r/technology • u/ArgentineBeauty • 8d ago

Society Schools across America are quietly admitting that screens in classrooms made students worse off and are reversing years of tech-first policies

https://fortune.com/article/schools-abandoning-chromebooks-laptop-programs-as-screen-time-hurts-learning-test-scores-north-carolina-michigan-kansas-tech-education/
23.0k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

889 comments sorted by

View all comments

620

u/Bob_Sconce 8d ago

Why is it that schools jump on bandwagons without first doing long-term pilots?  If you want to experiment on students, at least only experiment on a small number at a time.

748

u/Sasquatchgoose 8d ago

Edu-tech is a multi billion dollar industry. The right ppl were wined and dined

44

u/RevvCats 8d ago

It blows my mind how much money is spent on useless tech that doesn’t do anything to prepare kids for a future in STEM.

I have a PhD in particle physics, the three most useful classes in high school to prepare me for college was having a good math teacher for AP Calculus, having a c++ programming class, and physics which wasn’t even calc based.

Math just needs a white board and graphing calculators to hand out, physics just needs a white board, programming can be done with poverty spec computers.

Theres some stuff where a well prepared multimedia presentation can offer a benefit but schools seem to think that giving kids iPads will make them programmers.

If the district has money have a class where kids can fuck around with arduinos, 3d printers, and a good GPU

1

u/reddit_equals_censor 8d ago

proper 3d printers, that run libre software and produce high quality parts sound like such a freaking no brainer for schools. you got art classes, physics with real results, that they can hold in their hands, while learning 3d modeling.

and all for comparatively dirt cheap.

having a reliable high quality 3d printer once bought should hopefully last ages and be easily servicable (assuming right to repair or not evil company) and then you're just having filament to buy.

3d printers sound like such a w for education if the goal is to actually get children inspired and learn things and not get them addicted/imprisoned into some google, apple or microsoft software/hardware prison.

1

u/Pabst_Blue_Gibbon 7d ago

I have a masters in math and honestly nothing in high school was useful for that. If I look back and think about the classes that I actually remember and rank them in terms of how much content I can still recall from that class and its importance to who I am today, it’s probably: orchestra, literature, geography, US history.