My son who will be in first grade next year (currently he’s in K) received form the dept of education a chromebook. Im kind of horrified to be honest.
Final Decision on Chromebook Case in Denmark
81–90 of 173 posts
Re: Final Decision on Chromebook Case in Denmark
#82Schools+laptops is absolutely crazy. The amount of incompetence is beyond reason. My daughter(12)'s keyboard got broken, now she is afraid she wont be able to take her exam with an external keyboard because there is a spyware extension they use called 'safe exam browser' that might block her computer when she plugs the keyboard. Most of the kids are just using it to snapchat during class. I will honestly prefer to ju…
The amount of damage and breakages to these laptops has to be insane. Teenagers yeet their bags, mess with each other's tech, etc. As a school you can't make the parents responsible for damages, because a lot simply cannot afford replacements or repairs. While IT skills are important and should be taught at schools, please do it in the traditional fashion; have a computer lab, make everything abuse resistant, and get…
There is no “traditional fashion”, there’s what you, specifically, are more accustomed to.
Re: Final Decision on Chromebook Case in Denmark
#83Schools+laptops is absolutely crazy. The amount of incompetence is beyond reason. My daughter(12)'s keyboard got broken, now she is afraid she wont be able to take her exam with an external keyboard because there is a spyware extension they use called 'safe exam browser' that might block her computer when she plugs the keyboard. Most of the kids are just using it to snapchat during class. I will honestly prefer to ju…
The amount of damage and breakages to these laptops has to be insane. Teenagers yeet their bags, mess with each other's tech, etc. As a school you can't make the parents responsible for damages, because a lot simply cannot afford replacements or repairs. While IT skills are important and should be taught at schools, please do it in the traditional fashion; have a computer lab, make everything abuse resistant, and get…
> because a lot simply cannot afford replacements or repairs.
My kid’s elementary school policy for iPad damage was $100 for the first damage, $250 for the second, $500 for the third.
This was problematic for a few reasons: 1) they didn’t have anyone to debug devices in a school of 1000 kids, so any problem was damage and parents were fined; 2) the iPad was several years old and costs $300 to just buy; 3) if the iPad was stolen then the full $500 was due; 4) they wouldn’t provide cases and asked the parents to purchase only specific cases and any other cases were removed. Their approved cases weren’t very good; 5) location tracking was turned on even outside of schools.
When I tried to talk with the administration they said something like “this is as good as we can do.” They said that it was mandatory for kids to use these devices. I bought my kid their own iPad refurbed for 289 or something with AppleCare for $7/month and used that for 3 years of elementary school. Arguing with the admin every year when they tried to say this wasn’t allowed.
Re: Final Decision on Chromebook Case in Denmark
#84Schools+laptops is absolutely crazy. The amount of incompetence is beyond reason. My daughter(12)'s keyboard got broken, now she is afraid she wont be able to take her exam with an external keyboard because there is a spyware extension they use called 'safe exam browser' that might block her computer when she plugs the keyboard. Most of the kids are just using it to snapchat during class. I will honestly prefer to ju…
"I will honestly prefer to just ban all tech from schools." But can one really hope, to prepare students for life then?
Only when the lesson for life is "how to get stuff done when you've got unlimited access to far more interesting things that nobody will reward you for".
For actually learning things? It's like pet food packaging.
What do I mean by that? The pets don't buy the food, their owners do; the result is the packaging is designed to appeal to the owners. Does a cat care about the bright colours their retinas can't see, the metaphors they don't have the language comprehension to process? Or do they seem like picky eaters because they're put off food when it has subtle odours that their owners can't perceive? Likewise, are dogs meat-obsessed like pop culture tells us, or are they omnivores that will joyfully wolf down just about anything and wait for their digestive tract to figure out afterwards if it needs to be rapidly expelled?
Parents and schools buy stuff to teach with, it's sold to the adults because the kids have neither the budget nor the judgement to decide what they ought to learn. But how good are those things at teaching? We only find out much later, at first when the kids take exams and we see how well they learned, and later when we look at the same people in the workforce and find out if that exam itself is representative of the skills we care about.
Learning as an adult, I get to see if online courses teach me; I've gone from being a heavy user of Duolingo, even paying for a subscription, to giving up on it entirely as it morphed from lessons into an annoying kids cartoon.
I'm worried that I'm seeing similar from Brilliant.org, too. The older courses on e.g. using Q# to program quantum computers is still good — hard, yes, but good, it's actually pushing me to learn more, and in this it reminds me of when I started learning programming on a Commodore 64 from the user manual when I was aged about 5 or 6 — but the newer course updates over the last year or so have focussed on unskippable "cute" cartoons and the absolute beginner level content that parents and teachers will pay for, not filling in the gaps with the hard stuff that brings in the most educational value.
Re: Final Decision on Chromebook Case in Denmark
#85Schools+laptops is absolutely crazy. The amount of incompetence is beyond reason. My daughter(12)'s keyboard got broken, now she is afraid she wont be able to take her exam with an external keyboard because there is a spyware extension they use called 'safe exam browser' that might block her computer when she plugs the keyboard. Most of the kids are just using it to snapchat during class. I will honestly prefer to ju…
As someone who went to a high school (Italy) where in the first two years each student had a laptop they could use in the classroom, I agree that having a computer per student is a bad idea. In my experience, what ended up happening was that pupils who already knew their way around a computer didn't really get any extra benefit from using cmputers in the classroom and those who didn't like using computers hated it ev…
I think a lot of it started because of one of the better intended projects — the One Laptop Per Child movement that tried to give laptops to kids in poor countries. A key premise was that a laptop could be cheaper than all of the textbooks normally required, so the whole thing was really saving money.
