Tech in The Classroom

Technology is really cool. It’s fun.  Teachers want tech in their classrooms.  There is not too much doubt in my mind that we need to figure out ways to expose children on how to write code just like we teach them to write the English language.    But how much tech do we need in the classroom?  School districts have spent millions on technology.  Parents and teachers wanted it. As a parent, I get it.  You don’t want your kid to finish second place in the race and you will do anything to help them.  But, now teachers and parents are pushing back.

When my daughter went to law school, I told her to take handwritten notes. The temptation would be to take notes on a device.  In my personal experience when I was going to class for my MBA, when I took handwritten notes I remembered.  When I tried taking notes on my computer, I didn’t.  The tech also could be distracting for me.  Kids in grade/middle/high school classrooms have different distractions than I did but I believe that tech distracts them just the same.

I have tried to read books on a Kindle or tablet, but I find I like reading the actual book.  Maybe it’s just me since I grew up reading books.  I have friends that are my age that love reading on a Kindle and I don’t read newsprint anymore.  I get it all virtually.

At the same time, I am invested in a company that started in Chicago but is now based in San Francisco called Brilliant.  Many teachers find using it in the classroom is an asset.  It’s the largest social network of kids solving math and science problems together.  They have various “pay for” tracks so you can learn machine learning and other difficult skills.  Give it a try when you are commuting in an Uber or on the bus instead of going to a social media app.

I worry about how much screen time kids these days have.  Some have difficulty being social.  I am not talking about the normal surliness that kids and teens might have.  I am talking about their ability to interact with other humans in a normal way. I worry screen time gives kids a weird impression of the world.  They might be able to objectify people easier, since on a screen you often don’t know what’s real and what’s not.  Instead of opening up the world, we are narrowing it.

There is something about the hand to hand social interaction when you play a board game versus a screen game.  I think that in the classroom, even though we can use software like Excel to do all our math functions and statistical functions for us, it really does help to have learned to do them by hand so you know the basis for how everything is calculated.