topic Endless Tech in Classrooms Article in Peer-Peer Topics

Endless Tech in Classrooms Article

dochxp — Thu, 25 Apr 2024 10:16:49 GMT

Here in the UK, there has been an article in a paper that has gained some traction with our parents. I personally feel from this article that there is a conflation of issues with smartphones, issues with social media, poor implementation of technology in schools (and the consequences of this). I just thought it may be of interest to you to read this, and I also would appreciate any comments you have about what has been said, especially if it relates to your area of the world. Thanks all!

‘Endless tech’ at schools has been a failure, says Sophie Winkleman

Actress and campaigner wants the millions spent on education technology to be invested in teachers instead

Schools have “gone crazy” filling classrooms with screens and results will go down as a result, the actress Sophie Winkleman has warned.

The campaigner, 43, wants iPads removed from classrooms and the hundreds of millions of pounds spent by UK schools every year on education technology invested in teachers instead.

Speaking to The Telegraph, she said that schools should be a “safe haven” from screens for children.

Research from technology regulator Ofcom this week showed that a quarter of children under seven have their own smartphone, while 32 per cent of children aged eight to 17 had experienced something “nasty or hurtful” online in the past year.

Winkleman, who is married to Lord Frederick Windsor, second cousin to the King, has spent four years researching the impact of screens on children and is alarmed by what she has seen on school visits in her role as patron of the charity School-Home Support.

“I’m very concerned about tech for tech’s sake,” she said.

“It’s especially rampant in independent schools, where many heads have gone crazy for filling the classroom with screens. Perhaps they think it’s a progressive and attractive look to prospective parents?

“Maybe it is, but it’s their job to educate parents on the superior nature of books, handwriting and deep thinking.”

UK schools spend around £900 million a year on education technology, according to the Department for Business and Trade.

At private schools such as Eton College, pupils can be found learning from digital textbooks and quizzing apps, while using digital notebooks and Apple pencils to draw or write on a screen.

Meanwhile, tablets are available for pupils to use in the majority of state schools in England, according to a Government survey.

The “digitisation” of education in schools is gaining pace, with the exam board Edexcel starting to allow pupils to type essays in English Literature and English Language GCSEs.

Pearson, the company that runs Edexcel, hopes to be able to offer an on-screen option for all GCSEs by 2030.

Tablets are available to pupils in most state schools in England CREDIT: Digital Vision

Private schools are recruiting digital tsars to help them embed artificial intelligence into their teaching through tools such as “personal AI tutors” for pupils.

So-called “edtech” products are “simply not proven yet”, Winkleman said. “In fact, results and progress have been descending since they’ve been in use. I believe that’s why exams are now going online, because schools can’t bear to say, ‘OK, this hasn’t worked’. So education advisors are lowering the rigour expected in exams to match falling levels.”

A Unesco report on technology in education last year found there was “little robust evidence on digital technology’s added value to education”.

In the UK, 7 per cent of education technology companies had conducted randomised controlled trials, while only 12 per cent had used third-party certification. Unesco noted that a great deal of evidence on technology education comes from those trying to sell it.

Winkleman cited research by Prof John Jerrim of University College London which found that pupils tend to do worse in reading, maths and science assessments when they are completed on a computer, compared with on paper. Other academics have found that when people read on a screen, they tend to skim more than when reading from a book.

Last year, ministers in Sweden announced plans to reverse an earlier move by the government to make digital devices mandatory in pre-schools after children’s reading test scores fell between 2016 and 2021.

“There’s clear scientific evidence that digital tools impair rather than enhance student learning,” said Sweden’s Karolinska Institute, a world-renowned medical university.

‘This digital thing is a mistake’

Winkleman said that while she accepts that a small number of digital tools could aid learning, the UK should follow Sweden in largely returning to books, pen and paper. “They’ve done it in Sweden – they’ve said, OK, this digital thing has cost us beyond fortunes but it’s a mistake.”

