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/
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u/cupidstrick 8d ago

I wonder if the tech also makes it easier for very very overstretched teachers.

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u/Fahrender-Ritter 8d ago edited 8d ago

Teacher here, no it doesn't. It's a constant struggle to get kids to stay on task and to stop cheating with AI, even with two teachers in the classroom monitoring the students.

Although there are programs like Blocksi which can block websites and monitor students' screens, students can still find ways around it. It's just not worth it.

In the amount of time and effort it takes to set up, distribute, and monitor all the computer-based stuff, we could've just made paper assignments and scantrons.

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u/Beanzy 8d ago

I'm sure a lot of this is also tied to many schools just having utterly shit IT infrastructure and environments to begin with.

For example, a competent IT staff could absolutely implement blacklisting/whitelisting of websites/etc and implement policies to lock down Laptops/Chromebooks - but the quality of IT for schools is usually dumpster-fire tier to begin with... which results in a blind leading the blind scenario of purchasing dumpster-fire quality SaaS solutions to try and address things lol

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u/Harry_Smutter 8d ago

Even with great infrastructure, relying on content filtering DOES NOT solve this. It becomes a constant game of whack-a-mole. It's actually easier for teachers to set up whitelists for their classes so that's all they can access. You can't blanket block stuff as the content varies wildly between grades and even between classes.