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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

#111

Post by snowwrestler »

pc86 wrote: post #7
jacquesm wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But calculators actually did negatively impact basic arithmetic skills. The number of people that can't do 9x14 without reaching for a calculator is scary.

To this point is there an easier way to do this than mentally do (9x10)+(9x4), which is what I've done since I was in elementary school (29 now)?

This is how arithmetic is starting to be taught in elementary schools now, which unfortunately has resulted in those big Facebook blow ups about how "common core" math homework doesn't make sense anymore.

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

#112

Post by pc86 »

coldpie wrote: post #109
lintiness wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

your posted numbers were garbage; mine weren't: ( http://www.ccsd59.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Administrat... ). chicago isn't an outlier; it's a big city with a higher cost of living. real costs are hidden behind 'salaries', a term managed by the public unions to understate real comp. 8 months a year / health / sick / retirement age (55 typical) / pension. emotional appeals like your's are what have allowed the…

Cool rape metaphor, bro! Goodbye.

I don't think that's what a metaphor is.

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

#113

Post by FussyZeus »

relkor wrote: post #108
FussyZeus wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does everything need to be skill building and development oriented? I think a lot of the issues we've got right now with our youth are squarely on the fact that we're engineering their little lives from the delivery room to the end of high school. More importantly I don't believe that in person interaction is so critical. For many introverts like myself, forced F2F interaction in school was torture and did nothing bu…

> Does everything need to be skill building and development oriented? In short yes. There is a finite amout of time before you die, and that time is measured in years, not millenia . We spend ~12 years in school playing "general education" where basically we are conditioned to set times for work and hierchael authority. That is 15% of your entire expected lifespan, aka not time to spent lightly. Look at how quickly y…

I'm not saying out education system is perfect AT ALL, never would I say such a thing, I'm merely pointing out that the kids not chattering at each other about stupid bullshit and instead doing stupid bullshit on an iPad isn't the problem by a long way, and reversing the inclusion of said iPads will not fix anything either.

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

#114

Post by wagglycocks »

jerf wrote: post #37
mhurron wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Change also doesn't just happen because you dumped a computer in a room. I personally haven't seen a computer used effectively in a classroom, in a large part because the teachers don't know how to integrate them into their lessons. They were given devices and then given no instruction on how to use them.

Education is just barely starting to come out of what I call the "... but on a computer!" [1] era, which is when you try to do exactly the same thing you did before, but now it's on a computer (or a tablet in this case). There's basically no advantage to taking existing classroom practices, but sticking them on a computer. You'll have to rewrite the entire education process to figure out how to harness computers. Let…

What you're describing as the "but on a computer" era is also known in education as the first stage of the SAMR model: Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition.

This is a well known pitfall in technology integration. I don't think a lot of people in this thread are giving due credit to educators - it's their job, and there's a lot of smart people in education who have just as much common sense as the armchair teachers who think otherwise.

http://www.emergingedtech.com/2015/04/examples-of-transformi...

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

#115

Post by jerf »

wagglycocks wrote: post #114
jerf wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Education is just barely starting to come out of what I call the "... but on a computer!" [1] era, which is when you try to do exactly the same thing you did before, but now it's on a computer (or a tablet in this case). There's basically no advantage to taking existing classroom practices, but sticking them on a computer. You'll have to rewrite the entire education process to figure out how to harness computers. Let…

What you're describing as the "but on a computer" era is also known in education as the first stage of the SAMR model: Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition. This is a well known pitfall in technology integration. I don't think a lot of people in this thread are giving due credit to educators - it's their job, and there's a lot of smart people in education who have just as much common sense as th…

Educators have their hands tied. We've centralized everything, and the central bureaucracy has decided it doesn't matter how innovative educators can be because the central bureaucracy already knows everything about the best way to teach, and if you deviate from it, you're fired. (A couple of intermediate steps through failing test scores and the consequences, but that's the effect.)

Until the educators get the central bureaucracy off their backs, it doesn't matter what they are capable of.

If you'd like to read my point as being that the central bureaucracy is "the most entrenched, hidebound, nearsighted, and even perhaps terrified of real change" part of the system, I'm perfectly comfortable with that.

