Technology At Someday School

I saw a Facebook post this morning, which I cannot find anywhere now, but I wanted to mention it here. It was by a mother whose young son switched from a school where every student was required to have a tablet, to a school where every classroom had a few tablets for teachers to use but did not issue them to students.

These days, the popular thought seems to be that every child should have access to tablets and the Internet at all times. The post I read was by a mother who saw things differently. When her elementary school aged child went to a school where he was given an iPad and required to bring it back and forth between home and school, she saw his school performance decline. His attitude about school also changed. Plus, he lost his tablet several times, eventually for good. When he switched to a new school, his grades and attitude went back up.

I personally love technology. While I am definitely not any sort of expert, I am always fascinated by things like cellphones, tablets, apps, social networks, etc. On the other hand, I've seen bad things happen when children are given free access to technology. In the classrooms where I've taught, many of the kids who would have behavioral outbursts for no obvious reason would say they were angry because they wanted to go home and play video games. I heard from parents who were worried that their children were getting addicted to video games. When given the opportunity to earn iPad breaks, children would rush carelessly through their work just to get to the iPads. I also found that, with many children, if an adult wasn't watching over their shoulder at all times, they would find their way off of approved apps and sites and get into questionable content.

While it used to be assumed that children from wealthy families, who would have access to more technology, would be at an advantage over those from low-income families, it is turning out to be the opposite... well, as far as technology is concerned. Silicon Valley parents, many of whom have formed their careers around technology, are opting to restrict their children from technology and send them to schools where technology is limited. Why? Because staring at a screen all day trains your brain to just... stare at a screen all day.
Technology can be awesome. For me, as a person with autism, it opened new worlds. When I was just learning about my diagnosis, I was able to reach out to others who had it. I was able to find Meetup groups, and forums, and blogs. I was able to start my own blog. Being able to research experiences ahead of time also helped me to decrease my anxiety about them, which allowed me to experience the real world more fully. But, I was born in a weird era that floated between technology and no technology. My parents swear that I learned to read when I was one year old, and I was "addicted" to books earlier than I can remember. I was around 4 when I first played a video game, on my uncle's Atari. It was some sort of Pacman like game. Around the same time, my parents got us a Coleco Vision, and my 3-year-old brother and I would play those simple games for hours. But games were different then. Even when we graduated to a Super Nintendo, the games were innocent, with Mario and Luigi stomping on Goombas and fighting dragons. And we still played outside, and played with our toys, and read books, and had friends, and went places. Each summer we spent a week in a cabin in the north woods of Wisconsin, with no access to TV or even televisions... and we never missed it. We didn't whine or beg for our technology. It was a small part of our lives.

There is so much more in the world for children to experience, outside of technology. As a teacher, I want to use technology to open up more of the world for children, but not allow it to be the world for children. Did you ever see that commercial for a computer, where a little girl is sitting in a field beside a baby elephant, but instead of interacting with the baby elephant, the child is looking at a video of a baby elephant? The message was supposed to be that technology is even better than the real world. But if any of my children get the chance to be inches away from a baby elephant, I want them to be in awe of it. I want them to be seeing it, touching it, smelling it, talking to it, talking about it, and remembering the experience forever.

I've come up with what I think will be a good compromise for technology at Someday School. We will have a few Kindles, and each child will have a KIndle Freetime profile on one of the Kindles. This will enable them to use their Kindle for a predetermined amount of time each day, and then they'll be cut off. It will also help to keep them from accessing content that isn't kid-friendly. The Freetime program does allow children to use their Kindles for reading books even after they've used up their screen time, but that is probably okay. We all love books. If children need to use a computer to look up something they want to learn about, they can use a teacher's tablet under supervision.

This way, technology will be just one of the choices children will have during their day. They can choose when to have their screen time, and what to do with it, but when it is finished, it will be time to move on to other "real life" activities.

I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on tablets. Invaluable to the educational experience, something to avoid altogether, or would you just as soon take them as leave them?