If my district said today "hey, we think this whole edtech thing was a bad idea, plus we're dealing with a budget shortfall, so we're going to get rid of our Chromebooks" I don't think it would have a negative effect on learning. Practically speaking, edtech saves me some time. Less time juggling paper, makes a few things easier. It's good for short chunks of time with focused goals. I might have a post coming next week on this topic.
But there's this huge gravity toward more ed tech in schools. State tests are now mostly online. SATs went online. So you need to have Chromebooks or something to support those. And if we're going to buy all those Chromebooks we should be using them, right??
Last piece is a bit ugly. Ed tech in small doses, I'm in favor. I wouldn't mind if the school said no, it's a lot of money. But it's really tempting for teachers to use ed tech as a pacifier. Maybe kids are playing subway surfers, or cutting and pasting everything in their slide deck from the internet, but at least they're quiet. Here's a question. You randomly select 100 classrooms today across the country. Let's say 6th grade and up. You walk in at a random time. In how many classrooms do you find every student on a Chromebook/other device, teacher sitting at their desk on their computer, students are supposed to be working independently. Then, from those classrooms, what fraction of students are actually working?
Now same experiment, but 15 years ago. It might be the biggest qualitative difference in schools today. You teleport someone from 15 years ago into today's schools, they walk down the halls, the number of kids staring at Chromebooks might be the first thing they notice.
I'm with you on phones – it’s almost obvious now (credit to Haidt and others) how destructive they are to kids (and us – maybe more us?) It’s also hard to imagine any upside using them in schools.
Entirely ed-tech free schools seem like a good experiment, but a strong overcorrection? To your point, we often conflate the products AND the bad behaviors that come with them; removing edtech doesn’t increase learning, just decreases the chance of distraction, and there remains all the work of good teaching, schooling, parenting, telling your sister to read George Elliot but she thinks it’s irrelevant and also she’s an ‘adult’ now why are you even talking to me…
Ed tech you can at least imagine upside (but I concede, rarely see). I was talking with a school network that blew up successful old school rote learning/drilling philosophy to teach deeper cognitive skills (oversimplified summary) – I believe they both sound good saying it and are doing it more productively than many in the past (like me). They didn’t mention edtech once, but they use edtech.
I don’t buy kids need to be “exposed” to tech for the modern world (they’ll figure it out) – I do think they will be at a disadvantage for not having many successful reps using tech tools, yes chatgpt, on their learning journey.
On your two points:
I have ten thousand sheets of reading logs somewhere in my parents’ basement to remind us kids can escape non-screen homework too – but I agree, it’s easier to monitor, and I bet parents would like hearing “your kid will never need their phone/computer when they’re doing this (thoughtfully crafted) homework assignment.”
I wonder if the high-demand school is actually tech honest, saying: every other school has failed to prepare your kid for this crazy new world – we’ll work with you so we don’t.
Oh, totally would take 7pm-1m screen free -- huge advantage if you could achieve that, even if hw didn't happen at all. I agree with you that using tech for hw (and as extension, unsupervised schoolwork/learn it yourself classes) will multiply distraction for most students, with greatest loss for the well-intentioned student who could have avoided it. My point was more, I'm wary of a total edtech free school, vs using it thoughtfully, and also which of those resonates with parents.
First of all, welcome back to blogging. Excited to have you here, even if you're doing 15 days of Shipmas around...Jonathan Haidt.
I'm actually headed to Sweden next month and meeting with various players in their education system, this is super helpful context for me to try to dig into. Though, I am so wary of relying upon political figures to accurately relay how things are playing out on the ground. Stay tuned.
Your musing about ed-tech free schools seems like just one piece of a much larger puzzle around the role of technology in society. We are now bearing witness to what happens when you let massive power accumulate in the hands of literally one person and he then decides the American government should be gutted like Twitter.
Dylan's thought experiment is haunting. I will never forget my visit several years ago to Summit Public Schools, then considered the nation's leading exemplar of tech-enables personalized learning. It was a complete debacle, classroom after classroom of kids doing nothing at all while the teacher sat behind the desk, also doing nothing. At that point I had already established my anti-personalized learning position, yet I had steeled myself for Summit being the exception that proved the rule, insofar as it had Chan Zuckerberg Initiative mainlining it all the cash it could handle. But it was just embarassing, a complete disaster of the sort that if some independent observer came across in a "traditional public school" they'd light the world on fire.
