My daughter(12)'s keyboard got broken, now she is afraid she wont be able to take her exam with an external keyboard because there is a spyware extension they use called 'safe exam browser' that might block her computer when she plugs the keyboard.
Most of the kids are just using it to snapchat during class.
I will honestly prefer to just ban all tech from schools.
As far as I know Sweden is rolling back[1]large parts of the digitalization at schools. Not just because of cloud usage, maintenance and incompetence.
The digital devices harm learning. Sweden will spend 60 million for reintroducing actual books, focus on actual reading and writing (important for learning and motoric ability).
I’m not surprised. While I’m sceptic about many positions of Manfred Spitzer [2] (University of Ulm) I’m afraid that he is right in many areas. A tablet is not the tool to discover the world for a child. They need to view, touch, smell and focus on matters.
Putting aside that Apple (iPad), Google (Chromebook) and Microsoft (Surface) just want to train child’s to depend on their stuff forever. We can still introduce computers at the age of 12 and the kids will adapt - and teach required basics (control your data, understand technic on high level, touch-typing, how you can access knowledge…and that a lot of companies and people are hostile).
Actual reading is super important; the letteredness of people has been in decline for decades, and while it's partially to blame on the shift in entertainment preferences, schools de-emphasising reading and understanding in favor of other skills has been a big factor as well.
Your remark about the suppliers wanting to get the kids "hooked" on their products isn't new btw, this was happening 20+ years ago already with MS Office and co.
Yesterday the Danish Minister of Education went on screen to tell everybody he will try and help the schools reduce the use of screens and electronics.
He wants handwriting and books back in the classrooms.
As someone who went to a high school (Italy) where in the first two years each student had a laptop they could use in the classroom, I agree that having a computer per student is a bad idea.
In my experience, what ended up happening was that pupils who already knew their way around a computer didn't really get any extra benefit from using cmputers in the classroom and those who didn't like using computers hated it even more when forced to write out an assignment on a keyboard as supposed to handwriting.
Most importantly though, they were a HUGE distraction. Any time the lesson got boring because the teacher wasn't good or just not good at getting the kids engaged in the lesson (which happened quite often sadly, but that is another discussion) we would all just start playing on the computers. Some kids came to school just to play videogames and barely learned anything.
Now, some of these issues (like bad professors, smart kids getting bored because of slow pace of lessons) have always been present in every school all over the world but I do think that having tech in the classroom just makes things worse, as now even those who would have normally followed the lesson are tempted to just turn on their computer and pretend to take notes when really they are playing Candy crush. It's bad enough being a teenager and being bombarded with stimuli from your phone and social media, having that kind of distraction at school just makes things even worse.
So yeah, I think tech in school is one of those things that sounds great but usually just back-fires in spectacular ways (imho).
I think a lot of it started because of one of the better intended projects — the One Laptop Per Child movement that tried to give laptops to kids in poor countries. A key premise was that a laptop could be cheaper than all of the textbooks normally required, so the whole thing was really saving money.
But envy is one of the most powerful forces in politics, even when it doesn't make sense. So the idea that children in Namibia were getting laptops, while kids in Virginia weren't — even though it was a money-saving trick — that was just unacceptable. And unlike in the OLPC, schools bought laptops from a variety of vendors, mostly interested in upselling lots of unnecessary features rather than providing a lightweight textbook device. Anyone familiar with the history of the TI-83 understands that corporations selling technology to schools are the lowest form of life.
I can't say for sure that this is what caused it, but it was right around the time that laptops started showing up in schools, and also when the concept of the "netbook" was introduced. The early netbooks certainly seemed to be imitating that weird green blob-shaped thing that OLPC hoped would revolutionize education in the less developed world.
>
Most importantly though, they were a HUGE distraction. Any time the lesson got boring because the teacher wasn't good or just not good at getting the kids engaged in the lesson (which happened quite often sadly, but that is another discussion) we would all just start playing on the computers. Some kids came to school just to play videogames and barely learned anything.
