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The technology pushed into schools today is a threat to child development

americanaffairsjournal.org

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Re: The technology pushed into schools today is a threat to child development

#261

Post by Dylan16807 »

toasterlovin wrote: post #153
blhack wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do this. I have a really difficult time turning my mind off in silence. If it’s dark and quiet, my mind is working. Listening to old TV shows like TNG helps distract me enough to fall asleep.

Just gonna throw this out there (as a longtime insomniac): perhaps that’s your brains way of telling you that it needs to mull over whatever’s going on in your life. I’ve found that my insomnia is worst when I have so much going on that I’m not getting enough quiet time to process it all.

How many hours of mulling might be necessary? I don't really care if some part of me wants to spend 20 hours a week in generic reflection, it's going to be mostly wasted effort after the first hour or two. Whatever I would replace is probably more important.

Re: The technology pushed into schools today is a threat to child development

#262

Post by imtringued »

raverbashing wrote: post #188
shard wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In related news, the younger generation of kids in Asian countries are getting worse and worse at writing Chinese characters because they can just type the Romanized versions without learning how to write it. Personally I am able to read Chinese at a moderately high level (can read newspapers) but I cannot write most characters off the top of my head. This is what happens when you emphasize reading over physical writ…

I think some countries should just bite the bullet and start replacing their archaic writing systems with something more modern Phonetical alphabet, standardized spelling, etc Few people nowadays have the time and willingness to learn thousand of characters and their stroke orders. Not to mention the whole "every character has several unrelated pronunciations, but hey, context, right?!" of Japanese.

Actually kanji only don't make sense in the context of only reading them. First learn how to speak and listen. Then as soon as you write a bunch of kanji you will realize how consistent the stroke order is and that there are a lot of repeating elements (loads and loads of boxes...). There are still some annoying exceptions but those are the minority. Learning the meaning of each kanji will make it very easy to connect the kanji with the intended word.

Re: The technology pushed into schools today is a threat to child development

#263

Post by glaberficken »

plughs wrote: post #8

Our elementary school uses chromebooks from 1st grade on, and I do see a lot of downsides. The most outrageous problem, IMO, is that there are 'modules' that must be completed, and kids with computer access at home can work on them at home. Kids from low income families are screwed over - again. Other problems - spellcheck is always on, why learn real spelling when the computer fixes it for you? - The de-emphasis on…

Tech-parent here (if you can call me that!) I have a 9 and 4yo. My 9yo watches youtube since she was 2 (on normal restricted mode) I have been teaching my kids (especially the older one) to identify by herself what is quality content that you can learn from Vs what is just dopamine inducing click bait. I think it is delusional to think you are achieving anything by blocking youtube. The earlier you teach your kids to create their own filters the better. They will be exposed to it at some point anyway. My kid learned a lot of stuff by herself already on you-tube. How to draw, how to braid her hair, its really an empowering thing for kids. I wish i had youtube when I was a kid. It just enables them to learn by seeing and imitating, except they are not limited to what they see at school or at home. She already has a great sense of what is a shit video full of non-sense or what might be violent or inappropriate for her and polices herself to stop watching straight away. (obviously there is some supervision involved. She is not allowed to watch yt on the infrequent occasions she is home alone).

The other day we were researching something on wikipedia together for one of her homework assignments and i closed a browser tab by accident, she immediately turned and pressed Ctrl+Shift+T. I asked her how did she learn that. You guessed it, on youtube. One day she was drawing on a online drawing app and she closed the tab by accident and was really upset about loosing the drawing she had made, so she went on youtube and searched how to recover lost tabs.

Re: The technology pushed into schools today is a threat to child development

#264

Post by tasogare »

pier25 wrote: post #110

It totally is. I worked in EdTech for the past 4 years and was in contact with the education world. Digital devices are harmful to younger kids. The brain develops much better when using fine motor skills such as writing with pen and paper. France banned all digital devices in primary schools for a reason and all countries should do it. The most important factor in getting quality education are not digital devices or…

I work in EdTech in public research and the amount of crap published, the pervasive wishful thinking and the tendencies to focus only on the micro-actions that can be easily measured is unbelievable. I wonder how many are secretly as cynical as I am but keep going because of job security.

Re: The technology pushed into schools today is a threat to child development

#265

Post by animal531 »

bluGill wrote: post #191
mrr54 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are teams not based on age in the United States? In New Zealand they're all categorised as 'under 9s', 'under 8s', 'under 7s' etc. They've also introduced weight classes to a lot of teen sports too to prevent them from being dominated by gigantic Samoan kids.

