TLDR: My friend Dylan, a wonderful math teacher in Colorado, will jettison classroom technology in January. Let’s predict what happens, shall we?
[Preface: Welcome new readers. Big picture goal of this blog? We (Mike, Sean, Jenny) examine Teen Flourishing and Languishing, 3pm to 3am.
But we each come from the 8am to 3pm tribe. Sean taught and ran schools. Jenny just published a great book about schools. So we can’t help but wade in on 8am to 3pm school matters from time to time.]
A. Dylan emailed me:
I’m going to do a tech-free trial in my class in January. Leave your Chromebooks in your backpacks, I don’t want to see them at all.
It won’t be too hard for me, everything I use tech for I already have good alternatives, but I want to give 100% zero tech a shot. I realized how much putting students on screens placates them. I don’t want Chromebooks to be part of my classroom management strategy. Even if it’s just 20% of class, that feels like a trap I don’t want to be in.
B. Mike writes:
Love your January Tech Free Classroom trial! I will incentivize you just for trying. We don’t have Big Cash here at CTF - but perhaps a CD of Amish Paradise by Weird Al?
And with your permission, blog about it. What will you change? What tech do you use in your math class?
C. Dylan responds:
Love it. Easy yes to you blogging this.
Though I will maybe decline the CD. Love Weird Al but I don’t have anything that can play a CD anymore.
1. Here’s an example of a Desmos lesson screen, that’s a once a week lesson for me. Normally I would have students do these on their own Chromebooks. An alternative is that I project the screens I want to use, and we make predictions, use mini whiteboards for responses, etc and do them as a full class without any student-facing tech.
2. DeltaMath practice and online quizzes. In Jan we’ll use pencil and paper instead.
3. I use a range of tools like Mathigon for online challenge assignments for students who finish early. Instead I will paper-based Play With Your Math problems and challenge questions at the end of paper assignments.
4. Examples of stuff I used a few years ago and have already stopped: for equations I would use the SolveMe puzzles, Polypad, Graspable Math, and many more Desmos activities than I use now.
Three years ago I was doing ~all practice on DeltaMath, so I’ve reduced that footprint. Compared to that point I can absolutely see a difference in Long Term Memory, and that's been one factor pushing me toward more paper-and-pencil practice in class. But this experiment is really rooting out the final tech stragglers.
Well if it’s an experiment, we need some outcome variables. I asked Dylan how he would you judge the result.
D. Dylan writes:
It’s tough.
There are a bunch of things I can measure, but I’m not convinced they will budge in a meaningful way.
Let’s just dispense with learning data. Hard to compare before/after here, it’s just a one month trial. Diff content so quiz scores up or down wouldn’t prove anything, to me or others.
Here are some outcomes I can pre-register:
1. I typically have 2 to 3 students each period who are doing anything but Deltamath on their Chromebooks. They’re distracted.
What precisely will these 10 or so total kids (across all my classes) do without Chromebooks?
a. Mostly find another way to tune me out - status quo.
or
b. Mostly try more than they did in December.
2. Providing extra help to those struggling-to-comprehend.
I typically (December) jot down names of kids who need extra support on a post-it and then try follow up when students are on tech. Students tend to be more self-sufficient with a screen in front of them than with paper-and-pencil, so the idea is it’s easier to do that one-on-one intervention during tech time. Of course the reality does not always work like that.
Without the tech….
a. Extra help goes better. I notice more kids (names on my post it), and actually circulate to help them, less time dealing with tech issues helps.
or
b. It goes worse.
3. Dylan view of Whole Class Vibes
a. Better
or
b. Worse
If possible I will do some sort of survey of the class as well. Could have too many confounding variables though. If I do a survey on day back from Xmas break, etc.
4. Adding up 1-3, will I want to continue this experiment in February or go back to my reasonable use of tech?
a. Go back to reasonable use
or
b. Continue this Tech Free Classroom experiment in February….
E. I think “vibes” is good for this experiment. One thing about K-12 people: they sometimes try to suck out academic signal when the data won’t allow it. Drives people like Dylan and me alike crazy. Sometimes vibes is the best you can do.
Hmm. Maybe there will be unintended consequences.
I tried to imagine what a Delta Math rep would ask Dylan:
1. Did manual grading take too much time or make it harder to know which kids are stuck?
2. No gamification or immediate feedback from Delta Math - doesn’t that hurt?
3. Was it harder for advanced students to work at their own pace?
4. Were you more fatigued as a teacher?
E. Dylan responded:
Sure! I’ll answer those questions as well at ~Feb 1.
F. Finally, I asked my friend Doug Lemov what he’d predict.
Doug writes:
Super fascinating experiment.
1. I’d predict that where the teacher models for the whole class using a screen (the Desmos example) - those moments are less disruptive than when students “touch” the tech themselves (the Delta Math example).
Generally speaking teacher-facing and teacher mediated-technology has more upside and less downside. Not saying I’m not in favor of full unplug…but I think this underscore a distinction that often gets blurred. Technology in the hands of a teacher is different from technology in the hands of students.
2. Our local district uses the “flipped classroom” (maybe Dylan can write about what a godforsakenly stupid idea that is).
Every time the calculus teacher would walk by, my daughter would noodle with the screen as if she were engaged - when in fact she was totally lost. But all the gadgets and things to click (versus sitting with a blank paper) made it easy for her to hide… to appear to be gamely doing something. She hid in class the tech facilitates that that, just like students use tech to “look busy” at home.
In many ways I think she fooled herself that she was “working on it”… but she was doing things without mastering the math and in the end she had to drop the class.
3. We are also the family that always asks for a hard copy of the text book. I.e., all the text books are electronic and I tell my kids… “Go ask the teacher for a hard copy. He/she has one somewhere.”
And lo and behold when they go in and say “My dad says I have to get a hard copy of the text book,” the teacher goes to the back corner of the room and blows the dust off of one and hands it to my kids…. At least that’s what happens in history and science…. In math they usually don’t have a hard copy if they have a text book at all….
Tune in ~Feb 1 for Dylan’s tech free classroom January experiment results.
Reminds me I need to read Jared Cooney Horvath’s new book: The Digital Delusion. Free Press excerpt here.
