Do your primary schools issue Chromebooks/other devices?

[KitsPoint]

[reposting for traffic]
My kids’ primary has recently announced a plan to start introducing Chromebooks.
I’m really saddened by this as kids should be getting less screen time, not more!!😔 I can see it might be convenient but handwriting and concentration are bound to suffer. I also fear it will lead to cuts of other things eg art/science experiments. The school struggles to fund equipment now, by the time they’ve blown the budget on Chromebooks they’ll be nothing left.

Am interested to hear experiences of people whose primary schools are using devices - is it as bad as I fear? Maybe parents like it if it gives them an easy life.

thanks

Where does the quote which you posted say "there is no evidence that computers in the classroom is a bad thing"?

What you've quote makes clear opposite, that if technology is over-used or inappropriately used that this undermines learning (which I'd have thought would be blindingly obvious, but anyway...).

"What is the point of this post"
Er, see comment immediately above - I am concerned about the potential over-use and inappropriate use of technology in schools as it undermines learning! That's why I specifically asked for feedback from others on how technology is used in their schools, in the hope that it was not being used wildly inappropriately or excessively.

I said in terms " I can see [tech] might be convenient but handwriting and concentration are bound to suffer. I also fear it will lead to cuts of other things eg art/science experiments. The school struggles to fund equipment now, by the time they’ve blown the budget on Chromebooks they’ll be nothing left." If you don't understand the point I'm not sure I can do any more to explain it to you!

"You are the one that's come here with the assertion that children using Chromebooks is a problem, you need to come up with the research to prove it is, and the research you've linked to does no such thing."
Not exactly. I came on here to express concerns about the introduction of Chromebooks and to ask for people's experiences. In response I was told that an all you can eat diet of tech in schools is an unquestionably positive force and that there's no evidence to the contrary. That's just not true, so in response I've posted some links to evidence to the contrary.

In fact, it should be for those who are so strongly advocating for heavy tech use in schools to prove how it benefits children's learning, using independent peer-reviewed research. Rather than for those of us who have concerns to prove that it's not beneficial, or just plain harmful.

Or are you happy for anything to be unquestionably shoved in our kids' faces in the classroom, based on little more than the ed-tech companies completely unbiased 'research' that if a school adopts their app it will make their shareholders very rich improve learning, personal development and individual joy exponentially? Do you not think it's worth applying just a little critical thinking, or just maintaining an open mind, when it comes to something as important as children's education?

I've said I'm open to both experiences and evidences which contradict my concerns and views, yet no-one has bothered to put forward any robust evidence to support the use of increasing technology in schools. FWIW I'm sure there is some, and it's not a completely black and white issue, but it's ironic (to say the least) that you attack me for not substantiating my concerns when you've made literally zero effort to evidence your own position.

Anyway, since you asked here's some of the evidence from Karolinksa report mentioned in my earlier quote:

"There is clear scientific support that digital tools risk impairing, rather than improving, pupils' learning:

• Digital tools contain many distractions, which interfere with the ability to concentrate and working memory, which in turn impairs learning (Klingberg, 2023). One study shows, for example, that when pupils and students had their computers connected during a lecture, they spent up to 40 percent of the class time on irrelevant things that had no connection to the teaching (Kraushaar & Novak, 2010). Another study examined the effects of having half of the students have their laptop open during a lecture while the other half have to keep it closed. After the lecture they had to answer questions about the content. The students who had their laptops open performed 30 percent worse than their peers (Hembrooke & Gay, 2003). These studies concerned students at university level and the negative impact of computers on students in primary and secondary school is likely to be even greater as younger children have poorer executive functions (e.g. directing and controlling their impulses). With regard to pupils in compulsory school, the OECD has published a report showing that high use of computers in school has a clear negative correlation with PISA results in both mathematics and reading (OECD, 2015). Even in cases where a student is able not to be distracted by their own computer screen, there is a great risk that they will be distracted by other students' screens. If you let the students have their computers open during briefings, you should expect that there are always some students who do something other than listen to the teacher, and the risk is of course particularly high for those students who already have difficulties coping with the school's knowledge requirements.
• "Multi-tasking" (when you do many things at the same time) leads to poorer learning because our brains have a limited ability to retain relevant information in working memory (van der Schuur et al., 2015). Studies have shown, for example, that if young people have their mobile phone next to them when they study, they need significantly more time to learn the material. If students have to use their computer to search for information online [I think someone on here suggested "researching Vikings"], they will be exposed to a variety of distractors. Advertising on the Internet is now also personalized to make it even more difficult to resist.