School teams are classed by grade level. Non-school teams are by age. Non-school teams are generally seen as a fun thing to do on weekends, while school teams can become very serious. Hold your kid back early and they will be the star of the team 12 years latter. Some of this is because at some critical points their body is physically better than their peers and thus they get to play a little more and get that much m…

Yeah, it's a common thing for all sportsmen and women. https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/why-many-olym...

The positive feedback loop they're in pushes them more and more towards the things they're better at than their peers.

Re: The technology pushed into schools today is a threat to child development

#266

Post by blhack »

toasterlovin wrote: post #153
blhack wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do this. I have a really difficult time turning my mind off in silence. If it’s dark and quiet, my mind is working. Listening to old TV shows like TNG helps distract me enough to fall asleep.

Just gonna throw this out there (as a longtime insomniac): perhaps that’s your brains way of telling you that it needs to mull over whatever’s going on in your life. I’ve found that my insomnia is worst when I have so much going on that I’m not getting enough quiet time to process it all.

Hmm, I'm talking more about projects I'm working on, or things I want to work on the next day. I'm at a point in my life where I look at this as a good thing, not something that needs correcting.

Re: The technology pushed into schools today is a threat to child development

#267

Post by sethammons »

gvjddbnvdrbv wrote: post #218
jacobolus wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think students will better learn to spell without spellcheck? As far as I can tell spending class time on spelling per se and/or grading students on spelling mistakes is a complete waste of time and focus. The ideal way to teach spelling is (1) get kids to read a whole lot, (2) show students their mistakes in context when they make them on as short a feedback loop as possible, without judgment. It’s plausi…

> The ideal way to teach spelling is (1) get kids to read a whole lot, (2) show students their mistakes in context when they make them on as short a feedback loop as possible, without judgment. Speaking as a dyslexic person this is garbage. Learning to spell required weekly word lists, spelling tests and hours of study. The memory skills this built have seriously helped me in my life.

That short feedback loop is the only thing that worked for me. Spelling/vocab lists all through school. I Could slog through that and get an A, but forget spelling next week. Typing in chat or essays would give the red squiggly line. Instead of right-clicking and getting the spelling, I would backspace and try again. That is how my spelling improved.

Re: The technology pushed into schools today is a threat to child development

#268

Post by BlueTemplar »

thayne wrote: post #221
gvjddbnvdrbv wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The ideal way to teach spelling is (1) get kids to read a whole lot, (2) show students their mistakes in context when they make them on as short a feedback loop as possible, without judgment. Speaking as a dyslexic person this is garbage. Learning to spell required weekly word lists, spelling tests and hours of study. The memory skills this built have seriously helped me in my life.

This hints at the biggest problem with our education system. Different children learn in different ways. Word lists and spelling tests may have been effective for you, but they weren't for me (reading hundreds of books otoh did improve my spelling). Unfortunately, I don't really have a practical solution.

It's kind of obvious: teach different children differently? Classes with large numbers of children should probably be rare.

Re: The technology pushed into schools today is a threat to child development

#269

Post by sethammons »

daxfohl wrote: post #148
SolarNet wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First of all, could someone enlighten the non-US readers about what common core is? A new set of standards for education that are meant to cut across state lines (e.g. California and Texas previously set education standards merely through market volume and being the biggest purchasers). It's mostly fine. A lot of people are upset that they "changed how math works" but what they really did was introduce a bunch of d…

My eldest is in first grade and so far I'm not a fan of the Common Core math. I could make a cynical conspiracy argument that much of it is designed around promotion of the type of technology presented in the article. "Carry the one" is the simplest thing to explain with a pencil and a blank piece of paper. All the additional Common Core techniques seem to require some kind of visual representation, either via the ga…

What if the "one way" doesn't work for some students where an alternative way does? What if the "one way" is interpreted as the only way? A large complaint about math from students (pre common core) is that there is too much memorization. "Is x^1 or x^0 1, or was it 0?" When math is a bunch of memorizations, students can't apply it outside of canned prompts. The goal is to build mathematical literacy and understanding in a way that is accessible to more students than the "one way." Time will tell if common core gets us in the right direction.

Re: The technology pushed into schools today is a threat to child development

#270

Post by BlueTemplar »

filoleg wrote: post #118
jacobolus wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don’t learn the “rules of English” through explicit instruction. They learn them through years (decades) of exposure. Anecdotally, the main predictor of how good someone’s spelling will be is how much reading they have done.

>Anecdotally, the main predictor of how good someone’s spelling will be is how much reading they have done. Agreed, but it doesn't just have to be books. My personal example: in my native language, I read tons of books as a child, which was what gave me a strong edge when it comes to spelling/grammar. I got into learning english in my late teens, and, by that time, I wasn't as much into reading long-form books as I w…

Yeah, and I prefer the (good, "adult") Russian translation of the Lord of the Rings to the original too! :P
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