But envy is one of the most powerful forces in politics, even when it doesn't make sense. So the idea that children in Namibia were getting laptops, while kids in Virginia weren't — even though it was a money-saving trick — that was just unacceptable. And unlike in the OLPC, schools bought laptops from a variety of vendors, mostly interested in upselling lots of unnecessary features rather than providing a lightweight textbook device. Anyone familiar with the history of the TI-83 understands that corporations selling technology to schools are the lowest form of life.
I can't say for sure that this is what caused it, but it was right around the time that laptops started showing up in schools, and also when the concept of the "netbook" was introduced. The early netbooks certainly seemed to be imitating that weird green blob-shaped thing that OLPC hoped would revolutionize education in the less developed world.
Re: Final Decision on Chromebook Case in Denmark
#86Public sector IT in Denmark has been in a weird tug of war between those eager to sell out our data to American companies and those who naively think Ubuntu and LibreOffice can realistically replace the public sector's dependency on Microsoft. We need to keep our data in Denmark and become less dependent on American companies (and especially Microsoft/Google). But the change needs to be led by IT professionals who ca…
> But the change needs to be led by IT professionals who care about
usability and know better than forcing Linux and LibreOffice down
the throat of elderly office workers.
I say there's a fair bit wrong in that sentence that needs unpacking:
Sadly, most schools do not have "IT professionals". They get the person who knew a bit about computers and rose into the role - often by attending a few week-long Microsoft training sessions pushed at the school.
We need to get more real IT professionals in to schools, those who have professional chartered status and observe codes of ethical practice such as those the BCS advocate.
Secondly, IT professionals do not necessarily care or know anything about usability. That suitability is for the teacher to discern. Administrators care about budgets and ease of administration. It's their convenience and usability that comes first. Usability is context dependent. Which leads us to....
There is nothing wrong with the usability of LibreOffice or Linux. They are both excellent products and in my subjective experience far superior to those from Microsoft or Google.
We are talking about kids who have minimal needs and are working on school projects, like a 1000 word essay, not important business deals, safety critical systems or urgent reports with pristine scientific typesetting that need to be published yesterday in Nature.
Re: Final Decision on Chromebook Case in Denmark
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
“Most importantly though, they were a HUGE distraction”
Yes. A huge distraction. Notice the adjective, indicating magnitude. Where did they say laptops introduced the concept of distraction to school?
Have you ever heard of the term sarcasm? Maybe it was left out of the books you read in school.
Re: Final Decision on Chromebook Case in Denmark
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Think of tech like chemistry class. We don't let kids carry around chemicals all day to use however they want. Instead, we have them do experiments in a special lab under close watch. Computers should be treated the same way. They shouldn't be something students can use anytime, anywhere without guidance. Just like we handle dangerous chemicals with care, we should also be careful with technology. It's powerful, and…
Chemistry is something that can explode and poison you. And a normal person cannot buy dangerous chemicals (that easily). Computers are normal in everyday life and allmost every job. Whether it is research, or writing or programming - artificially seperating students from such a integral part of modern life seems not that practical. At least not, if the goal is to raise the general level of computer savviness - which…
> Chemistry is something that can explode and poison you. And a normal person cannot buy dangerous chemicals (that easily).
???
I know of at least two distinct ways to make a toxic chemical using only things found in an entirely normal kitchen[0], and that's just using the things I was taught at school.
Both methods also produce an explosive gas as a side product.
[0] And that's not just a joke at the expense of British cuisine
Re: Final Decision on Chromebook Case in Denmark
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
As far as I know Sweden is rolling back[1]large parts of the digitalization at schools. Not just because of cloud usage, maintenance and incompetence. The digital devices harm learning. Sweden will spend 60 million for reintroducing actual books, focus on actual reading and writing (important for learning and motoric ability). I’m not surprised. While I’m sceptic about many positions of Manfred Spitzer [2] (Universit…
Actual reading is super important; the letteredness of people has been in decline for decades, and while it's partially to blame on the shift in entertainment preferences, schools de-emphasising reading and understanding in favor of other skills has been a big factor as well. Your remark about the suppliers wanting to get the kids "hooked" on their products isn't new btw, this was happening 20+ years ago already with…
Letteredness = literacy, right?
Re: Final Decision on Chromebook Case in Denmark
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
As someone who went to a high school (Italy) where in the first two years each student had a laptop they could use in the classroom, I agree that having a computer per student is a bad idea. In my experience, what ended up happening was that pupils who already knew their way around a computer didn't really get any extra benefit from using cmputers in the classroom and those who didn't like using computers hated it ev…
Would the issue be resolved by a resiliant way to lock all devices into a particular mode? i.e. "Word processing only" "specific website(s) only" etc I'm aware that actually implementing this in a fool-proof way is non-trivial - but would it in theory solve the issue and allow the benefits of tech? I can't imagine taking notes by hand any more.
Fine if they control the devices, but it better be well working, otherwise it will be a huge distraction and potentially be taking time from the teacherstudent interactions.