I would not fault computers here. At my school time, when pupils were bored, they covertly played card games like Skat [a German card game] or graph paper games like Battleship, Racetrack, Connect Four, ... under the school desks.
I still remember this one girl who, when the teacher confiscated one deck of Skat cards, the moment that the teacher looked away, simply took out another deck from her school bag, and play continued (she played Skat semi-competitively, so she nearly always had, I think, dozens of decks of Skat cards in her school bag).
Another former friend had an insane creativity in turning stuff that one could find in a pencil case into contraptions for shooting rubber pieces.
> and those who didn't like using computers hated it even more when forced to write out an assignment on a keyboard as supposed to handwriting.
Whether they like it is not is secondary; did they learn to use the machine? Because some amount of ability to use computers is rather important in the modern world.
It’s amazing that laptops were the thing that introduced distraction to pupils in school. Not paper football. Not whispering. Not passing notes. Not staring out the window. Not sleeping. Not spending too much time in the bathroom.
The amount of damage and breakages to these laptops has to be insane. Teenagers yeet their bags, mess with each other's tech, etc. As a school you can't make the parents responsible for damages, because a lot simply cannot afford replacements or repairs.
While IT skills are important and should be taught at schools, please do it in the traditional fashion; have a computer lab, make everything abuse resistant, and get a favorable repair / maintenance contract.
We have a 15 year old that managed to destroy 3 or 4 laptops and four phones in the span of five years.
> because a lot simply cannot afford replacements or repairs.
My kid’s elementary school policy for iPad damage was $100 for the first damage, $250 for the second, $500 for the third.
This was problematic for a few reasons: 1) they didn’t have anyone to debug devices in a school of 1000 kids, so any problem was damage and parents were fined; 2) the iPad was several years old and costs $300 to just buy; 3) if the iPad was stolen then the full $500 was due; 4) they wouldn’t provide cases and asked the parents to purchase only specific cases and any other cases were removed. Their approved cases weren’t very good; 5) location tracking was turned on even outside of schools.
When I tried to talk with the administration they said something like “this is as good as we can do.” They said that it was mandatory for kids to use these devices. I bought my kid their own iPad refurbed for 289 or something with AppleCare for $7/month and used that for 3 years of elementary school. Arguing with the admin every year when they tried to say this wasn’t allowed.
I agree. Kids don't need these types of concerns and distractions in their formative years. And computers are inherently distracting—as the intrinsic design of modern computers ensures that's the case.
Thankfully, my primary education was before computer tech in schools or I'd have been sidetracked by the technology and it's pretty certain I'd have learned much less. Even by that age I was fascinated by electronic stuff and invariably I'd have pull it apart or tested it to destruction.
Right, had I had the tech I'd have lost out on two accounts, not only would I have been distracted by it but I'd have likely lost it or rendered it useless by the time exams came around. Not having the compulsory tech necessary for exams would have added further unecessary stress and distraction.
When I was a teenager, my mom bought me a computer. By the end of the first year, you'd think I have a computer workshop in my bedroom, due to various part I was trying to add to the cases. I can't even remember the amount of gadgets I've destroyed trying to take them apart.
If you're trying to teach IT to students, have a tech lab. If the students need to watch something, it can be done with a projector.
When I was in high school, I got a special exemption to be allowed to use a laptop to take notes because my hand would cramp trying to jot down everything the teacher wanted us to. Once I was at university, everybody was using a laptop. They were incredibly distracting.
I now know that I never needed one. If a teacher uses the Socratic method, I learn very effectively as long as the dialogue is engaging. Note taking slows me down and doesn’t allow to me fully process what has been said. I always had to spend a large amount of time reviewing the notes after class and realized how much didn’t soak in when I was taking them.
The issue was, far too many teachers would add one random bit of trivia into a quick sentence they said and use that as a question on the next exam. Even if that bit of knowledge wasn’t in the related books or could be naturally deduced by understanding the topic.
