
I gave my students iPads – then wished I could take them back - e15ctr0n
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/i-gave-my-students-ipads--then-wished-i-could-take-them-back/2015/12/02/a1bc8272-818f-11e5-a7ca-6ab6ec20f839_story.html
======
joeevans1000
Remember when that guy was offering to buy every classroom free TVs in
exchange for the school's commitment to have the kids watch a certain amount
of programming a day? The programming included ads. This seems the same.
Having the kids load linux onto laptops, yeah... I could understand the value
in that. Having them work with Raspberry Pi's, I could see the merit in that.
Program robots? Definitely. But this debacle of Apple products for kids has
been terrible. I do believe the schools and city councils are well meaning.
Yes, these expenditures are so huge the city councils have to often get
involved. But introducing kids to computing via the walled gardens of Apple
are a disservice to them, and a step back, in my opinion. Apple devices are
imminently non-configurable... they are designed to walk you through the
computing experience, training you to seek the help of 'geniuses' as opposed
to becoming your own genius. The cost of these programs is astounding.
Districts could be loading linux onto machines bought for relatively
nothing... those linux skills would be immediately applicable to Raspberry Pis
and to robots. Are schools afraid of really educating their students, as
opposed to making them dependents of Apple's consumer culture?

~~~
hellbanner
Right. "Program or Be Programmed"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgicuytCkoY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgicuytCkoY)

~~~
matt-attack
Great perspective. Thanks for posting.

------
CodeWriter23
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 children working in teams. And a sizable
portion of their report card deals with socialization and citizenship.

The tablet is a tool, alongside pencil, ruler, scissors, etc. NOT the primary
device for delivering content. The kids use them (K-2) to make movies, make
sketches of the things they are engineering, and math drills.

It seems a good lesson was lost on the author: teaching the kids how to
appropriately use this type of tool. At my daughter's school, we get it.
Starting next year, Grades 3-5 will have an admin account on their take-home
MacBook Airs. Yep, sounds totally crazy. The value here is teaching the
children not just how to use their computer but how to take responsibility for
keeping it running. Hopefully El Capitan rootless mode will provide a robust
defense against those pesky Flash 0-day bugs.

~~~
megaman22
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.

~~~
smileysteve
> Group projects and emphasizing socialization is a crutch that incompetent
> teachers use to force their intelligent students to do their job for them.

I find the opposite true in my career. Business is 95% about how you interact
with others; whether that is teaching, listening to, meeting with,
understanding morale, etc.

Let's look at Agile, socialization is at the key, people over processes, scrum
meetings every morning looking for who needs help and who can help, sprint
meetings with product managers selling ideas to engineers and engineers
discussing how it will be solved, retrospectives where everybody tries to
figure out what went right/wrong and what to do better.

Then there is pair programming, which is the definition of a group project.

~~~
relkor
The difference in your Agile and pair programming examples is that those
interactions are fundamentally between people with similar abilities. In
business, the teaching, listening, and understanding are communication between
people with similar baud rates. My impression is that you may be projecting
your experiences with groups of competent engineers -- who all passed a
rigorous screening process and years of performance reviews -- onto the
behavior of children drawn at random from the entire population.

Group projects are a tool to adjust the average performance, without any
effort on the teacher's part. The effect is more insidious than a simple
numerical average would suggest because group projects introduce a time
differential. Consider people as an op-amp. Their internal drive to produce a
given quality is the reference voltage. What output the currently have (the
progess towards the objective) is the input. When you put top performers in a
group to pull up the slackers, the feedback gain of that system is
artificially reduced. The good students want a certain level of quality, so
they will work even harder to try an bring the quality (input signal) up to
their standards. Depending on how bad the slackers are, the good student may
even reach saturation, running out of hours in the day to compensate for the
incompetence of others.

The incompetent teachers intuitively understand this effect. They are not
fostering some kind of social nirvana, they are transferring the workload of
pulling up the class average onto the bright kids. The bright kid ends up
spending twice, three times as long on the group assignment, and that effort
gets averaged out to the other group members' grades. The cost to top
performers is all that time they could have been improving, moving forward,
was stuck doing large amounts of low skill work.

------
b6
This was really painful to read.

I don't often think I have vision or significant insight, but it's been
obvious to me for as long as I can remember that egregious use of technology
in classrooms is a profoundly terrible idea. What, educators were worried
children wouldn't spend enough time staring at glowing rectangles, and needed
to get a head start? Really?

It's not clear whether most adults are even capable of making good decisions
about what technologies to invite into their lives. Inflicting computers and
software on children in a classroom, I think, demonstrates either profound
lack of understanding about the state of these technologies, or judgement, or
both.

Pens, pencils, crayons, markers, paper, books, musical instruments. These are
the kinds of things that belong in classrooms. Children should be reading and
drawing and building and talking and playing creatively, learning to think and
solve problems based on experiencing the world directly, not trying to sip
secondhand information through the straw of a screen, not wasting time with
the latest malware and ads and passwords and an infinite amount of other
stupid computer bullshit. Technology is a kind of heroin-like thing you should
choose to invite into your life later as an adult if you want, not inflicted
on you as a child.

