ipads in secondary school

[Kfor]

My DD is in a strong grammar, and all work is done on ipads, the lessons and the homework. The other apps were blocked during the first 2 years, however after that the parents got the choice, and most decided that no restrictions were needed. Our daughter instantly downloaded the TikTok, Snapchat , Instagram, you name it. At school most wont work but at home it is a major distraction to have them on a learning tool...the messages are constantly pinging...She seems to have no self-control...even months before GCSEs. Her grades went down (from 8s to 5s). We had lots of chats about it, tried to show her strategies. Nothing worked. Am I unreasonable to ask the school to block her tablet again..as apparently she would be the only one in the class. Or should I just let her be in charge and possibly have very low scores on her GCSE..?

There's evidence it's bad for learning so I'm at a loss why they keep using them

Block it.

my school that I taught at introduced chromebooks. I genuinely cannot imagine why as they really don’t help.

sure, some homework needs computers but there’s no need for students to have a device in school and at home that’s a nightmare to monitor.

Yes re-block.

Most have to hand write their exams so it’s not good practice to do everything on iPads.

I absolutely despair about these shitty distracting devices being used instead of pen and paper. And don’t even get me started on the illegal data sharing practices (of children’s data) of almost all edtech software firms (see LSE research)

Local authorities often trot out promissory, baseless nonsense such as “we are creating tomorrow’s digital superstars!”…when in fact numeracy, literacy and even computational understanding have nose dived since 1-1 device schemes began in schools around ten years ago (refs include The International Computer and Information Literacy Study (ICILS).

Where I live, kids as young as 4 are forced to use iPads at school, including web browsing on devices that do not have sufficient filtering and have resulted in countless examples of harmful content being viewed in class.

We are told we cannot opt out but I have found a legal workaround to this.

anyway, here is a nice cartoon

Not having to do 2 hours of marking every evening is probably quite an incentive

Is the work being marked by AI then?

yes this school is marking with AI, we got an email informing us

I work in a school where all the kids use tablets.

I can see its selling points:

1. the kids can research material in class
2. they can use educational programmes that customise themselves for each pupil, concentrating on that child's weak points
3. less marking for the teachers, as subjects like maths, Science and MFL can be marked by AI (this doesn't yet apply to English/Humanities in my school

The reality, however, is:

1. the kids do their "research" by copy-and-pasting from the the AI summary of whatever question they have been tasked with answering, which does not help their understanding or recall of the topic
2. they are constantly messing about on them when they're supposed to be working. Checking the football scores, watching YouTube videos, looking at the socials of their favourite band. The tablets are a huge distraction
3. the educational programmes that supposedly customise themselves for each pupil and mark their homework, are not working as well as they should because many kids answer them using AI (the teachers know this goes on but the kids deny it)

Of course, it's not all the kids who do this, but it's a sizeable minority and it's usually the ones who really can't afford to be distracted in this way. The teachers are constantly telling them not to, but it's like Whack-a-mole, and anyway the more time is spent chiding them about using their devices, the less time there is for actually teaching.

I think tablets are terrible for kids' education.

That’s appalling.

genuinely.

My kids school issues iPads when they start yr 7. But they are v locked down so only school approved apps etc. the iPad saves them carrying books and worksheets home on a long commute and means they can submit homework electronically. I hope the marking is still done by humans not AI.

kids at this school typically get 7s 8s 9s at gcse, so it is possible.

I was shocked at first..but some teacher friends said that this will be introduced everywhere...Our school is using TopMarks (AI) to mark English and History..and gradually will do thhe rest.

Dear me. I mean, aside from the obvious fact that you’d like a human rather than a large language model robot to mark your child’s work…Presumably the children’s data is also being used/shared for commercial purposes including training AI. I’d be wanting to check those privacy policies closely. (BTW, this is illegal without parents opt-in consent if the child is under 13… but all the software companies are sharing children’s data regardless).