A bigger problem is school sponsored spyware on the devices. Weird how they don’t mention that:
https://www.eff.org/wp/school-issued-devices-and-student-privacy
https://time.com/7275031/spy-high-true-story-prime-video/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/feb/19/schools-spied-on-students-webcams
I’m not sure how that’s a surprise to anyone. Keep your personal stuff off hardware that doesn’t belong to you.
They used the onboard cameras to take pictures of kids in their bedrooms.
That is a problem, but usage monitoring software should be expected.
Then refusal to use it should also be expected, but they have zero accommodation for that.
Right, because it’s only supposed to be used for school purposes.
The school’s purposes don’t include scanning my home network. Why do their devices do that?
I can’t answer that with the limited information you’ve provided.
It’s definitely a surprise to most students. Not really reasonable to expect people who have never been taught tech to understand tech.
It’s actually a pretty important lesson for them to learn
There should be 1 class for computer and tech. The rest of school can be done with pencil, paper, and a ruler.
Districts should stop playing the marketing game and spend money repairing buildings, buying up to date textbooks, and fucking paying teachers more.
One class seems too few. 75% of jobs in the US use computers regularly. Even the plumber shows up with a tablet and such. On top of that, what ever was the point in making us write the essay twice, rough draft, the final… and have to rewrite the whole damn thing if we made a mistake. When it comes to writing, computers are where it is done.
Math… yeah, pencil and paper, calculator for the high level stuff. History/social studies… videos and articles are just easier to distribute via computer. Though initial presentation with follow up commentary is ideal. I think computers are overused in school, but 1 class is too far in the other direction.Some classes can/should be done in pencil. Math for one is good.
I’d prefer a writing class in pencil as well. Everyones handwriting is going to hell.
I very much agree on math. But writing… I hardly ever handwrite anything anymore. Doesn’t seem critical. And more time spent learning what to write than how to handwrite seems like a good trade.
My mum gave me her old slide-rule that she’d used as a kid. Kinda mechanical calculator, very early computing tech. She told me that there was debate about whether kids should be allowed to use them in school or just calculate manually. She said they were taught to do it manually then when they could do that they were taught slide rule, because many jobs would expect people to have slide rule skills.
When I was little, calculators still had kinda bulbs for each digit, then LCD screens came along and they suddenly got small and more powerful. There was the same controversy about whether we should be allowed to use them in class. We were taught how to do algebra n shit with paper and pencil, but also how to use the calculator.
This has worked for the past couple of generations of tech, I don’t see why this one should be handled any differently. Kids should learn Pythagoras and algebra n stuff, how to do it themselves. Then they should be taught how to do it using a computer, and all the other stuff you can do with the computer.
Honestly, computer lessons in schools need to step up, at least in my country. Back in the 80s we were taught on 32k ram BBC B computers - we only had to learn to code a bit of basic, but those of us who wanted to dig deeper could learn assembly, start fucking with registers n stuff, learning binary and hex. Gave me a very basic understanding of how a computer actually worked.
I’m told that in my country, kids these days are taught how to use office. And that’s about all. Fuckin shame and a missed opportunity for those children who are drawn to tech and want to dig deep.
So yeah, I’m just saying we gotta teach them to do math on paper, really understand it - and then we gotta teach them the tech.
I think writing by hand is overrated. Said as a person who wrote non stop as a kid, whole little novels by hand. Much hand cramps. Much pain. Now carpal tunnel . Grew up pre internet. It wasn’t from computers.
I can write the same shit on a laptop, and without smearing shit because I’m left handed.
Ok, but you need a laptop instead of a scrap of paper and a random pen. In many cases, it’s just overkill.
I bet people down voting me are the sales reps that sell/lease thousands of iPads and Chromebooks to districts along with software licenses and contracts to supple the personnel to support that hardware.
Tech has a place in the classroom, but that place isn’t “everything everywhere all at once” and I think there is a good value in teaching kids when they’re young when and where to put their phones and tablets down.
I think this is one of the biggest missed opportunities in education.
We put “technology” in front of students, but mostly in the form of locked-down devices, prescribed apps, and step-by-step workflows. That teaches compliance, not understanding.
There’s a huge difference between using software and understanding how it works, how to break it, fix it, or build your own.
Basic exposure to things like Linux, hardware setup, networking, and programming would give kids agency instead of just familiarity. Even if they don’t pursue tech careers, they’d come out far more capable of navigating (and questioning) the systems around them.
Digital safety is a big one. Not just “don’t click bad links” but actual operational awareness: privacy, tracking, permissions, data ownership. The stuff that matters in reality.