~~~
panzagl
Tablets are just the next step in replacing teachers with their exorbitant
$40K salaries with half that number of $10/hr babysitters, so more money can
be funneled to the companies providing the curriculum and testing.

~~~
lintiness
cities like chicago have near 3% property taxes to pay current teachers
average salaries over $75k/yr. with health, with vacation, with summers, with
cola, with lifetime guaranteed pensions of 70%+. school admins routinely take
home $125k+. when are we going to stop with the nonsense that teachers save
the world while starving in their yugos?

~~~
coldpie
When it stops being true, I imagine.
[http://www.payscale.com/research/US/All_K-12_Teachers/Salary](http://www.payscale.com/research/US/All_K-12_Teachers/Salary)

~~~
lintiness
[https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d11/tables/dt11_083.asp](https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d11/tables/dt11_083.asp)

how about using a real source. payscale.com?

~~~
coldpie
So bizarre that you used a specific outlier case of $75-125k, more than twice
what the actual average is. And given that your outlier exists, I wonder what
that says about teacher salaries on the lower end of the bell curve given the
average of $55k.

~~~
lintiness
no idea what you're talking about. your number fits a ba with zero experience
on a national average. teachers make a lot more with even limited experience
in big population areas (with politicians on the dole) with corresponding
higher cost of living (ie. chicago, where i stated).

~~~
coldpie
I'm saying your original example was specifically crafted to make people think
teachers are well-paid ("average salaries over $75k... school admins routinely
take home $125k") by cherry-picking a specific outlier. When I called you on
it, you found real data showing the average is actually $55k, which means many
salaries are even lower than that. Now you've backpedaled so far as to say the
_average_ teacher salary is roughly equivalent to "a ba with zero experience,"
which I would categorize as criminally underpaid for a position so crucial to
the upbringing of our country's children.

~~~
lintiness
your posted numbers were garbage; mine weren't: ([http://www.ccsd59.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/07/Administrat...](http://www.ccsd59.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/07/Administrator-and-Teacher-Salary-and-Benefit-
Report-2014.pdf)).

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
public unions to rape the average family (both in the classrooms where they
fail, and in the pocketbook where public school teachers are doing their
finest work).

~~~
coldpie
Cool rape metaphor, bro! Goodbye.

~~~
pc86
I don't think that's what a metaphor is.

------
rayiner
> My lively little kids stopped talking and adopted the bent-neck, plugged-in
> posture of tap, tap, swipe.

I'm extremely skeptical about the utility of technology in education, but
iPads are a bad idea for reasons other than the above. A room full of kids
working hard with pre-iPad technology looks like that too, except they're
concentrating on books and paper.

~~~
farmdve
I've noticed this behaviour outside of school and with much older people. I
grew up with a computer and I admit I use it at least 15 hours a day every
day, but a big chunk of this time I've used for learning and contributing
rather than just pure media consumption.

Today too many people are engrossed in facebook and can't continue a
conversation without flicking and swiping through facebook every 30-60
seconds. Everybody's faces are now illuminated by their devices' screens.

