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I gave my students iPads – then wished I could take them back

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Re: I gave my students iPads – then wished I could take them back

#81

Post by csorrell »

limaoscarjuliet wrote: post #66

Computers will rot your brain. Or... not? I'm 40. I come from an Eastern-Bloc country. Back in the day we raised ourselves, running outside all day, building and breaking friendships by playing sports and other more stupid games (e.g. throwing small rocks at cars - yes, THAT stupid). Just like kids today have Internet, we had a drug - TV. Grandma said: it would rot your brain, it is the Satan, stay away. Apparently t…

I grew up with a TV that had no boundaries around it and don't feel like it kept me from experiencing a full childhood either. I did waste a lot of time in front of it but television was mostly just a fallback; I preferred playing outside and with other kids. The thing about TV then that is different from technology now, is that we were limited more by whatever programming the cable networks had scheduled between all those commercials. TV was actually boring most of the time, especially during the day.

I have kids now and know that with my oldest at least (11 year old boy), when there are no boundaries around screen time, the screens are always on. There is a lot more going on in the world of video games, movies, the internet, etc. these days which make it easier for kids to get lost in.

Re: I gave my students iPads – then wished I could take them back

#82

Post by desireco42 »

joeevans1000 wrote: post #34

Remember when that guy was offering to buy every classroom free TVs in exchange for the school's commitment to have the kids watch a certain amount of programming a day? The programming included ads. This seems the same. Having the kids load linux onto laptops, yeah... I could understand the value in that. Having them work with Raspberry Pi's, I could see the merit in that. Program robots? Definitely. But this debacl…

As you said, schools are afraid of teaching kids real skills. I agree pretty much with everything you said the way you said it :).

Re: I gave my students iPads – then wished I could take them back

#83

Post by kps »

michaelmcdonald wrote: post #2

Change is hard. When computers were first introduced to schools there were similar arguments and complaints. When calculators were brought in instead of the slide rule we heard it would be the end of actually "knowing" math. Teachers who are great find ways to use technology and tools available to inspire their students and create engaging lessons. This teacher just sounds resistant to change.

  > When calculators were brought in instead of the slide rule
  > we heard it would be the end of actually "knowing" math.
Plato argued in Phaedrus that literacy would be the end of anyone actually "knowing" anything. Why learn if you can just google^H^H^H^H^H^H read it? Same shit, different millennium.

Re: I gave my students iPads – then wished I could take them back

#84

Post by marcosdumay »

thearn4 wrote: post #19
delecti wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The number of people who need to do 9x14 when they have no access to a calculator is pretty much zero.

That's too application focused. The primary value of arithmetic is that it forces you to exercise parts of your mind in a way which would otherwise be difficult. The same can be said of general mathematics, and literary analysis, etc.

Hum, basic arithmetics is mechanical repetition. There may be some benefit to the brain in doing it, but I'm doubting it until I get evidence.

The main benefit is that knowing arithmetics well makes higher mathematics easier to learn. That's because one won't get distracted doing calculations. That's still true on the calculator era, just a bit less so, thus I do think it's important to learn arithmetics... It just the "it improves your brain" that I find highly suspect.

Re: I gave my students iPads – then wished I could take them back

#85

Post by farmdve »

rayiner wrote: post #5

> My lively little kids stopped talking and adopted the bent-neck, plugged-in posture of tap, tap, swipe. I'm extremely skeptical about the utility of technology in education, but iPads are a bad idea for reasons other than the above. A room full of kids working hard with pre-iPad technology looks like that too, except they're concentrating on books and paper.

I've noticed this behaviour outside of school and with much older people. I grew up with a computer and I admit I use it at least 15 hours a day every day, but a big chunk of this time I've used for learning and contributing rather than just pure media consumption.

Today too many people are engrossed in facebook and can't continue a conversation without flicking and swiping through facebook every 30-60 seconds. Everybody's faces are now illuminated by their devices' screens.