The best teachers I had didn’t require me to use laptops. I realize that now that I am attending Greek school as an adult and only use a small notepad to take quick notes on something to follow up with later like vocab to add to Anki. A class of 12 engaged in dialogue is far more effective for myself.
I really don't get this, as far as I am aware, in Portugal there are still hardly any laptops or tablets in most schools, other than fancy ones for upper class folks.
Everyone else is pen and paper, shared computer labs, and home computers shared by all family kids.
Actually a few years ago schools started lending laptops (which you have to return at the end of the school year), but as far as I remember we never used them in class.
I can't quite recall if this was before the covid outbreak, but I think we still had in person classes that year.
That’s why poorer countries are thriving in maths literacy according to a report by the OCDE called “computers and learning making the connection” or something like that
I think they're a problem in universities too. I'm sure I've seen research that suggests students in lectures who take notes on paper get better grades that students who use laptops in lectures.
> I'm sure I've seen research that suggests students in lectures who take notes on paper get better grades that students who use laptops in lectures.
Honestly, I hated taking notes in lectures (and considered the necessity for it to be a distraction from paying full attention). On the other hand, there were these students who live-LaTeXed math lectures on their laptops ...
My kid had tablets in kindergarten that did the majority of the lessons. It's pretty horrifying in a lot of ways (way too much screen time), but has some advantages. If your kid learns well that way, they can move ahead at their own pace.
They do a lot of phonics in my kids class. She finished all her phonics lessons early in the year, so now she just uses that time to read a few chapter book chapters instead that I send with her to school, which is much more relevant than just doing extra phonics anyway (that's another story though).
Laptops are pretty useful for writing essays and doing research. It's also good to get some computer experience in, because the younger generation is growing up only knowing smartphones and doing as terrible a job in environments where they need to use computers (offices and such) as the retiring baby boomers are. Saving files using a mouse, and printing documents isn't something you know from birth, and we owe it to our children to teach them some basic computer experience.
I can't fathom while you'd use anyone's personal device to take tests, though. What could possibly be taught to a 12 year old that couldn't be tested in the form of a written exam? It's always the tyrannical anti cheat software that turns any good idea into a terrible experience.
> I will honestly prefer to just ban all tech from schools.
If we are talking about high schools and mainly technical high schools banning tech is contrary to the point of the school. I think a balanced view is better: carrying laptops on classes where you need them and also adapt classes if laptop could be beneficial.
Even in elementary school, my child has robotics.
In general, I think politicians use binary yes/no options because they are lazy and/or incapable of working or thinking harder.
Apart from lessons directly about computing and/or technology - of which there may be a handful of hours per week in a regular highschool - the number of subjects which "need a laptop" in high school is vanishingly small.
> politicians use binary yes/no options because they are lazy and/or incapable of working or thinking harder
Lobbyists don't even use binary. They're always pushing their product.
Hi. I had fairly severe dyslexia (and it turns out undiagnosed ADHD) in school, I could read fine, but handwriting in particular was hideously slow, to the point where I wasn't able to actually learn much because I was spending all my time laboriously writing things out. Once my parents persuaded the school to let me use an electronic word processor (I hesitate to call it a laptop by modern standards) for anything that involved writing it made the world of difference.
As a happy side effect it also had a BASIC interpreter, which I would absolutely use to distract myself in boring lessons. I've been a professional software developer more or less since I left school. Not sure what the lesson is there... give kids laptops but only allow text editors and compilers?
Think of tech like chemistry class. We don't let kids carry around chemicals all day to use however they want. Instead, we have them do experiments in a special lab under close watch. Computers should be treated the same way. They shouldn't be something students can use anytime, anywhere without guidance. Just like we handle dangerous chemicals with care, we should also be careful with technology. It's powerful, and if not used correctly, it can be harmful. Let's make sure when kids use computers, it's in a controlled environment, where they can learn safely and responsibly. Treat tech with respect, just like we do with chemistry.
It appears schools are having a difficult enough time learning basic skills like reading, writing, comprehension, and basic math. There’s no reason they need the distraction of laptops in the classroom.