Just before you get too excited and tell me that your children's schools all perfectly lock down all devices to ensure zero distractions of any kind at any time, Karolinksa continues:

• Reading and writing on screens have negative effects on reading comprehension. It is more difficult to remember the information you read or write on a screen compared to the information you read in a book (Clinton, 2019; Delgado et al., 2018). Studies have shown that it is not just about students being distracted by other things that are happening on the computer, but that the effect persists even if you limit the distractions on the computer. The negative effects of reading on a screen instead of on paper are also great– the effect is 36%, which corresponds to about two years of reading development in middle school (Klingberg, 2023). The above-mentioned effects also apply to more recent studies that include students who have become accustomed to computers from an early age. Studies also show that it is worse for learning if students take notes on a computer instead of with paper and pen (Mueller & Oppenheimer, 2014). If you ask the students themselves, they often state that they prefer digital tools, but when you test their abilities with objective tests, these clearly show that they perform worse when reading and taking notes via a computer (Singer & Alexander, 2017). This also clearly shows that qualitative studies, such as interviews that only examine what students themselves think, are not sufficient to draw conclusions about the effects of digitalization on learning."

But hey, at least there's no scrappy bits of paper at the bottom of bags @OhCrumbsWhereNow - thank GOD for that!!!

And from the final link in my post above, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11943480/ on handwriting:

Handwriting activates a broader network of brain regions involved in motor, sensory, and cognitive processing, contributing to deeper learning, enhanced memory retention, and more effective engagement with written material. Typing, while more efficient and automated, engages fewer neural circuits, resulting in more passive cognitive engagement. These findings suggest that despite the advantages of typing in terms of speed and convenience, handwriting remains an important tool for learning and memory retention, particularly in educational contexts.

We can consider handwriting and typing as distinct yet related modalities of written communication, each employing overlapping but specialized neural circuits. The unique demands of handwriting versus typing shape cognitive development and brain activity, rooted in our evolutionary history and present-day technological habits. [For the PP suggesting handwriting's a waste of time:] The neuroscientific evidence highlights the cognitive advantages of handwriting in learning environments, particularly for younger learners.

I suppose I should be thanking you, as you've prompted me to do some deeper research which confirms my original concerns as to concentration and impact on handwriting were spot on, and I do indeed need to campaign hard against further tech!

Thankfully I live in an enlightened and very progressive town where the local Smartphone Free Childhood movement led to all the primary head teachers publishing a statement against smartphone use in school, and I know from discussions with other parents that there'll be lots of others joining me in this :-)

I knew it.
You're one of the Smartphone Free Childhood cult members.

Fine. Ban your child from having phones and laptops and tech. That is your choice as their parent.

But, LEAVE MY CHILD ALONE.

I am their parent and I WANT them to have tech. Lots of it. Fortunately DD's is all outlined in her Ed Psych report so schools can have all the Smartphone rules they like... she gets to keep hers.

Given DD has managed to get to the end of Y11, have a university offer on the table for this September despite her SEN, has lots of hobbies, plays 3 musical instruments to a very high level, has professional film and west end credits and lots of friends... all alongside her TikTok account (the horror) and a 60WPM touch typing speed, I am more than happy with MY parenting choices.

Spoiler alert: this isn’t all about you/your daughter. If you and her ed psyche want to give her tech until it comes out of her ears then fill your proverbial boots.

But since you brought it up, maybe you could try leaving my child alone (sorry: LEAVE MY CHILD ALONE as it’s apparently necessary to shout this). I don’t want my kids to have tech foisted upon them against my wishes and when there is lots of evidence that for the NT at least (and I suspect for many ND kids too, even if not your daughter), that it seriously hampers their learning. And I’ll campaign on their behalf too because I care beyond just me and mine.

Still no sign of any evidence that heaps of tech in schools would help most children, just a tiresome ad hominem that posters often resort to on here when they don’t have any proper arguments to make.