Re: I gave my students iPads – then wished I could take them back

#86

Post by lintiness »

panzagl wrote: post #73
b6 wrote: post #46

This was really painful to read. I don't often think I have vision or significant insight, but it's been obvious to me for as long as I can remember that egregious use of technology in classrooms is a profoundly terrible idea. What, educators were worried children wouldn't spend enough time staring at glowing rectangles, and needed to get a head start? Really? It's not clear whether most adults are even capable of ma…

Tablets are just the next step in replacing teachers with their exorbitant $40K salaries with half that number of $10/hr babysitters, so more money can be funneled to the companies providing the curriculum and testing.

cities like chicago have near 3% property taxes to pay current teachers average salaries over $75k/yr. with health, with vacation, with summers, with cola, with lifetime guaranteed pensions of 70%+. school admins routinely take home $125k+. when are we going to stop with the nonsense that teachers save the world while starving in their yugos?

Re: I gave my students iPads – then wished I could take them back

#87

Post by joshstrange »

bluedino wrote: post #15

Access, not immersion. I cringed 15 years ago when school boards pushed to put computers in every classroom. What good is a room full of kids on MySpace and AIM? Sure, you need computer skills for the future. But beyond learning how to use a computer for typing, spreadsheets, word processing, you don't need more than that in the K-12 level. Some kids will want to be programmers. Some kids will want to do music. Some…

Why? Seriously why?

Technology and software are, not to sound cliche, eating the world. Even something you would consider to not need tech for like farming is seeing great advances from technology including but not limited to: drip irrigation, gps auto-pilot machinery, robots to kill weeds without herbicides, weather patterns, crop patterns, and more. Software and technology is everywhere and if it's not somewhere yet then it will be soon. Why should be churning out tech-illiterate students except for a couple of fields? This seems incredibly short-sighted.

Re: I gave my students iPads – then wished I could take them back

#88

Post by joshstrange »

tormeh wrote: post #63
cthalupa wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These programs are often funded by federal aid based on the number of students on free or reduced lunch. The money, IIRC, can really only be used for library stuff or technology, and it's a sort of 'use it or lose it' deal.

Yes, but since students usually do better without computers it's better to use it on the library or simply not take the money.

Want to provide some kind of source for that claim?

Re: I gave my students iPads – then wished I could take them back

#89

Post by dghughes »

panzagl wrote: post #73
b6 wrote: post #46

This was really painful to read. I don't often think I have vision or significant insight, but it's been obvious to me for as long as I can remember that egregious use of technology in classrooms is a profoundly terrible idea. What, educators were worried children wouldn't spend enough time staring at glowing rectangles, and needed to get a head start? Really? It's not clear whether most adults are even capable of ma…

Tablets are just the next step in replacing teachers with their exorbitant $40K salaries with half that number of $10/hr babysitters, so more money can be funneled to the companies providing the curriculum and testing.

Good teachers are hard to find even when I was in high school in the 1980s I had quite a range.

Compare three math teachers I had.

One teacher was so laid back he played music in class but it was 1960s music, nobody in the entire class got over 40%.

The second math teacher was also a university professor he was so strict many in his class failed too.

The third was a bit geeky in behaviour, a bit eccentric, he would "pick volunteers" three of them to solve problems on the blackboard at the front of the class. I can't recall anyone in that class getting under 90%.

Re: I gave my students iPads – then wished I could take them back

#90

Post by coldpie »

lintiness wrote: post #86
panzagl wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tablets are just the next step in replacing teachers with their exorbitant $40K salaries with half that number of $10/hr babysitters, so more money can be funneled to the companies providing the curriculum and testing.

cities like chicago have near 3% property taxes to pay current teachers average salaries over $75k/yr. with health, with vacation, with summers, with cola, with lifetime guaranteed pensions of 70%+. school admins routinely take home $125k+. when are we going to stop with the nonsense that teachers save the world while starving in their yugos?

When it stops being true, I imagine. http://www.payscale.com/research/US/All_K-12_Teachers/Salary
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