------
joshstrange
Good lord.... I don't think I can roll my eyes hard enough....

> One of my saddest days in my digital classroom was when the children rushed
> in from the lunchroom one rainy recess and dashed for their iPads. Wait, I
> implored, we play with Legos on rainy days! I dumped out the huge container
> of Legos that were pure magic just a couple of weeks ago, that prompted so
> much collaboration and conversation, but the delight was gone. My students
> looked at me with disdain. Some crossed their arms and pouted. We aren’t
> kids who just play anymore, their crossed arms implied. We’re iPad users.
> We’re tech-savvy. Later, when I allowed their devices to hum to glowing
> life, conversation shut down altogether.

Look I loved Lego's growing up, I still have massive rubbermaid containers
full of them but please tell me why playing with Legos is any more valuable
than playing minecraft? Let's not pretend that just because kids like
different things now that something MUST be lost. I never played a cup-and-
ball game like I'm sure generations before me did (I'm sure they lamented the
introduction of things like Lego). Every generation complains about the
younger generation and how they are going to turn out wrong because they
weren't raised the same way they were or with the same things ("I walked up
hill to school both ways").

Did the kids get quieter? Sure, I have no doubt of that but who's to say they
weren't communicating even more than before using chat programs? I had
teachers in HS CONSTANTLY complain about how students were reading less and
less all the time which I took issue with not only because I read plenty of
books but also I read tons of articles online. The medium may change but the
core concept remains IHMO. Reading Pride and Prejudice doesn't automatically
make you a better person than the student who know what's happening in the
world like the back of their hand.

Lastly not introducing them to tech now is just setting them up for failure
down the line. For better or worse the people who know technology will excel
more than those who don't. Tech is not it's own little sector/industry, it's
everywhere and it's integrated in to everything. To pretend otherwise is to
stick one's head in the ground and ignore the world around you.

~~~
greyman
> but please tell me why playing with Legos is any more valuable than playing
> minecraft?

She did - because it encouraged collaboration and conversation.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Minecraft is multiplayer, and supports chat.

~~~
robmcm
It's also the conversations that go on when they are not playing that
impresses me.

Less so with lego, as it's look at this, then destroyed and forgotten. With
minecraft they have to articulate what they have created and why, and
continuously improve and develop things.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Minecraft as a method of teaching tech debt!

------
m52go
A thought regarding the argument that iPads encourage anti-social behavior:

Many of us here were introduced to this immersive technology as mature adults
& don't know how to balance this technology with the demands of humanity
(namely, proper social communication). Give me an iPad, and I'll find a way to
watch stupid videos and avoid productivity (that's why I don't have one). Or
send me a text and I'll make my best effort at checking it ASAP, even if that
means losing focus on a real conversation for a few moments.

BUT: humans have an innate need to communicate. It's not a generational thing
--it's a human thing. Kids aren't going to forget they need to make quality
bonds with the people in their lives. They'll still do it. And I bet these
kids growing up now will be able to achieve this balance between man and
machine better than us.

I predict: it's not technology we're going to learn from our kids--it's how to
truly live well with it.

------
baldfat
My school district has lost almost 20% of the teachers and looking at another
$13,000,000 in deficit next year. they can afford iPads what a BROKEN
Education Funding System we have! Latino students get $0.85 for every dollar
spent on White non-Hispanic students.

> writes about how we are sacrificing connections, one quick check of our
> screens at a time

The old Computers cause people to disconnect and check out argument again!

As an old Geek I have always heard the anti-social behaviors breed by computer
use. The funny thing is I was more connected to people then anyone I knew. The
one culture that connects and gathers together have been the Geeks.

PS iPads for each child in elementary school is a bad idea but not for these
reasons.

~~~
rtkwe
Part of that is that there are funds that are siloed to be spent only on
getting tech into the hands of kids so money spent there by the school system
couldn't necessarily be spent elsewhere by the school.

~~~
baldfat
Okay great give my Urban District designated funds for iPads.