🥱

I am sure you will be quite at liberty to opt your child out of the laptop at secondary and university.

Let's hope your children thank you for it. They may struggle to access homework and revision resources of course. How do you plan to do maths homework when it's set and marked automatically on Sparx?

Also, good luck educating a 16 year old about the dangers of social media or checking their phone usage. It's a whole lot easier with an 11 year old.

I have zero interest in rebutting your arguments as I have seen the direction the world is moving and it's not towards pen and paper.

Yes, technology is distracting IF used inappropriately.

If you said, "My child will have full access to all of the internet and be allowed to use the Chromebook however he/she wishes with no teacher oversight," you'd have a valid point. If you said that the school had thrown away all of their pens and paper and were no longer teaching children to write, you'd have a point. If there were not still libraries of print books in every school and children were not given access to a range of print books AND ebooks, you'd have a point.

Just being furious because your child is getting a Chromebook, which will doubtless be heavily locked down to prevent inappropriate use, to use as directed in lessons and at home, does not give you a valid point.

The benefits of tech are blindingly obvious, no more lost books, easy access for all adults and children to communicate and keep track of progress/behaviour/deadlines, no heavy backpacks bursting with files and books.

You have NO evidence, that tech, appropriately used in schools "seriously hampers" learning, only some weak and wishy-washy evidence that handwriting notes can help with memorising them, as if there are not many other methods of committing information to memory.

I would be concerned about the possibility of viruses/cyber attacks. School budgets aren't going to stretch far enough to fund staying on top of things.

I'm in Finland and there has been a lot of talk lately about moving away from the digitalisation of the classroom and back to paper because studies found that using tech in the classroom brings worse results. Luckily not been an issue for my children as the schools in my town never moved away from physical textbooks, the schools have iPads and laptops but just a bank of them that classes can book when needed, not individual ones for each student. Vast majority of homework is in textbooks/workbooks/notebooks too.

I’m just coming on to offer a couple of examples of really great use of tech in secondary schools, and some where it works less well, and examples of how my kids school has been managing it. Screens and computers are not all evil and at university, they’ll all be using them most of the time. It’s not an all or nothing approach.

As well as written work, my kids are often set maths homework using online systems. They also have access to maths revision sites (often online homework is through these sites). Eg Maths Genie. It’s absolutely brilliant for homework and revision - my kids really rate it, it helps them see worked answers and examples where they’re getting something wrong, helps give extra practice questions on areas they want to do more revision on etc. Brilliant at really showing and coaching - ON TOP obviously of this happening in the classroom. Not all the websites / apps are this good. But this one is excellent.

At sixth form college, nearly all the work in maths / further maths classrooms is on whiteboards, some at desk and some on the wall in a collaborative way. They also use paper copies of past papers and questions and notebooks, and they also use loads of tech for homework as mentioned above. It’s a true combination.

In history a level, they have textbooks, they’re collating notes on their research topic online or handwritten, and are writing their long research essay submissions in ms word, not handwritten. They can also use online research resources. The sixth form college doesn’t really have a library - the subject books and extension books are kept in the subject classrooms, and there’s a giant ICT suite for private study.

In language gcse lessons they are entirely paper and classroom based, but for homework the teacher sometimes sets online quiz homework, or other online written work. It really varies in quality - some is useful and some is not.

Other than specific lessons in the computer rooms, or kids with SEN, the classroom work is non screens. They don’t use textbooks much though - a lot of photocopied sheets. No phones out in school. As the tech used for homework gets better, they’re using it more usefully. I fully expect that at university they’ll do a lot more on laptops / tablets. It’s important to learn how to do this, but it can be gradual.

Secondary school is fine, no need at primary beyond IT lessons.

Tech has been essential for my dyslexic child.

and frankly it’s what kids need to learn these days.

FAOD I've not seen any research on the effects of tech use on ND kids so I have no view on that either way. My focus is on NT kids where there is increasing evidence of harm.

Eg one of my fellow Smartphone Free "cult members" 😂😆has just sent me an interesting Guardian article which highlights further research showing how learning from screens is less effective than learning from paper. From the Guardian itself (and you'll be pleased to know that since the Guardian article was published, the research in question has been peer reviewed and published):

"....What if the principal culprit behind the fall of [US] middle-school literacy is neither a virus, nor a union leader, nor “remote learning”?