We didn't have any tech in school and yet we've turned out just fine, now sitting here and typing this on HN. I'm all for banning tech from schools. Allowing Google to enter the school system has been a crime against our children.
It doesn't particularly seem like kids are learning about computers by using computers in school. They just have a constant distraction in front of them.
Only when the lesson for life is "how to get stuff done when you've got unlimited access to far more interesting things that nobody will reward you for".
For actually learning things? It's like pet food packaging.
What do I mean by that? The pets don't buy the food, their owners do; the result is the packaging is designed to appeal to the owners. Does a cat care about the bright colours their retinas can't see, the metaphors they don't have the language comprehension to process? Or do they seem like picky eaters because they're put off food when it has subtle odours that their owners can't perceive? Likewise, are dogs meat-obsessed like pop culture tells us, or are they omnivores that will joyfully wolf down just about anything and wait for their digestive tract to figure out afterwards if it needs to be rapidly expelled?
Parents and schools buy stuff to teach with, it's sold to the adults because the kids have neither the budget nor the judgement to decide what they ought to learn. But how good are those things at teaching? We only find out much later, at first when the kids take exams and we see how well they learned, and later when we look at the same people in the workforce and find out if that exam itself is representative of the skills we care about.
Learning as an adult, I get to see if online courses teach me; I've gone from being a heavy user of Duolingo, even paying for a subscription, to giving up on it entirely as it morphed from lessons into an annoying kids cartoon.
I'm worried that I'm seeing similar from Brilliant.org, too. The older courses on e.g. using Q# to program quantum computers is still good — hard, yes, but good, it's actually pushing me to learn more, and in this it reminds me of when I started learning programming on a Commodore 64 from the user manual when I was aged about 5 or 6 — but the newer course updates over the last year or so have focussed on unskippable "cute" cartoons and the absolute beginner level content that parents and teachers will pay for, not filling in the gaps with the hard stuff that brings in the most educational value.
Although I say that knowing my grades in school wouldn't have been trash if I'd been able to use a computer and not get discriminated for my handwriting.
While perhaps a bit hyperbolic, I agree. Though I will be more nuanced and say that ban all tech from classes that aren’t about the tech. I think computer literacy classes for children are more important than ever, and not every family has the means or knowledge to teach kids these skills.
When I was a teenager in the 2000s you could still go to the mall, walk into an store and fill out a paper application for jobs, though even then they looked at you a bit funny. I’m pretty sure that’s not possible anymore, so it’s effectively required to at least be able to access the internet to find a job and participate in society. You’ll also almost certainly need to know how to use computers, and depending on the work, understand files and file systems.
I’m follow some subreddits that tend to attract younger people who are interested in programming. Whatever you take for granted about basic computer knowledge, I suspect most people don’t have it. One recent example was someone concerned that if they saved more than one file in a folder, it would overwrite anything in there (like a video game save slot). I think for a lot of people their only computer knowledge comes from game consoles and phones.
Nobody is arguing that they shouldn't teach tech at all. When they're talking about bans, they're likely referring to for general classes (math, English, science...etc) and would of course be happy with a computer class that teaches typing, Excel, PPT, and some actual computer/STEM stuff like basic programming. It may sound old fashioned, but books work just as well for most classes with a lot less distraction. Assuming you let your kid watch a little TV or play video games...they're no longer getting 1-2 hours of screen time per day like we did, but rather more like 5-6 hours per day which is likely not healthy.
(Story Time) I had a crazy woman teach a computer elective in highschool, but she made sure everyone left the class typing efficiently without looking and we all knew how to use Excel and PPT. It really helped in college engineering and of course in the work force knowing a little Excel. The ppt stuff sounds ludicrous, but I use it a LOT at work as research and analysis is often summarized and presented to less technical stakeholders in that format. TBH, she basically made sure we were experts in the blue collar aspects of computing that office workers everywhere use. She also taught some history of computing and made sure we all knew common computer terminology like what OS, GUI, DOS, RAM, ROM...etc all meant. In hindsight it was a pretty useful class. The weirdest thing in the class...the teacher had a question on the final that asked which book of the Bible was most like the history of computing. All of us 8th-10th graders were absolutely dumbfounded where this bizzare question came from. Apparently the answer was Exodus, but she couldn't explain to us why and indicated it should be obvious if we had seen Pirates of Silicon Valley.