She said that some head teachers who “went for tech in a big way, thinking they were being quite Silicon Valley” will not yet accept that tech in classrooms hasn’t transformed pupil outcomes.

Winkleman studied English Literature at the University of Cambridge and has appeared in the Channel 4 comedy Peep Show, ITV period drama Sanditon and the recent Wonka film. She has two daughters – Maud, 10, and Isabella, eight – who she has moved to different schools twice to get them away from iPads in classrooms.

“I was quite a lone voice in the classroom then, saying I don’t want them to be given iPads, even if you’re being really generous, please don’t,” she said. “So I just trotted around trying to find fairly traditional schools nearby. But the schools I visited around the country, where tech is used in serious moderation, are so visibly much more successful and happy and effective than the schools who’ve gone full on tech.”

The parent-led Safe Screens Campaign wants the Government to restrict smartphone use for under-16s CREDIT: iStockphoto

The actress is a leading voice in a growing movement against children’s access to the social media apps found on smartphones and tablets. Since February, tens of thousands of parents have joined a grassroots movement, Smartphone Free Childhood, launched to support each other in delaying giving their children such devices.

Winkleman worries that devices such as tablets in schools and online homework risk children being in an environment where they cannot escape screens. “Children should come home, be rid of those stupid screens and handwrite their homework,” she said.

“Handwriting delivers information into the brain more profoundly and it calms children down. It lets them think. It’s very agitating being on a screen, it’s not how we want our children to think or to learn.”

She added: “I think teachers need to be helped and supported and paid more, and I am angry that so much money has been spent on the wrong tools, instead of the only tool we need in the classroom which is a great teacher.”

Molly Kingsley, of Safe Screens Campaign, a parent-led initiative which wants the Government to restrict smartphone use for under-16s, said: “The rapid increase in usage of personal screens in school has been a financial bonanza for tech companies – but the evidence that they are beneficial for children and education is simply not there.

“Indeed, increasingly the evidence shows that reading on paper gives deeper comprehension and learning than screen-based learning. Coupled with the fact that pupils are increasingly able to outwit the devices to enable them to spend their lesson time surfing the internet, there needs to be a moratorium on increasing screen-based learning until an evidence-based risk assessment which puts children’s safety and long-term education at its heart.”

A Department for Education spokesperson said that England has “a world-class education system where primary children are the ‘best in the west’ at reading”.

They added: “Technology is there to support teachers, and the vast majority agree it does. Our exploratory work on AI also suggests it could further reduce the amount of time teachers spend doing administrative tasks, so they can focus on what they do best – teaching and supporting their pupils.”

Re: Endless Tech in Classrooms Article

steve — Thu, 25 Apr 2024 15:41:29 GMT

I'm seeing a lot of articles like this in both the left and right wing media (here in the US), and I think a "tech in schools" backlash is brewing. All the hype and bandwagoning around AI is only going to make it worse I think...

Re: Endless Tech in Classrooms Article

YERKO — Thu, 25 Apr 2024 20:34:12 GMT

I am a teacher, I believe that rowing in the opposite direction in this society where digital natives increasingly get along better with technology could be considered a losing fight. However, I am in favor of regulating, teaching, mixing and dosing the use of technology in new generations, life is not all or exclusively screens and tactile objects, personally the older they are with technology, the better. It is painful for me to go out for recess to see that only a minimal group of students run after a ball or play with each other, the rest, young and old, sitting next to each other looking at their cell phone screens.

@dochxp

Re: Endless Tech in Classrooms Article

Kim_Nilsson — Fri, 26 Apr 2024 09:46:20 GMT

In Sweden, as probably in other parts of the world, we are looking into, in a broader sense, disallowing student use of personal mobile devices during school hours, so it will only be under the guidance of a competent teacher that they will use their digital devices while in school.

What happens outside school hours is up to their parents, but not during school hours.

