DailyDirt: Parenting With Technology
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
Recently, the LA school district has had some problems with its adoption of iPads into its classrooms. Kids will be kids, and some of them figured out how to use their school-issued iPads for unsanctioned activities like watching movies, playing games and wasting time on Facebook. Clearly, there’s a bit of a learning curve for using technology as an educational tool as educators try to figure out how to lock down the devices and keep kids focused on using them solely for school-related work. Many parents with young kids want to encourage their children to use all kinds of technology, but the advice and recommendations from various experts can be a bit conflicting or almost useless. Here are just a few links on kids and screen time.
- According to recent surveys, technology is not at the top of the list of concerns that parents have about their newborn to 8yo kids. Parents who have grown up using technology are flexible in their own adoption of technology as a parenting tool — and not all of them use iPads as toddler pacifiers/babysitters. [url]
- Some prestigious pre-schools are handing iPads to 18mo kids, but not every parent agrees that barely-potty-trained kids should be interacting with a touchscreen instead of other humans. Also, you don’t want to touch that iPad after a kid who’s not potty trained has used it. [url]
- Plenty of folks are discussing the effects of screen time on kids. Apparently, some are making a distinction between “active” and “passive” screen time — but it’s still not clear if educational apps are actually educational. [url]
If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.
Filed Under: babysitter, computers, education, ipads, kids, mental development, parenting, pre-school, school, screen time, tools, trend
Comments on “DailyDirt: Parenting With Technology”
One iPad per child…. At $1000 per kid
So, uh, this seems like a website full of smart people, so maybe one of you can answer this question for me:
Why does the LA School District even care whether the students are using the iPads for personal enjoyment?
Every article I’ve read on this story takes it as a given that if students are using them for fun it must be a terrible failure that necessitates reevaluating the entire program, but… why?
If the work gets done what does the school care what else kids do?
The articles also never really explain what the iPads are for; it seems to me that, say, typing a 20 page report on an iPad would actually be kind of an uncomfortable pain in the ass, compared to using, say, a netbook of some kind.
What makes the iPad appealing is that you can take it with you everywhere you go and have lots of freedom to browse the internet and share documents with people you meet in real life. If you take away that aspect of them for students, what makes them an improvement over books and paper?
Re: Re:
The whole idea of everyone having an apple product is to positively influence the bottom line at apple.
I thought this was common knowledge.
Actually I’d rather touch an iPad from a kid who hasn’t been potty trained. At that stage, someone else is changing their nappy and dealing with “stuff”, so their hands will be pretty clean.
Early stages of potty training however … hmmm …
Re: Re:
After experience of my four-year-old, he definitely had cleaner hands when he still had a nappy… 🙁
I’m quite comfortable with technology for the kids but I disagree with using it as pacifiers or something. I also think that the kids should have plenty of ‘real world’ interactions meaning the use of technology should be limited.
Giving iPads for the 18-month-olds seem somewhat excessive unless they are just part of the process and are not used constantly. Also… iPads? Really?