Until recently there has been no scientific answer to this urgent question, but a soon-to-be published, groundbreaking study [has now been published] from neuroscientists at Columbia University’s Teachers College has come down decisively on the matter: for “deeper reading” there is a clear advantage to reading a text on paper, rather than on a screen, where “shallow reading was observed”.

Using a sample of 59 children aged 10 to 12, a team led by Dr Karen Froud asked its subjects to read original texts in both formats while wearing hair nets filled with electrodes that permitted the researchers to analyze variations in the children’s brain responses. Performed in a laboratory at Teachers College with strict controls, the study – which has not yet been peer reviewed [it has now been peer reviewed] – used an entirely new method of word association in which the children “performed single-word semantic judgment tasks” after reading the passages.

Vital to the usefulness of the study was the age of the participants – a three-year period that is “critical in reading development” – since fourth grade [Year 5] is when a crucial shift occurs from what another researcher describes as “learning to read” to “reading to learn”.

Froud and her team are cautious in their conclusions and reluctant to make hard recommendations for classroom protocol and curriculum. Nevertheless, the researchers state: “We do think that these study outcomes warrant adding our voices … in suggesting that we should not yet throw away printed books, since we were able to observe in our participant sample an advantage for depth of processing when reading from print.”

I would go even further than Froud in delineating what’s at stake. For more than a decade, social scientists, including the Norwegian scholar Anne Mangen, have been reporting on the superiority of reading comprehension and retention on paper. As Froud’s team says in its article: “Reading both expository and complex texts from paper seems to be consistently associated with deeper comprehension and learning” across the full range of social scientific literature.

A groundbreaking study shows kids learn better on paper, not screens. Now what? | US education | The Guardian

I heard that smoking is actually really good for your health as well as making you look super-cool so hey, don't let any robust properly researched peer-reviewed evidence anti-smoking "cult" members persuade you otherwise, you just keep puffing away....!
🤦🏼‍♀️

Another screen-time benefit - shortsightedness for all!

Every hour children spend on screens raises chance of myopia, study finds | Children's health | The Guardian

Or this from UNESCO (maybe they're part of the SFC cult too...though they do say "Using technology can improve some types of learning in some contexts. The report cites evidence showing that learning benefits disappear if technology is used in excess or in the absence of a qualified teacher."):

"Sound, rigorous and impartial evidence of technology’s added value in learning is needed more than ever, but is lacking. Most evidence comes from the United States, where the What Works Clearinghouse pointed out that less than 2% of education interventions assessed had ‘strong or moderate evidence of effectiveness’."

Ah well, 2% is better than 0%....just about!

You're doing a fantastic job of demonstrating what a wonderful resource the internet is. Incredible what you can read on screens isn't it.

Our primary has some chromebooks, but they are shared between classes. It's no different to doing ICT lessons in our era, but instead of going to the "computer room" to crowd around a few massive PC screens, the computers come to your classroom. They are left in a big cart during day and wheeled around to a classroom when they have an ICT lesson.
All very normal.
They have an hour of ICT maybe once or twice a week.

You're right, I’m so lucky that when I was at primary school 40 years ago there was none of that antediluvian book rubbish, and that they gave us all Chromebooks and set us lots of work on learning apps, and that I did all my homework online, all of it! Otherwise, as an adult, well I’d just never have been able to figure out any of this confusing interweb stuff, would I?!

As for that law degree I got from Cambridge, I credit it entirely to Sparx maths, without which I would undoubtedly have zero reasoning skills, and would probably just be dragging my knuckles on the floor Neanderthal-style.
Thank you Sparx, I couldn’t have done it without you!

I don't know any secondary schools that don't use Sparx as standard for all Maths homework.

Do you even know how the platform works?

I think you might struggle to find a secondary school that will work for you. There are no text books these days in any subjects.

The cult’s latest offering (I like what I did there) includes a harm I’d overlooked in this context - my bad, as they say. This is just one of the points made by a Stanford professor of education:

“Another problem with platforms is that they, by necessity, amass large swaths of data. Myriad forms of educational technology exist – from virtual reality headsets to e-readers to the small sensors on student ID cards that can track when students enter schools. And all of this student data is being funneled out of schools and into the virtual black boxes of company databases.