I get that there are constraints like funding, vendor lock-in, teacher workload, curriculum pressure. But the current model feels like it’s optimised to produce competent consumer users of systems, not people who can shape them.
Feels like a massive wasted opportunity.
You’re partly right. Did you read the article? One of the chief complaints is that in fact the devices aren’t locked down and kids are using them for things like games and youtube.
You’re in a Lemmy echo-chamber for the rest of it. The average user isn’t us.
As for the rest, schools teach to the lowest common denominator. The article itself plainly shows that the people “in charge” haven’t a clue how to effectively monitor, limit, and control usage of these basic devices. So throwing more at them isn’t the solution when they can’t even manage what they’ve got.
How can one become a tech nerd without tinkering with things though?
Yes but modernOS are advanced enough you dont need to tinker at all, kids will just go to the “app store” install some gacha games and never learn s thing about how the computer actually works. Like that’s kinda what i did growing up except my first computer was command line only so i was forced to do some tinkering.
Na the kids need a basic ass machine with only a command line like we did growing up on apple IIs
“Sorry Billy, you need to get your X Windows environment up or you’re just not getting YouTube on here. Look at your younger brother, he’s already experimenting with Wayland. I’m very disappointed in you Billy.”
Exactly!! – kid is gonna go home cry and wake up at 1AM and figure out how to get wine running so he can play roblox with his friends
Tech shouldn’t be allowed in the classroom until high school.
Kids need to learn how to think, use their hands, eye hand coordination, basic reading and most importantly … have a freakin ATTENTION SPAN!!!
The modern computer, internet culture and social media are all designed to shorten a person’s attention span as much possible to turn their brain into pudding and market anything to them.
One of the greatest skills in life in being able to think for yourself, to wonder, to imagine and to question the world with just your own mind rather than in occupying every waking moment to a digital device.
Tech isn’t the problem. It’s teaching kids to think critically. It’s hard to do regardless of what device you are using and it’s next to impossible with large class sizes.
Writing things out by hand does give kids time to think in larger classes where they can’t help guide their own lesson, though.
Bingo. Not a tech issue, it is a pedagogical issue. The way we teach hasn’t changed in 50 years. The problem is systemic. Teachers are taught to develop lesson plans in antiquated ways. Teachers aren’t encouraged or empowered to innovate. Funding is insufficient. Testing takes priority over learning because funding is tied to scores. Then you’ve got big tech lobbying to suckle at the teet of taxpayer dollars influencing decisions being made where the interest of children and learning is secondary.
With things like learning long division or cursive handwriting I think we frequently run into the doorman fallacy. There is so much value in teaching people to think and teaching people to learn that we get distracted by everything having to be a useful skill for future employment.
Good. My son’s school is already tired of me.
Did people honestly think giving 10 year olds school-issued laptops would end well in the slightest? Like, seriously?
I never knew of anyone who didn’t use their school-issued devices for anything other than browser games most of the time. They literally used it for games rather than school work.
You can’t hand them the reins and then complain that they’re even worse now. Schools are partially to blame for all this electronics bullshit kids are into these days. A lot of middle and high schools almost require students to have a fucking iPad these days.
This just reminded me; my first time playing Pokemon Gold/Silver was on a computer in my school library using a fan translation patch like 6 months before the English release.
Good times.
Wait until we find out that the school-assigned devices are always listening, and everything is being scanned for keywords by the NSA, and they’re taking action based on what they hear, arresting and deporting people.
It sounds insane, but this is MAGAmerica. If this was the top story tomorrow, I wouldn’t be surprised, at all. Think of this when the Administration says they are going to give a free laptop or tablet to every American schoolchild.
They give each kid in middle school and up a lenovo windows computer at mi kids’ school. My daughter does her school work on her Fedora PC, transfers the files to the lenovo over FTP, and uses it only in school. The funny thing is that she came home complaining about that, and I quote, “garbage computer they gave me at school, I can’t work on that thing”, and decided to instead use that workflow. I’m so proud of her 😍
But it’s the way of the future! How else are you going to learn a trade that trillions will be spent trying to make irrelevant?
Reading the article it isn’t a problem with tech.
Yet again it’s adult’s inability, ignorance, or unwillingness to limit access to sites and place time limits on devices. Parents don’t parent, parents don’t want to deal with taking devices away, people can’t seem to manage parental controls or learn how they work on the device or the home LAN.
It’s not the tech’s fault. It’s the adult’s fault for not adulting.
(As a side note, people on lemmy need to remember that this is the “average” user, so when you suggest some stance on tech, this is the world outside of the fediverse where people can barely manage an iphone)
Iready and Progress Learning are trash.
