids who are determined not to work will just play that dinosaur game on google or look at their phone or look out the window or ask to go to the bathroom for 20 minutes or put their head down or ask to go to the nurse. |
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You don't want screens?
News flash: Your children have a screen at their disposal the moment you get them a phone and are on them constantly. There isn't a whole lot the teachers can do about it. Get over yourselves. |
Here we are, blaming 2nd graders for having lousy impulse control on a laptop. Because we all would have done so much better using a laptop then? Parents are complaining because it's inappropriate. Whether or not laptops are inappropriate for HS students is one question. For ES? There's no question. |
No “we” are not blaming 2nd graders for anything. Not one thing I said at all references 2nd grade. |
+1. I'm homeschooling my kindergartener but even after things are back to normal and she can go to school 5 days a week, I'm nervous about the excessive tech use. I was given a laptop by my school in 7th grade and it was a huge distraction. Everyone would be playing games or messaging each other on AIM. Students accidentally accessed pornography. It was a mess. |
Yeah that would be why my kid doesn't have a smartphone and won't be getting one... |
| I’m a high school teacher. That ship sailed long ago. Even the best students do it. I’m not happy about it from a “future of humanity” perspective but teachers made their peace with this pre pandemic. |
+1. We're getting treatment for my child's ADHD and working on impulse control, etc, but DL is a disaster and so are laptops in class. |
Gonna be rough for all those kids when they get to college or grad school with the "no laptops allowed in class" professors. |
We moved our first grader to Catholic school this year and one of things I really like is that they use workbooks and have them writing with a pencil all the time. No personal screens in the classroom. His handwriting was not good last year. He was definitely behind. I have seen a huge improvement this year and the teacher has noted it too. We were doing virtual K with FCPS at the end of last year and I did not like all the reliance on apps... watch this YouTube video, do this Dreambox math, go to MyOn and have it read you a story. Let alone the god awful hyperdocs where he had to click and drag things and attempt to peck out sentences on a keyboard. It was painful. I think this whole "we are preparing them for modern world we live in" is a bunch of BS. Young elementary students have plenty of time to develop computer skills AFTER they have learned how to write. And even after that point we need to be careful about how much is being done on screens instead of paper. We are going to have a generation of people who lack the fine motor skills we need for things like certain types of surgery. This issue is already being noticed in med students: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/30/well/live/surgeons-hobbies-dexterity.html. |
Why aren't you designing your teaching so that students don't have much time/opportunity to be sitting on their devices? |
That doesn’t happen. In college your learning is entirely on you. Those Professors do not care if you come, if you like the content, if you’re engaged. They’re teaching what and how they teach and it’s on the students to get it or not. In this sense we do high school kids a huge disservice because if they don’t learn or engage or do the default is “how did the teacher fail to grab them.” The reality is the best teacher still can’t compete with the phone. I swear some kids aren’t even consciously aware they’re picking it up and scrolling it. You call them out and they’re genuinely surprised. |
Also there is a workaround to watch YouTube even when blocked, and many kids know it. |
There is no teaching that is more exciting to a kid determined to be on or addicted to their phone. There just isn’t. I have had parents email me and say “he gets so distracted by his iPad/phone can you just take it in your class?” and I have flat out responded your job is to tell him to leave it at home, not to ask me to confiscate it. |
I was speaking from the recent experience of multiple friends enrolled in college courses who were told no laptops allowed in class. |