Technology

Tech devoured everything as it does. Put some funding back in shop class, arts, home ec., etc. That was the issue around here going back decades.

They defunded all those things here. Back then my high school got a ton of fancy Apple computers. Those went unused except for the IT guys fucking around with them and never actually deploying them for some reason. Only the aging Windows PCs were used by students. That was the only funding being spent anymore.

The world is more than just the big tech industry. It's no wonder so many trades professions are aging out into oblivion. We listened to techbros who are converting the world into digital zombies.

Give the kids things to do again other than screen time. The rest of the entire curriculum has long ago been gutted down to pure theory. Of course they're bored to death, and searching for stimulation on their screens.

You can have a Linux running on a raspberry pi, but you have to build the device yourself. That's my solution.

When I was in middle school. I thought that it was really cool that the kids in 'murica could take laptops and tablet into the school to use in class for learning. Then I stopped being a middle schooler.

They only ruined one generation this time.

This is likely a hot take but, I don't think this was the fault of the in-class laptops. They thought removing phones were going to solve the issue, it didn't, they thought computers were going to solve the issue, they didn't.

The core issue is: School is fucking boring. As a kid/teen you spend 8-10 hours a day sitting at a desk listening to a teacher yap about shit that at the time you don't believe is even important so you can regurgitate said useless information in tests that you then proceed to forget 2 weeks after taking. Hell even now I think I learned more actual life and useful skills in college. I have more engagement and entertainment working a full time job, than I did in a classroom, and at least I was making money with the job.

The school districts are shocked that upon providing a tool that could be used to lessen the tedium and lifelessness that school shoves down kids throats they then misused said tool. I don't understand it.

Make learning fun and engaging, add actual life skills to classrooms like how to read an analog clock, or how to write a check. Talk about how to survive in the real world, how interest works, how your credit score is really important, maybe how the government works cause I know I never had a civics class. Stuff that kids in middle/high school would actually care about, instead of how to solve 3 unknowns in an equation, or how to find an angle of a triangle when you know the 2 angles, or learning about colonization for the 8th time. Make it so it isn't just "read this board, repeat on the test".

If you solve the underlying issues at play, instead of trying to remove the tools that kids are misusing in order to fix the issue that the school system as a whole created, I think it would be found that computers would be a net positive. I know having a computer in class significantly improved my scores and learning capability, as I could use it for legible note taking, and I could record sessions if I needed to. Yes I definitely accessed coolmathgames at times but, I can tell you right now, the ability to do that helped remove the monotony of the classroom, and if I didn't have that tool at my disposal, I would have simply zoned out and gained nothing out of the day, instead of what I did. My scores definitely wouldn't have gone up like the article seems to be alluding to.

well, let's be a bit more specific: The screen is not the problem. The operating system, the applications, and the abysmal integration is the problem.

We’ve spent years telling kids that every problem is solved by putting another screen in front of them. Now we’re discovering that unlimited access to the world’s biggest distraction might not have been the revolutionary education strategy we thought it was. Technology is a tool, not a teaching method.

I was part of the first school year where my district implemented a one-to-one laptop/student policy. Our school district got a fat grant the year before, because they implemented a drug-testing policy and used the money to buy each student a MacBook Air.

It was a complete disaster. There were some positives to it, but it really changed everything from there on.

Our IT department was ran by 3 guys, spread across a high school, middle school, and 6 elementary schools. They had no idea what they were doing most of the time. We had some Windows machines in the drafting classroom, my profile became corrupted, preventing me from being able to log in. The admin couldn’t figure out how to delete my profile, and insisted that I just used someone else’s login. I also lost work because he couldn’t figure out how to sign in as an administrator, and yank my files from my user folder.

We had full admin rights on those computers, and the MDM (JAMF) was not installed correctly allowing us to uninstall it. Many of us ran pirated software.

The biggest thing was cheating. It just became so easy. The school couldn’t do anything about it because all the answer keys were being uploaded to Quizlet, which was a service many teachers were using for study guides.

The school tried to block iMessage from working on these machines, and failed miserably. We figured out how to bypass it within the first week of implementation.

Since I’ve graduated, they’ve made a lot of changes for the better in terms of device management. However, I have no idea about how the classrooms have changed since.

Furthermore, this school district did a horrible job of teaching kids how to use computers. They did typing lessons, but didn’t ever explain how to use the computers. So when the laptops came in, many students had no idea what a file was or how to submit them to the LMS.

I at the least can be thankful that they gave us actual computers, rather than Chromebooks. I work in secondary education now, and so many students have Chromebooks because that’s what their school taught them how to use. They have no clue what software is, and only know how to share a document through Google Docs, rather than getting the file exported as a .pdf or .docx and properly submitted into the LMS.

IMO Chromebooks have ruined a generation. Especially since schools forced this upon the masses.

the problem is advertising. advertising distracts away from the school's own messages, education and purpose.