Anonymous
11/12/2025 12:49
Subject: Fourth grade chrome books in school
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote: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.
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.
Anonymous
11/12/2025 12:37
Subject: Fourth grade chrome books in school
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote: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.
Anonymous
11/12/2025 12:05
Subject: Fourth grade chrome books in school
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote: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.
Anonymous
11/11/2025 18:37
Subject: Fourth grade chrome books in school
Anonymous wrote: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
Anonymous
11/10/2025 21:53
Subject: Fourth grade chrome books in school
What about IXL? Anyone's school uses it? I'm so over it. This is in a Catholic school.
Anonymous
11/04/2025 17:26
Subject: Fourth grade chrome books in school
Anonymous wrote:We should go back to states and chalk, amrite?
Y’all are ridiculous.
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.
Anonymous
11/04/2025 09:09
Subject: Fourth grade chrome books in school
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote: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
Anonymous
11/04/2025 09:07
Subject: Fourth grade chrome books in school
Anonymous wrote: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)
Anonymous
11/04/2025 07:07
Subject: Fourth grade chrome books in school
We should go back to states and chalk, amrite?
Y’all are ridiculous.
Y’all are ridiculous.
Anonymous
11/04/2025 07:06
Subject: Re:Fourth grade chrome books in school
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:I'm not sure that I understand the objection. I suppose that we could argue that buying Chromebooks at the elementary level isn't the best use of limited school-district resources, but children do need to learn how to be computer-literate. Researching stuff on the Internet is at least as important as learning how to use library resources. I know that people my age (late 40s) spent significant time in library class in elementary school, learning how to find information. These basic skills served me well thorugh my secondary and college education. This is still necessary for children today, but they also need to know how to use online search functionality, how to evaluate the quality of a given source, and how to prepare a bibliography including Internet sources.
If your kids are playing games all day, then the teacher has a classroom-management problem. This isn't a problem with the technology.
So you managed to develop computer skills, online research skills, online literacy etc WITHOUT being issued a personal chromebook in elementary? In other words, it is completely unnecessary. I hate the argument that kids NEED them in order to develop computer skills.
And people managed to get places by horse and buggy. Your point? 🙄
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.
Anonymous
11/04/2025 00:08
Subject: Re:Fourth grade chrome books in school
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:I'm not sure that I understand the objection. I suppose that we could argue that buying Chromebooks at the elementary level isn't the best use of limited school-district resources, but children do need to learn how to be computer-literate. Researching stuff on the Internet is at least as important as learning how to use library resources. I know that people my age (late 40s) spent significant time in library class in elementary school, learning how to find information. These basic skills served me well thorugh my secondary and college education. This is still necessary for children today, but they also need to know how to use online search functionality, how to evaluate the quality of a given source, and how to prepare a bibliography including Internet sources.
If your kids are playing games all day, then the teacher has a classroom-management problem. This isn't a problem with the technology.
So you managed to develop computer skills, online research skills, online literacy etc WITHOUT being issued a personal chromebook in elementary? In other words, it is completely unnecessary. I hate the argument that kids NEED them in order to develop computer skills.
And people managed to get places by horse and buggy. Your point? 🙄
Anonymous
11/01/2025 14:40
Subject: Re:Fourth grade chrome books in school
Just looking at curriculum between public schools isn’t going to show much. Our kid attends a pretty high scoring public at around 75-80% proficient in math and reading. Even year to year at the same school and even with the same curriculum, what is taught and HOW it’s taught is so teacher dependent. In our case, K teacher had kids on iPads for a long time, emphasized memorizing sight words, and assigned reading and memorization homework. 1st grade teacher focused a lot on phonics and writing, with regular math homework. 2nd grade teacher did far less writing and a lot more iPad worksheets and apps, no homework. I’m friendly with parents with kids in the other class sections of the same grade so I know the other teachers ran class differently. In theory, this is all the same language arts curriculum, purportedly the same phonics program, and the same math curriculum. In practice, I’m sure most of the kids meeting state and national standards are doing a lot of their learning outside of school.
Anonymous
10/31/2025 07:32
Subject: Fourth grade chrome books in school
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:I honestly think we will look back at this and see it like smoking while pregnant or not using car seats. What were we thinking??? That is if we don't fully turn into Idiocracy by then.
The sad thing is this is just one more way that poor and rich kids will be different. Rich kids at private schools learn cursive and how to read novels. They develop attention spans. Poor kids get ed tech with ads shoved in their faces for 80% of the day.
And rich kids can put on their resumes “Perfect Cursive Handwriting“
My three read books and learned cursive but didn’t have to continue it. I think it was mostly to be able to read it when reading old documents and letters. There are no benefits to writing in cursive. If a student does better with cursive fine, but not necessary.
One read The Outsiders and The Giver in the sixth grade. They are reading a contemporary novel right now but I forget the name. Shakespeare comes in the 8th grade and they put on a Shakespeare play.
I remember two years ago my daughter read Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry, The Family Under the Bridge and Holes in the 4th grade.
I think some posters claiming their kids don’t read complete books are trolls. How can they not read complete novels and why wouldn’t they? Mine are in public school and none of that is true.
