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Comment by kleiba | Hacker News Reader

There's a big political agenda where I live to push laptops, tablets and other IT into schools, but so far no-one has been able to explain to me why this is thought to be necessary or even a good idea.

The common answer that kids need to be able to us information technology as a way to prepare them for challenges of their later life is laughable: most kids are already way more tech-savvy when they enter grade 4 or so than most teachers.

All I see is teachers unfit to use the medium effectively, and technical problems that prevent efficient use (wifi to restricted or too open, projector connection not working, incompatibilities between devices, etc.).

To me, this seems to be fad-like activism on the side of some politicians trying to make their mark without any real plan. Oh, well, I guess that way it's like the rest of the educational system...

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Nah, tech-savy means that they can use a few selected apps which mostly look all the same. Most kids are at the same level of "incompetence" when it comes to connecting printers, projectors, editing settings, presenter views, streaming, etc., as are their teachers. Even the basic settings (eg. on their phones) are usually an untouched feature of their devices.

There are some exceptions of course, as they always were, but what the tv was for older generations, computers and phones are for the new generations... just enough technical knowledge needed to see the content and not a bit more.

At my kids school, blackboards have long ago been replaced by digiboards, which enables the teacher to show much more than a blackboard allows. There's also a bunch of chromebooks that are required for certain exercises. It certainly helped me when I wanted to give programming lessons there, but they're also used for language and math. One big advantage is that it can provide kids with a much more personal approach than a sheet of paper or classical lessons can, and with 20+ kids per classroom, the teacher can't give personal lessons to everybody.

Not everything is on the chromebook, though; lots is still from books and paper. I think a mix is a good approach. Of course the school does first need to ensure that the tech works seamlessly. That doesn't seem to be the case in your school.

I've no doubt it's true that the "digiboard" allow richer content than a blackboard, but the real question should be do children learn more effectively this way? And I don't have the answer to that, but there's surely research on the topic.

They might be tech-savvy but that's entirely touch-based for the majority of kids. If we think keyboards and non-touch computers will still be the medium of work in the future it's crucial that kids learn how to use them.

But that's not what is taught in the schools around me where everything is done on tablets, too.

My kindergartener has a laptop, which I thought was ridiculous. But they use it to do adaptive math and reading programs, which actually seem useful to let the kids learn at their own speed.

OTOH, the best would be if the teacher was delivering 1:1 tailored instruction based on student need, but that’s not happening, so at least the computer can teach him something.

Some subjects can benefit from dynamic difficulty. A teacher can handle a limited number of difficulty levels for kids of different skills. A computer can handle many more. It's good for kids to get a subject at their own level, instead of being bored or discouraged by stuff that's too easy or too hard.

There's a difference between what theoretically could be achieved with IT - in a perfect world - and what is actually being done in praxis right now. There's no concept in place, as far as I can tell, other than "we need to have tablets in schools".

Oh, that sucks. Is the school any good in other regards? Or just sucky in general?

At my kids' school the tech is used mostly like I described, and it really does help to give a bit of needed challenge to them.

I'm not just talking about one specific school - this is basically state policy.

100% agree - and it's having a serious impact on at least one of my kids who has a learning disability. Teachers just really aren't equipped to deal with kids on devices who know how to use them better than the teachers do.

> most kids are already way more tech-savvy

What about those who aren't? Public education is designed to pull those struggling to average level, not leave them behind.

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