------
aaronharnly
I'm surprised that (by appearances) these iPads were in essentially full-time
1:1 use in a 3rd grade classroom, when students have a lot of learning to do
about and through movement and physical manipulation, not to mention social
engagement.

From what I've seen[1], in lower elementary grades technology can be very
effectively used in the hands of the teacher (for assessment, interpreting
student strengths and weaknesses in reading or math, and for projecting rich
media).

Putting devices in the hands of students in lower elementary is probably best
done for very targeted purposes and limited time; for example, keeping the
rest of class engaged with an activity while the teacher is giving his or her
full attention to working with a reading small group for 30 minutes.

[1]I've been part of teams creating teacher-facing tools for elementary, and
digital curriculum for middle school and above.

------
thearn4
Are there any really decent examples of devices like tablets being utilized
creatively and effectively in a K-12 classroom?

I don't want to sound cynical or like a luddite (I would be posting on the
wrong site, for sure), but nearly every application that I have used that is
meant to be used in a classroom environment has been extremely shallow.

------
bluedino
Access, not immersion.

I cringed 15 years ago when school boards pushed to put computers in every
classroom. What good is a room full of kids on MySpace and AIM?

Sure, you need computer skills for the future. But beyond learning how to use
a computer for typing, spreadsheets, word processing, you don't need more than
that in the K-12 level. Some kids will want to be programmers. Some kids will
want to do music. Some will want to do graphics or desktop publish. Have
computers available for kids to do that in computer class or art class or math
- but don't push them in every setting.

~~~
joshstrange
Why? Seriously why?

Technology and software are, not to sound cliche, eating the world. Even
something you would consider to not need tech for like farming is seeing great
advances from technology including but not limited to: drip irrigation, gps
auto-pilot machinery, robots to kill weeds without herbicides, weather
patterns, crop patterns, and more. Software and technology is everywhere and
if it's not somewhere yet then it will be soon. Why should be churning out
tech-illiterate students except for a couple of fields? This seems incredibly
short-sighted.

------
michaelmcdonald
Change is hard. When computers were first introduced to schools there were
similar arguments and complaints. When calculators were brought in instead of
the slide rule we heard it would be the end of actually "knowing" math.
Teachers who are great find ways to use technology and tools available to
inspire their students and create engaging lessons. This teacher just sounds
resistant to change.

~~~
jacquesm
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.

~~~
pc86
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)?

~~~
davnicwil
Hmm that's interesting - I'd tend to round one of the numbers, whichever is
closest to a '5' or '10', to make an 'easier' multiplication, then add /
subtract the extra value lost / gained by rounding.

Example 9 x 14 = (<10> * 14) - ([1] * 14) = 140 - 14 = 126

key: <> easier rounded number [] deal with rounding 'error'

~~~
pc86
I've done that before too, but for whatever reason my mind just defaults to
adding two numbers rather than subtracting. Probably either habit or I just
find it easier.

------
greyman
Hm, this is sad. What I wonder is - couldn't this be anticipated beforehand?
If they asked me, I would probably predict that what she describes would
happen (having iPad and a child at home). Anyway, why on earth would you give
the child a mainly-leisure device, why at least not netbook instead?!

------
limaoscarjuliet
Computers will rot your brain. Or... not?

I'm 40. I come from an Eastern-Bloc country. Back in the day we raised
ourselves, running outside all day, building and breaking friendships by
playing sports and other more stupid games (e.g. throwing small rocks at cars
- yes, THAT stupid).

Just like kids today have Internet, we had a drug - TV. Grandma said: it would
rot your brain, it is the Satan, stay away.

Apparently the TV did not rot my brain. I do not watch it today (other than
Netflix). I cannot stand it. Yes, we did not have fun exactly like Grandma had
in her youth (I bet she had some fun ;-), but we had fun.

So perhaps tablets are not that bad. Perhaps Internet is not that bad. Sure,
it will change us, but - just perhaps - in a good way.

Perhaps it is just us, older folks, who cannot see what is good and what is
bad for our kids.