Gauging parent demand for an edtech free school would be a relatively low lift / easy to do at this point and I bet ($1) it would tell you there's likely MUCH more demand for it than we think
I would bet you wouldn't need to make it a boarding school to get enough geographic density.
PLUS, a parent that would like an "edtech free school" would seem much more likely to me to do some sort of homeschool-ish route versus send their child to a boarding school. Different parent taste/disposition/preferences I would think ...
but what do I know - both of our kids are still in diapers.
1. I think if you want homeschool/microschool parents, the economics are tough, because they anchor so low in expenditures, even so far with Education Savings Accounts.
2. Parents that would otherwise choose suburban public or traditional private - but who see real damage from screens - not enough of them methinks in most metro areas. Would be interesting to test.
a. For high school, if you told teen you should go to the "screen free school," they'd freak out - it would suggest a weird SOCIAL milieu. Most parents wouldn't want that steep an uphill battle. Obviously the pitch wouldn't anchor in that - it would be all the good things, and why screen free enables the good things.
b. For elementary school, kids wouldn't know to object - wow extra recess LETS GO - but at that point parents are less worried about screens, they haven't seen the carnage.
1. "Then, from those classrooms, what fraction of students are actually working?" What would you guess for your own school in Colorado?
2. To what extent, if at all, do you buy my argument that assignments being overwhelmingly online makes it 5x harder for parent to productively patrol the 5pm to midnight behavior and curtail bad smartphone use?
If my district said today "hey, we think this whole edtech thing was a bad idea, plus we're dealing with a budget shortfall, so we're going to get rid of our Chromebooks" I don't think it would have a negative effect on learning. Practically speaking, edtech saves me some time. Less time juggling paper, makes a few things easier. It's good for short chunks of time with focused goals. I might have a post coming next week on this topic.
But there's this huge gravity toward more ed tech in schools. State tests are now mostly online. SATs went online. So you need to have Chromebooks or something to support those. And if we're going to buy all those Chromebooks we should be using them, right??
Last piece is a bit ugly. Ed tech in small doses, I'm in favor. I wouldn't mind if the school said no, it's a lot of money. But it's really tempting for teachers to use ed tech as a pacifier. Maybe kids are playing subway surfers, or cutting and pasting everything in their slide deck from the internet, but at least they're quiet. Here's a question. You randomly select 100 classrooms today across the country. Let's say 6th grade and up. You walk in at a random time. In how many classrooms do you find every student on a Chromebook/other device, teacher sitting at their desk on their computer, students are supposed to be working independently. Then, from those classrooms, what fraction of students are actually working?
Now same experiment, but 15 years ago. It might be the biggest qualitative difference in schools today. You teleport someone from 15 years ago into today's schools, they walk down the halls, the number of kids staring at Chromebooks might be the first thing they notice.
I'm with you on phones – it’s almost obvious now (credit to Haidt and others) how destructive they are to kids (and us – maybe more us?) It’s also hard to imagine any upside using them in schools.
Entirely ed-tech free schools seem like a good experiment, but a strong overcorrection? To your point, we often conflate the products AND the bad behaviors that come with them; removing edtech doesn’t increase learning, just decreases the chance of distraction, and there remains all the work of good teaching, schooling, parenting, telling your sister to read George Elliot but she thinks it’s irrelevant and also she’s an ‘adult’ now why are you even talking to me…
Ed tech you can at least imagine upside (but I concede, rarely see). I was talking with a school network that blew up successful old school rote learning/drilling philosophy to teach deeper cognitive skills (oversimplified summary) – I believe they both sound good saying it and are doing it more productively than many in the past (like me). They didn’t mention edtech once, but they use edtech.
I don’t buy kids need to be “exposed” to tech for the modern world (they’ll figure it out) – I do think they will be at a disadvantage for not having many successful reps using tech tools, yes chatgpt, on their learning journey.
On your two points:
I have ten thousand sheets of reading logs somewhere in my parents’ basement to remind us kids can escape non-screen homework too – but I agree, it’s easier to monitor, and I bet parents would like hearing “your kid will never need their phone/computer when they’re doing this (thoughtfully crafted) homework assignment.”
