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I hope I don't sound like a Luddite, but I don't think kids should have chrome books, or any type of laptops in school...
I used a laptop full time in school from 16-18 (and then at university too) and found it much more productive. My notes were better and more usable.
For younger children I think everyone agrees that it's important to be teaching computer skills, and that requires computers. Having rooms of desktop computers is arguably outdated, and a poor use of space, so many schools have switched to trolleys of shared laptops.
Additionally there's a problem with computer access for homework. Many households don't have a computer suitable for homework, so by giving every child a laptop, schools can (theoretically) rely on everyone having a basic level of equipment available.
Is this perfect? No, it takes some effort to do, but given modern remote management tools I'd expect not a lot more than traditional IT provisioning at schools. Should kids get one from day 1 in kindergarten? Probably not, but during primary school could be reasonable.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
paper, perhaps?
To what end? In a professional environment, the last time I wrote on paper is when my computer was in for maintenance. That's like having students use hand-slates in the era of paper.
I hope I don't sound like a Luddite, but I don't think kids should have chrome books, or any type of laptops in school...
It's easy enough to give some classes chromebooks, while others don't have chromebooks, and see who gets higher test scores.
Then keep track of those people, and see who does better at university, and who ends up earning more, having a bigger house, or living longer - just to confirm that those people really end up doing better, rather than just doing well on the test.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why? As a student, giving me access to a laptop improved my ability to get things done by orders of magnitude. I always struggled with messy writing, and being distracted easily. Having a laptop let me pay better attention, because I could work on something and passively listen to the class. My notes were also legible, meaning I could take meaningful notes for the first time ever. I could also combine photos of the c…
> I could work on something and passively listen to the class (This is a genuine question) What were the benefits of being in class if you're basically doing something else and not actively listening? Compared with, say, sitting in the library (or indeed at home), working on the same thing, without the potential distraction of what the rest of your class was doing?
It's just a different learning style. I'm actively listening, but in a more passive way than normal, if that makes any sense.
> Compared with, say, sitting in the library (or indeed at home), working on the same thing, without the potential distraction of what the rest of your class was doing?
In University I'd often skip class specifically to do this. Worked far better for me than sitting in a lecture hall. Let me work at my own pace, take breaks, walk around, ect. Classes with mandatory attendance were the bane of my existence. Intentionally designing courses to require attendance by not providing complete notes, or incomplete textbooks, also caused me issues.
I hope I don't sound like a Luddite, but I don't think kids should have chrome books, or any type of laptops in school...
Why? I used a laptop full time in school from 16-18 (and then at university too) and found it much more productive. My notes were better and more usable. For younger children I think everyone agrees that it's important to be teaching computer skills, and that requires computers. Having rooms of desktop computers is arguably outdated, and a poor use of space, so many schools have switched to trolleys of shared laptops…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
paper, perhaps?
To what end? In a professional environment, the last time I wrote on paper is when my computer was in for maintenance. That's like having students use hand-slates in the era of paper.
I hope I don't sound like a Luddite, but I don't think kids should have chrome books, or any type of laptops in school...
Not only that. We are promoting to our kids a fully proprietary system that increasingly becomes a walled garden, run by an aggressive imperialist company with abysmal technical support, with a complete failure in parental control practices. It is, at least with our school, completely impossible to implement parental controls on enrolled Chromebooks, so you have to trust the school's policy which is, in many cases, inadequate. The school's solution - well, take the Chromebook away at home. Good luck with that.
Chromebook pushes the agenda of Google cloud and Google apps on the user. Millions of people are grown into this world assuming the only option for them to perform functions or access their own data is to be online and use the cloud. This is as close to a digital dystopia as I can imagine.
I don't like what Google has become and I would never buy a Google Chromebook. Forcing this in schools so early (11-years old here in the UK) is a crime we're all committing. We all are going to pay for it.
I hope I don't sound like a Luddite, but I don't think kids should have chrome books, or any type of laptops in school...
Our eldest has had a school-issue iPad, along with the rest of his class, for a couple of years now.
As a parent I'd suggest that, despite being basically issued "for free", they're a very mixed blessing, since they were given out I can count on one hand the number of pieces of work his class have done on the iPad where the device was of benefit.
The number of times my son has reported one of his classmates getting into trouble due to messing about on iPad in class easily numbers in the hundreds...
If the school decided to take all the iPads away tomorrow I wouldn't be bothered in the slightest.