This is a fluff article but about a well signposted issue in education: tech in schools may be pushing education backwards.
Many countries have embraced tech in schools - such as laptops for students - and big tech companies in the US have been enthusiastic about getting their tech in front of young people as they will be the consumers of the future. But despite the billions spent it seems to actually be damaging education.
There are educationalists pushing for tech to be taken out of schools and go back to methods that actually do produce consistently good results.
For many years I have thought that elementary schools should be free of any modern electronic tech. In middle school it should be introduced but not connected to internet (word processors, interactive encyclopedias or coding like we used to learn it in the '80s or '90s, BASIC, Logo, that kind of stuff).
Finally, introduce internet in high school, in a controlled way, focusing primarily on knowledge and research sites. No LLMs included.
Of course you can’t control what happens in the students’ homes, but that should not affect what happens at school, specially if you replace homework with schoolwork, which I also think it’s better in the long run.
This is a fluff article but about a well signposted issue in education: tech in schools may be pushing education backwards.
Many countries have embraced tech in schools - such as laptops for students - and big tech companies in the US have been enthusiastic about getting their tech in front of young people as they will be the consumers of the future. But despite the billions spent it seems to actually be damaging education.
There are educationalists pushing for tech to be taken out of schools and go back to methods that actually do produce consistently good results.
For many years I have thought that elementary schools should be free of any modern electronic tech. In middle school it should be introduced but not connected to internet (word processors, interactive encyclopedias or coding like we used to learn it in the '80s or '90s, BASIC, Logo, that kind of stuff).
Finally, introduce internet in high school, in a controlled way, focusing primarily on knowledge and research sites. No LLMs included.
Of course you can’t control what happens in the students’ homes, but that should not affect what happens at school, specially if you replace homework with schoolwork, which I also think it’s better in the long run.