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

#116

Post by megaman22 »

jerf wrote: post #37
mhurron wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Change also doesn't just happen because you dumped a computer in a room. I personally haven't seen a computer used effectively in a classroom, in a large part because the teachers don't know how to integrate them into their lessons. They were given devices and then given no instruction on how to use them.

Education is just barely starting to come out of what I call the "... but on a computer!" [1] era, which is when you try to do exactly the same thing you did before, but now it's on a computer (or a tablet in this case). There's basically no advantage to taking existing classroom practices, but sticking them on a computer. You'll have to rewrite the entire education process to figure out how to harness computers. Let…

This is the number one reason I love static analysis tools like ReSharper for coding. I write a piece of dodgy code, and it tells me "Hey, this could result in trying to access a null pointer", or, "Hey, dummy, this conditional is logically inconsistent and the block below can never get executed" or "Hey, you can rewrite this great big loop with a simpler LINQ statement." Then after a few times of doing this, I internalize the rules, and start doing it on my own.

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

#117

Post by alistairSH »

jacquesm wrote: post #38
alistairSH wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two counter-points... 1. Computers in classrooms have rarely, if ever, been deployed to entire classrooms in the way that tablets can be. Typically, you'll see one or two PCs in a class, plus a computer lab. PCs don't distract in the same way iPads can. 2. Calculators do make people worse at math. I saw this first-hand with my son. As he went through school, they used calculators for everything. Students began to rel…

But you as a parent could easily fix that. Schools don't have a monopoly on education.

Of course, and we did. But, I continue to believe that allowing calculators on ALL mathematics work from a young age does the student a disservice. Calculators certainly have their place, but elementary school arithmetic is not that place.

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

#118

Post by osxrand »

VLM wrote: post #74
bonesinger wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, my girlfriend's school implements iPad use and she has none of these problems. They have a single IT person in the school who setup all the iPads. My gf setup guided access on her 30 ipads to lock them down and the kids only use them for 1 or 2 lessons max. The majority of her teaching is down without iPad use. A lot of the author's issues seem to be a lack of awareness on technology, how to use iPads, and ev…

"They have a single IT person in the school who setup all the iPads" This leads to an important side issue that people outside the .edu system don't understand, that you release a product for kids that is web based, my daughter's teacher can roll it out to the kids in about 10 minutes using a laser printer to make a QR code of the URL for the kids to scan and then do math drills or whatever, literally during a single…

That would depend on your instatution, all of the private schools I work with let the teachers find new apps and we can push them to the iPads pretty easily. Budget has been provided with a little extra so we can buy apps during the year if needed, and we do.

Win a decent MDM, the apps work and work well.

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

#119

Post by jacquesm »

alistairSH wrote: post #117
jacquesm wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you as a parent could easily fix that. Schools don't have a monopoly on education.

Of course, and we did. But, I continue to believe that allowing calculators on ALL mathematics work from a young age does the student a disservice. Calculators certainly have their place, but elementary school arithmetic is not that place.

Agreed. So I taught my eldest arithmetic at home and discouraged the schools from giving him more calculators until the sums involved more than two digits and other operators than the basic four. After the third calculator they got the message. Interesting aside: the teacher couldn't do anything beyond single digit arithmetic without reference to a calculator either. Pretty sad affair, and I really wonder how someone who does not understand the basics gets to be a teacher.

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

#120

Post by CodeWriter23 »

megaman22 wrote: post #78
CodeWriter23 wrote: post #22

We don't have any of those problems at my daughter's school. First, all the iPads are locked down using some management software, so the kids are locked out of the clock, etc. that can cause unintentional distractions. Second, they limit use to about 30 minutes per day, so traditional lessons are taught using traditional techniques. Third, our school emphasizes social interaction with project-based learning, with the…

I would have flunked out of such a school, instead of being my class valedictorian. Group projects and emphasizing socialization is a crutch that incompetent teachers use to force their intelligent students to do their job for them.

My anecdotal doesn't follow your statement. My daughter is one of the intelligent students, and is severely challenged socially. She hasn't figured out the difference between "leader" and "dictator" yet. As a lone wolf myself, I can see how this helps prepare children for careers where they do more than just max out the number of hours they can bill.
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