Part of why I’ve grown so skeptical about this current digital revolution is because of how these tools reshape students’ bodies and their relation to the world around them. Young people are not viewed as complete human beings but as boxes checked for attendance, for meeting academic progress metrics, or for confirming their location within a school building. Nearly every action that students perform in schools – whether it’s logging onto devices, accessing buildings, or sharing content through their private online lives – is noticed and recorded. Children in schools have become disembodied from their minds and their hearts. Thus, one of the greatest and implicit lessons that kids learn in schools today is that they must sacrifice their privacy in order to participate in conventional, civic society.

Or there’s this admittedly rather out of date but still informative piece published in Time magazine by a psychologist:

“From inner-city schools to those in rural and remote towns, we have accepted tech in the classroom as a necessary and beneficial evolution in education.

This is a lie.
Tech in the classroom not only leads to worse educational outcomes for kids, which I will explain shortly, it can also clinically hurt them. I’ve worked with over a thousand teens in the past 15 years and have observed that students who have been raised on a high-tech diet not only appear to struggle more with attention and focus, but also seem to suffer from an adolescent malaise that appears to be a direct byproduct of their digital immersion. Indeed, over two hundred peer-reviewed studies point to screen time correlating to increased ADHD, screen addiction, increased aggression, depression, anxiety and even psychosis.”

I agree with you, OP. My DC's school issues a chromebook for each child. It's the only thing I don't like about the school, and it's for two reasons:

1. We have very little control over it. The school's filter is installed and I'm sure it's very good, so I'm not overly concerned about inappropiate material, but there's no way for us to install time limits on it the way we have on our own devices. Yes, it just means we have to parent, I know. And we do. But it's another source of friction which frankly I could do without. And it's more screentime doing things that wouldn't otherwise require a screen, so even if the activity is wholesome (writing stories etc), the screen aspect means more stimulation, more blue light in the evenings, etc
2. Lots of the DC's homework and learning is done via the chromebook. Seneca for science, Mathswatch for maths, Sentencebuilder for Spanish. And I can see the advantages: teachers can see what has been done and when, with much more data, and many of these platforms are dynamic and taylor the questions so that each pupil gets more practice on their weak areas, less on their strong ones. But, I can't shake the feeling (and I'm sure there's research to back this up, although I don't have time to look it up now) that clicking on numbers/words with a mouse doesn't activate the same neural pathways as writing does. I just don't think children learn as effectively via screens as they do with the various manifestations of pen and paper - flashcards, mind maps, blurting, past papers etc.

Scrolling To Death is quite interesting on this:
https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1BmjrZ5CEA/

Thanks, it’s a really powerful speech which was shared by the pesky Smartphone Free bunch a week or two ago. But I’ve been keen to dig into the underlying research, to head off any predictable bleating that “Sophie Winkleman is just a posh actress so what would she know anyway?”.

Winkleman fact - we once shared the earthquake simulator at the Natural History Museum with SW and family 🤣.

Well I wish you lots of luck.

DD finishes school in less than 4 weeks time so not our problem.

Heads up though, we have one of the cult members on the year WAG. Posts all these kinds of articles and petitions. Strangely everyone just scrolls on past and ignores her...

And all the best to your daughter (genuinely!).

At my DCs’ primary there are almost 90 parents in the dedicated Smartphone Free WAG so posts of these kind get lots of interest and petitions get a huge amount of support 😊

I'm in the US and chrome books or iPads were distributed to all the school kids in my local elementary and HS Dstricts, and also in the local private schools, at the start of our covid lockdown. Laptops had been essential for HS students well before then, and the school had provided one for each student. Older models were upgraded at the time.

They are still going strong. I personally think it's a sad thing, but in truth, I saw a lot of worksheets before the chromebooks, and that isn't optimal either IMHO.

Screens are not necessarily bad, but you can always limit them at home, apart from homework if they are to use them for that.

Smartphone free WhatsApp groups. 😂

I agree wholeheartedly with that assessment.

I don't like the way all this is heading.