> If anything, schools are failing profoundly in preparing kids for a technological world.
This argument is often made (and also wrt preparing pupils for their professional life). I don’t think it the reasons you imply are right.
The problem is that nothing they could use now in school will prepare them for what they will need to use in the future. The software, tools and devices they will need will change as technology keeps evolving. What they need to learn is the basics, how to adapt to a new platform and core OPSEC principles. And they can learn that on pretty much anything.
> We need more hackers.
I was a kid of the 1990s, I know what you mean. But I also was a hacker. We had access to computers at school, which was great. But we did not have to use them all the time for things that are better done by other means of communication.
My kid just spent a couple of hours doing some programming on his school laptop, which is fantastic. What is not is requiring the same laptop to take exams with bullshit spyware and requiring it in the classroom for lectures that would be better without them. Then, they are a distraction and they do not help.
> I just spent three hours last night working on spanish homework on a school supplied chromebook with a high schooler, and it was pathetic how bad the UX was, how poorly the laptop performed, and just how painful the entire experience is.
Yes, Chromebooks are terrible. They are actually a hindrance more than anything else.
> If anything, the real issue is that the current school laptops suck. If anything, schools are failing profoundly in preparing kids for a technological world.
I would rather claim that this is a preparation for the corporate world where (except for the technology sector) work computers suck and are filled with corporate spyware. :-)
>I will honestly prefer to just ban all tech from schools.
Woah what a reactionary! No ballpoint pens, right?
>2028 the effects of the tech ban were apparent, in mere years, the productivity of this countries students had dropped well below global levels. Graduates the year before were becoming first class citizens as inequality became based on the year you were born.
This article advocates for Linux (Chromebook is already Linux) on refurbished hardware (a random mix of old laptops in a large-scale deployment lol) and a laundry list of other "technology solutions" which would be, obviously, impossible for a school system to smoothly maintain or even deploy.
I'm not sure privacydad has ever deployed or maintained an IT department. A school system is very complex.
For what they offer - Chromebooks are actually very good. My kids' school computers are probably better than most of the corporate-issue windows laptops I've ever had. Google docs/classroom are also very good compared to grab-bag of apps my kids have to use.
--- (general computers-in-school rant) ---
The clear answer is to get computers out of schools as much as possible! I know they won't so if you happen to work on this kind of software - PLEASE advocate for shipping better software!
My kids aren't even taught how to type but are expected to put together slide shows and things every other week.
The testing and assignments done on the computer are full of UX issues like missing scroll bars and confusing + inconsistent <form>s - Some tests allow you to go back and read the material, some don't, some lose your answers in-between, etc.
Every year there is massive churn of "apps" the school district was corrupted into buying to replace last year's crop of junk.
When advocates say Linux they unironically (and sometimes unknowingly) mean GNU+Linux.
This typically means a standard image the school can manage that has reasonable device management, with a company they can pay, and that their in-house IT can contact for support when the unexpected, unforseeable issues happen.
I have yet to hear one suggest ChromeOS or any Android tablet; those run the Linux kernel, but don't (AFAIK) use nearly any of the GNU software.
And I kind of get it. We've all seen the copy-pasta, and this division took on a life as a joke about a crazy person that takes things too far. But most of the people that make that joke seem to have forgotten that RMS frequently starts off looking crazy, but is nearly always vindicated. Sometimes it's five years, sometimes it's twenty. But it happens more often that not.