~~~
csorrell
I grew up with a TV that had no boundaries around it and don't feel like it
kept me from experiencing a full childhood either. I did waste a lot of time
in front of it but television was mostly just a fallback; I preferred playing
outside and with other kids. The thing about TV then that is different from
technology now, is that we were limited more by whatever programming the cable
networks had scheduled between all those commercials. TV was actually boring
most of the time, especially during the day.

I have kids now and know that with my oldest at least (11 year old boy), when
there are no boundaries around screen time, the screens are always on. There
is a lot more going on in the world of video games, movies, the internet, etc.
these days which make it easier for kids to get lost in.

------
diivio
What....why the heck would you give 8 year olds iPads....my littlest brother
was born in 2002 I think and when he turned 8 his school didn't do this
nonsense.

They should be reading from regular books and get regular
chalkboard/whiteboard Lectures and doing hands on activities.

Instead of giving them iPads you could have a small set of time in the week to
go onto a desktop computer and learn how to keyboard and do those kid like
programming exercises and maybe some fun online learning tools.

Technology is only bad for kids if you don't know how to ration it and talk to
them about it and limit it to educational uses.

Just giving them iPads makes no sense. All you're doing is helping Apple
lol.....

You cannot even teach them practical academic tech stuff like keyboarding or
programming using those kid friendly programming applications like Minecraft.

Or at least lock down the iPads so it only has educational apps.

------
facepalm
That seems a bit one-sided. It is not all or nothing.

My son (age 5) gets to use a tablet from time to time, mostly to watch
"Sendung mit der Maus" which is a famous German educational show. They cover
various topics in 10 minute blocks. My son has already learned a lot from
that.

I recently visited an elementary school and all the kids were having lessons
about squirrels (it was in autumn). I guess "under the hood" they were
learning more than just squirrel stuff, like reading comprehension, writing,
structuring information and so on. But other than that, I am pretty sure what
takes them days to learn about squirrels in school would be easier taught by
Sendung mit der Maus.

------
gnrme
iPads are primarily high end content consumption devices - in my mind, that
makes them a strange choice for education.

~~~
greyman
Depends on which apps do you use - there are also a lot of quizzes, puzzles,
math and grammar exercises etc. But the problem is, what I also observed on my
daughter, that when the exercises are printed on paper, she can just focus on
them, since there isn't anything else on the paper. But when on iPad, there is
always a lure to just close that educational app and switch to another
entertainment one. The attention span is shorted and the focus is shallower,
since there is always a temptation to be distracted by something else.

------
MrBunny
So the real issue here is the lack of in person face to face? Which is the
continued argument that adults/college students don’t know how to handle
social interactions with tech. Is it possible adults/college students don’t
know how to handle social interaction with tech around because their exposure
was much later in life? Is the lesson these kids learning even more important?
How to hold on to humanity in the face of technology. Or possibly humanity and
tech has entirely different direction and we are just trying to fight it all
together.

------
jl4ntz
I'm not an education professional, but this seems like it would be a better
idea for kids that are a little older than third grade.

------
jvvlimme
A while back I attended a presentation and the speaker summed it up nicely:
"We live in the 21st century, we go to work in the 20th and our kids go to
school in the 19th."

And the main hurdle here is not the tech but the teachers. With a few
exceptions, teachers are technophobes and they don't have the mindset to
support tech in the classroom.

------
hmottestad
Learning how to take control when faced with all these screens and all this
information and communication without getting sucked in might be one of the
greatest lessons to teach children today.

------
Joof
I'm sure iPads can be useful, but you know what's more useful? Good teachers.

------
dangerpowpow
These schools have too much money

~~~
cthalupa
These programs are often funded by federal aid based on the number of students
on free or reduced lunch. The money, IIRC, can really only be used for library
stuff or technology, and it's a sort of 'use it or lose it' deal.

~~~
tormeh
Yes, but since students usually do better without computers it's better to use
it on the library or simply not take the money.

~~~
joshstrange
Want to provide some kind of source for that claim?

~~~
tormeh
Yes: [http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-
Management/oecd/educati...](http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-
Management/oecd/education/students-computers-and-
learning_9789264239555-en#page5)

(it's an OECD study. I don't really know their pedigree as a source of
evidence)