Re: Endless Tech in Classrooms Article

dochxp — Fri, 26 Apr 2024 12:18:42 GMT

Thanks all, appreciate everyone's feelings and input here. It is certainly frustrating that any backlash would occur against good EdTech implementations and what seems to be more about smartphone use and the pupils 'personal' and outside of school lives. As you may be aware, in the UK there has been recent Government guidance stipulating that mobile phones should be banned in school, including at lunch and break times. I also do feel there is some sort of 'backlash' coming. But again, I think people are conflating smartphone use and productive use of tech (that is not smart phone) on managed and monitored devices.

Re: Endless Tech in Classrooms Article

tbrass — Fri, 26 Apr 2024 16:38:26 GMT

I'm at a private school in the US, and we're getting backlash against edtech (especially in US K-5) as well. We even had administrators and teachers railing against screentime. When we ran the numbers (tracking from our iPads about how much time each app was open), most students averaged under 4 hours per week (our devices don't go home at this level). It feels like parents are conflating the struggle they have around screentime at home with instructional screentime at school. In the 30 years I've been teaching, I've lived quite a spectrum of edtech, and I'm not sure that many of the naysayers really understand how it's leveraged today compared to when they were students or how their children use it outside of school.

Re: Endless Tech in Classrooms Article

Kim_Nilsson — Fri, 26 Apr 2024 19:11:38 GMT

This. So much this.

Re: Endless Tech in Classrooms Article

bethhughes — Mon, 29 Apr 2024 13:54:06 GMT

I work at a private school in the US, too. I have found the screen time issues to be the same inside the majority of schools whether private or public. For us, training the teachers and advising the parents that this was just another tool in the teacher toolbox was part of our Chromebook deployment training. Assuring parents that the device was not replacing the personal classroom instruction time helped assuage concerns. As part of my discussion with students and parents, I explain to them that using a device for sociability is not the same as using it for productivity. When I make that comment, many parents are surprised, and even quite shocked, to learn that their child is not skilled at using the device's productivity applications for school assignments and educational collaboration. The students are quite adept at using social apps but the learning curve is high concerning other applications for school work. I have some funny and head-shaking stories I could share and I am sure you all have similar stories you could share about this, too.

It's important for a school to have a vision statement or goal for their use of technology. Why do we have the devices in front of the students? If it is because it is trendy and the other schools in the area are doing it, then we need to examine our motives and vision for student tech. We tell our students and parents that we are preparing the students for college and career by training them to use a device in those future settings. We also balance that purpose with the amount of time that the students are using the school's devices at school and home. Wisdom tells us to not ignore some of the studies findings concerning the negative impact of screen time; the majority of student's dislike for e-textbooks; the benefits using real flashcards and handwriting; and other concerns listed in the OPs resource materials. If we address them and counter with how we are addressing those concerns it goes a long way in having a successful device program.

At our school, we have implemented a school-wide "no cellphones during school hours" policy for our students. We encourage out staff to be leaders in this and not use their cell phones, unless an emergency, during instructional hours. We have seen a reduction is student discipline, anxiety, and drama. No shocker on the decrease in drama. LOL The students interact and actually talk to each other at breaks, lunch and recess. It's been great to see the transformation. I don't believe that we were ever meant to be a voiceless (texting all the time), faceless (looking at our phones and not each other) society and training our students on how to interact in real-life is a skill that is greatly needed.

Addressing the concerns while wanting to teach and train out students to be leaders in an ever growing technology-center world can be challenging. As a school, we are positioned to help parents understand the different uses/purposes of a device while acknowledging the concerns of its impact on student's lives.

Re: Endless Tech in Classrooms Article

Kim_Nilsson — Mon, 29 Apr 2024 14:10:05 GMT

Thank you, Beth!

Again, it comes back to people outside of school rarely have any clue what actually goes on in school!

"I went to school once" isn't, and never was, a qualification for who should decide what happens at school.