> refurbished hardware (a random mix of old laptops in a large-scale deployment lol)
On the refurbished laptop market, I see large amounts of the same series of laptops, often Thinkpads, for example. I assume this is because companies will replace entire collections of hardware dated for their purposes. I don't think it is too far-fetched to connect this market to schools in individual districts.
> a laundry list of other "technology solutions" which would be, obviously, impossible for a school system to smoothly maintain or even deploy.
School private networks seem unnecessary, especially nowadays when most apps are cloud-based and don't require installation. Many modern routers support domain blacklists to prevent access to inappropriate content. What else is needed?
Public sector IT in Denmark has been in a weird tug of war between those eager to sell out our data to American companies and those who naively think Ubuntu and LibreOffice can realistically replace the public sector's dependency on Microsoft.
We need to keep our data in Denmark and become less dependent on American companies (and especially Microsoft/Google). But the change needs to be led by IT professionals who care about usability and know better than forcing Linux and LibreOffice down the throat of elderly office workers.
One approach is to identify the business processes they are using Microsoft/Google apps for and then offer the entire process through well-designed web apps hosted in Denmark.
> better than forcing Linux and LibreOffice [...] well-designed web apps hosted in Denmark
Sure, instead of replacing Windows/M$-Office with Linux/LibreOffice, replace them with a web app which requires the elderly office workers to change their habits even more?
Why not sponsor developers to contribute to LibreOffice and fix the parts that aren't working or are causing problems instead? If all the public sector entities interested in replacing M$-Office in Europe contributed, they could really make a difference...
I'm far from a Linux zealot, in fact I'm writing this from Windows as it's the OS I prefer for my personal computing needs, but I don't see much of a problem with elderly office workers using Linux.
The main problem with Linux usability is installing and updating it. If all you do is browse, fill web forms and write documents, and you have the software to do so installed and maintained by someone else, I don't see how it can be much harder to use than Windows. It could even be easier in the sense that they could safely open "catvideo.exe" while slacking at work without causing a disaster.
If someone else is doing the maintenance then moving from Windows to Linux is no different than from Windows to Chromebook (arguably easier) for the average senior.
I moved my mum to Linux over Windows about a decade ago and her only requirement for a computer is that it has to run that "minty thing" - bless her, she has no idea what an OS is or why she should care.
> But the change needs to be led by IT professionals who care about
usability and know better than forcing Linux and LibreOffice down
the throat of elderly office workers.
I say there's a fair bit wrong in that sentence that needs unpacking:
Sadly, most schools do not have "IT professionals". They get the
person who knew a bit about computers and rose into the role - often
by attending a few week-long Microsoft training sessions pushed at the
school.
We need to get more real IT professionals in to schools, those who
have professional chartered status and observe codes of ethical
practice such as those the BCS advocate.
Secondly, IT professionals do not necessarily care or know anything
about usability. That suitability is for the teacher to
discern. Administrators care about budgets and ease of administration.
It's their convenience and usability that comes first. Usability is
context dependent. Which leads us to....
There is nothing wrong with the usability of LibreOffice or
Linux. They are both excellent products and in my subjective
experience far superior to those from Microsoft or Google.
We are talking about kids who have minimal needs and are working on
school projects, like a 1000 word essay, not important business deals,
safety critical systems or urgent reports with pristine scientific
typesetting that need to be published yesterday in Nature.
> We need to get more real IT professionals in to schools, those who
have professional chartered status and observe codes of ethical
practice such as those the BCS advocate.
Pay is too low compared to what they can get elsewhere.
>and those who naively think Ubuntu and LibreOffice can realistically replace the public sector's dependency on Microsoft
I was writing book reports on that exact stack over a decade ago. Its perfectly fine for students. Most people don't even explicitly chose Windows. They just use and adapt to whatever comes with their computer.
>forcing Linux and LibreOffice down the throat of elderly office workers.
Let office workers chose their needs on a case by case basis. But that shouldn't affect the stack you give to students.
I went from teaching in a Google environment to teaching in a Microsoft environment this year.