As for Chromebooks you can block ads. The schools should have done that for the students. Most schools use Chromebooks for some subjects and notebooks for others.
I wouldn’t wait longer than middle school for the students to be using a laptop. The longer they use them the more adept they are. They type faster with fewer errors. They can manage three screens being open to work on an assignment with ease. They know how to use all of the tools. You don’t want the poor kid trying to use her thumbs to type like an iPhone. You want the laptop to be second nature.
There are actually a lot of benefits to kids learning cursive, far beyond reading old documents. Look it up
+1. And the narrowmindedness of “it’s this way at our school, so it must be this way at yours” is nothing to be proud of.
When you have a top performing public school, and others have serious complaints about their schools not doing their jobs, the way it’s done in the high test scoring schools might be more helpful.
Learning to write well is important. Learning cursive isn’t. It’s nice to be able to write in cursive fast and flawlessly but it’s not possible for every student. Maybe make it an elective class for children of parents who can’t let it go.
The “top performing” school are top performing because of all the enrichment (either directly or indirectly) kids and their parents do outside of school. It isn’t the teachers or curriculum- those things are more or less standardized and follow what the state tells them.
They are apparently outperforming the schools that don’t read full books and cheap programs with ads on Chromebooks. That has to be some of it. These communities who only read snippets also have involved parents. I’m sure the teachers are fine but if students aren’t reading complete age appropriate novels by 2nd grade they wouldn’t do as well as schools that do. Same thing with grammar, and it’s not just the Catholics who teach it.
While there may be outliers, most top performing public schools aren’t reading full novels in elementary and are using tons of EdTech. I haven’t found any major difference in the curriculum between top performing and low performing schools, outside of AAP centres and such.
Anonymous
10/31/2025 07:30
Subject: Fourth grade chrome books in school
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:I honestly think we will look back at this and see it like smoking while pregnant or not using car seats. What were we thinking??? That is if we don't fully turn into Idiocracy by then.
The sad thing is this is just one more way that poor and rich kids will be different. Rich kids at private schools learn cursive and how to read novels. They develop attention spans. Poor kids get ed tech with ads shoved in their faces for 80% of the day.
And rich kids can put on their resumes “Perfect Cursive Handwriting“
My three read books and learned cursive but didn’t have to continue it. I think it was mostly to be able to read it when reading old documents and letters. There are no benefits to writing in cursive. If a student does better with cursive fine, but not necessary.
One read The Outsiders and The Giver in the sixth grade. They are reading a contemporary novel right now but I forget the name. Shakespeare comes in the 8th grade and they put on a Shakespeare play.
I remember two years ago my daughter read Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry, The Family Under the Bridge and Holes in the 4th grade.
I think some posters claiming their kids don’t read complete books are trolls. How can they not read complete novels and why wouldn’t they? Mine are in public school and none of that is true.
As for Chromebooks you can block ads. The schools should have done that for the students. Most schools use Chromebooks for some subjects and notebooks for others.
I wouldn’t wait longer than middle school for the students to be using a laptop. The longer they use them the more adept they are. They type faster with fewer errors. They can manage three screens being open to work on an assignment with ease. They know how to use all of the tools. You don’t want the poor kid trying to use her thumbs to type like an iPhone. You want the laptop to be second nature.
There are actually a lot of benefits to kids learning cursive, far beyond reading old documents. Look it up
+1. And the narrowmindedness of “it’s this way at our school, so it must be this way at yours” is nothing to be proud of.
When you have a top performing public school, and others have serious complaints about their schools not doing their jobs, the way it’s done in the high test scoring schools might be more helpful.
Learning to write well is important. Learning cursive isn’t. It’s nice to be able to write in cursive fast and flawlessly but it’s not possible for every student. Maybe make it an elective class for children of parents who can’t let it go.
The “top performing” school are top performing because of all the enrichment (either directly or indirectly) kids and their parents do outside of school. It isn’t the teachers or curriculum- those things are more or less standardized and follow what the state tells them.
They are apparently outperforming the schools that don’t read full books and cheap programs with ads on Chromebooks. That has to be some of it. These communities who only read snippets also have involved parents. I’m sure the teachers are fine but if students aren’t reading complete age appropriate novels by 2nd grade they wouldn’t do as well as schools that do. Same thing with grammar, and it’s not just the Catholics who teach it.
The way some publics are educating kids (i.e., not) i'd have to supplement almost every subject that is taught. And all the subjects and topics they don't teach, like science, geography, spelling, grammar. Do parents really have that kind of time or are they just throwing a couple math problems around, using a spelling workbook, and hoping their kids read books at home? I have the time, and I still don't want DD to spend so much free time doing academic work. I want her to play, relax, and pursue activities she enjoys.
Anonymous
10/31/2025 05:48
Subject: Fourth grade chrome books in school
Anonymous wrote:I honestly think we will look back at this and see it like smoking while pregnant or not using car seats. What were we thinking??? That is if we don't fully turn into Idiocracy by then.
The sad thing is this is just one more way that poor and rich kids will be different. Rich kids at private schools learn cursive and how to read novels. They develop attention spans. Poor kids get ed tech with ads shoved in their faces for 80% of the day.
+1