I wonder if the high-demand school is actually tech honest, saying: every other school has failed to prepare your kid for this crazy new world – we’ll work with you so we don’t.
Aungar, thank you, and:
1. You write of "Tech Honest"...
This is what Arvind's proposed new school in North Carolina will do.
"Every other school has failed to prepare your kid for this crazy new world – we’ll work with you so we don’t."
2. "At a disadvantage for not having many successful reps using tech tools, yes chatgpt, on their learning journey"
I'd ask: would you expect a "net" (total) disadvantage for the 50th percentile executive function boy, heading off to college?
Gain: His new 7pm to 1am is no longer mostly online. It's not super productive at schoolwork! Maybe 90 minutes gets done. But in there:
- Perhaps some in person hoops or just hanging out with fellas at Mr. Food ("Mom I'm going out!")
- Perhaps part-time job as busboy
- Perhaps some sci fi pleasure reading
- Maybe one more sport season or lifting
- All of this instead of 90 true minutes of online homework but 4.5 hours of non-school screen consumption
- Maybe more actual schoolwork completed - just way easier for Certain Moms to get a bad report card and chase
Loss: Let's stipulate the loss of no good reps on GPT
What's the net tradeoff?
Oh, totally would take 7pm-1m screen free -- huge advantage if you could achieve that, even if hw didn't happen at all. I agree with you that using tech for hw (and as extension, unsupervised schoolwork/learn it yourself classes) will multiply distraction for most students, with greatest loss for the well-intentioned student who could have avoided it. My point was more, I'm wary of a total edtech free school, vs using it thoughtfully, and also which of those resonates with parents.
First of all, welcome back to blogging. Excited to have you here, even if you're doing 15 days of Shipmas around...Jonathan Haidt.
I'm actually headed to Sweden next month and meeting with various players in their education system, this is super helpful context for me to try to dig into. Though, I am so wary of relying upon political figures to accurately relay how things are playing out on the ground. Stay tuned.
Your musing about ed-tech free schools seems like just one piece of a much larger puzzle around the role of technology in society. We are now bearing witness to what happens when you let massive power accumulate in the hands of literally one person and he then decides the American government should be gutted like Twitter.
Dylan's thought experiment is haunting. I will never forget my visit several years ago to Summit Public Schools, then considered the nation's leading exemplar of tech-enables personalized learning. It was a complete debacle, classroom after classroom of kids doing nothing at all while the teacher sat behind the desk, also doing nothing. At that point I had already established my anti-personalized learning position, yet I had steeled myself for Summit being the exception that proved the rule, insofar as it had Chan Zuckerberg Initiative mainlining it all the cash it could handle. But it was just embarassing, a complete disaster of the sort that if some independent observer came across in a "traditional public school" they'd light the world on fire.
Wait what are you doing in Sweden? I thought you were going Down Under.
I wonder how those Summit kids did - if they thought it was better or worse than their previous schools....
Gauging parent demand for an edtech free school would be a relatively low lift / easy to do at this point and I bet ($1) it would tell you there's likely MUCH more demand for it than we think
I would bet you wouldn't need to make it a boarding school to get enough geographic density.
PLUS, a parent that would like an "edtech free school" would seem much more likely to me to do some sort of homeschool-ish route versus send their child to a boarding school. Different parent taste/disposition/preferences I would think ...
but what do I know - both of our kids are still in diapers.
Agree.
1. I think if you want homeschool/microschool parents, the economics are tough, because they anchor so low in expenditures, even so far with Education Savings Accounts.
2. Parents that would otherwise choose suburban public or traditional private - but who see real damage from screens - not enough of them methinks in most metro areas. Would be interesting to test.
a. For high school, if you told teen you should go to the "screen free school," they'd freak out - it would suggest a weird SOCIAL milieu. Most parents wouldn't want that steep an uphill battle. Obviously the pitch wouldn't anchor in that - it would be all the good things, and why screen free enables the good things.
b. For elementary school, kids wouldn't know to object - wow extra recess LETS GO - but at that point parents are less worried about screens, they haven't seen the carnage.
DK, thanks for the note.
1. "Then, from those classrooms, what fraction of students are actually working?" What would you guess for your own school in Colorado?
2. To what extent, if at all, do you buy my argument that assignments being overwhelmingly online makes it 5x harder for parent to productively patrol the 5pm to midnight behavior and curtail bad smartphone use?