Too much tech: Devices distract students, don't support learning

Hoping to be "innovative," schools have added digital devices -- tablets, Chromebooks, iPads and so on -- without a clear idea of how to use them or any reason to believe students will learn more, writes Amy Tyson on After Babel.

A former child therapist and the mother of four children, Tyson is a co-founder of Everyschool, which promotes the limited use of technology only if it's superior to traditional methods.

"Teachers are pressured to use devices and apps because districts have invested millions in technology," she writes. Students spend more and more time on screens.

. . . students using reading apps like Epic! can swipe through entire books in seconds to earn digital rewards, without actually reading. One parent told me her second grader “read” 40 books during 30 minutes of silent reading. The teacher’s goal was to use the iPad and practice reading. The child’s goal was to collect badges and unlock a new avatar in the app. What we ended up with is a child who had 30 minutes of pointless screen time and no reading practice.

All that screen time, "may be contributing to academic and social-emotional challenges, while displacing the human connection students need most," Tyson writes.

Children enjoy reading more when they read printed books, she writes and they show "improved comprehension, recall, long-term memory, attention, working memory, and a deeper knowledge of the material."

"Likewise, handwriting notes improves memory, recall, and conceptual understanding of complicated material, while supporting brain development in young learners," Tyson writes.

We don't know what tech skills students will need in the 21st century, she writes, but they're even more likely to need "soft skills that screens in schools may actually be undermining," such as the ability to pay attention.

When students are used to being constantly entertained by a device, it's "harder for them to focus on more demanding tasks, or on almost anything in the real world, because the real world is rarely as stimulating as a screen," she writes.

In EdTech’s 10 Best Practices and The EdTech Triangle, Tyson recommends eliminating low-value ed-tech while retaining tech that teaches high-level skills such as "robotics, website design, digital marketing, or music editing." Eventually, students should learn to create a spreadsheet, locate online resources, cite sources, observe online etiquette and so on, she writes.

Most school districts buy ed-tech without knowing if it will be effective, writes Chris Liang-Vergara, chief learning officer at the Advanced Education Research and Development Fund. There aren't many "high-quality, evidence-backed products," he writes. Research and development of new ed-tech is fragmented, at best.