Though Google now feels familiar and relatively easy (though try moving documents from one folder to another online...), I'd almost forgotten that when it was first introduced, it was met with a lot of resistance, and teachers and students alike were confused for years.
Microsoft spaces (Teams, Edge) are far, far worse.
Since the schools I've worked at run their own servers locally, I think using Nextcloud as your main platform should be very doable. The apps you can install are mostly very slick and modern. (I use Talk for calls now, for example).
https://nextcloud.com/blog/keep-your-data-in-your-school-use...
I see the point about the clunkiness of LibreOffice. But as a teacher, I see great value in thinking carefully about what you introduce students to, because once a decision is in place, the effect multiplies with each new cohort of students.
Ubuntu? No way. Nothing on the DE works on Debian branch, basically avoid for consumer use.
Fedora? Yes please.
LibreOffice is downright terrible, please do not lump it into a problem of OS replacements. I'm 100% convinced there is some M$ plant that deliberately makes the GUI bad. I still use it, and I use Google's.
Unfortunately the US will never stop the hard courting of Denmark (the influence of which can be readily seen in Danish society, as American values are antithetical to Scandinavian values), because of Thule Air Base, the northernmost US military base, in Greenland.
You can see how much young Danes idolise the US. This could be said for more EU countries, but by my experience living in Denmark, it is much more pronounced there.
The real problem I saw with Chromebooks used in educational settings was not Google, but the extensions from sketchy third-parties forced on students by IT policy with unlimited permissions to vaccum up their data and sell to the highest bidder
> Danish schools will no longer be allowed to use Chromebooks and Google platforms
The ACTUAL Title of article, and leading paragraphs, may (sadly) tell a slightly different story:
> Final Decision on Chromebook Case in Denmark
> 03 Feb, 2024
> This week saw a conclusion on the Danish Chromebook case. The result, long-awaited by father and privacy activist Jesper Graugaard, shows that the Danish Data Protection Authority has issued an injunction regarding the tracking of children's personal data via Chromebook and Google platforms in schools.
> From 1 August 2024 onwards, Danish schools will no longer be allowed to enable Chromebooks and Google platforms to collect students' personal data for processing. Each municipality will need to give an indication of how they will comply to this injunction by 1 March 2024.
What's the problem with our children doing the entirety of their learning in a data collection box that aims to bombard them with advertisement and get them used to an ecosystem for lifelong ad targeting?
Now seriously, if Chromebooks didn't exist, couldn't you imagine a Black Mirror episode around this very theme?
This headline is misleading. According to the article schools CAN still use Chromebooks but they cannot enable the tracking functionality on them.
"From 1 August 2024 onwards, Danish schools will no longer be allowed to enable Chromebooks and Google platforms to collect students' personal data for processing."
> For activist Graugaard, the decision comes as a relief. He began his crusade against Chromebooks in school in his home town Elsinor over four years ago. While this week's report makes no reference to Jesper's initiatives, it is clear that this injunction could not have been issued without his tireless and sometimes solitary activism.
Sounds like some crazy person just screwed up education for everyone.
Readit News
The amount of incompetence is beyond reason.
My daughter(12)'s keyboard got broken, now she is afraid she wont be able to take her exam with an external keyboard because there is a spyware extension they use called 'safe exam browser' that might block her computer when she plugs the keyboard.
Most of the kids are just using it to snapchat during class.
I will honestly prefer to just ban all tech from schools.
The digital devices harm learning. Sweden will spend 60 million for reintroducing actual books, focus on actual reading and writing (important for learning and motoric ability).
I’m not surprised. While I’m sceptic about many positions of Manfred Spitzer [2] (University of Ulm) I’m afraid that he is right in many areas. A tablet is not the tool to discover the world for a child. They need to view, touch, smell and focus on matters.
Putting aside that Apple (iPad), Google (Chromebook) and Microsoft (Surface) just want to train child’s to depend on their stuff forever. We can still introduce computers at the age of 12 and the kids will adapt - and teach required basics (control your data, understand technic on high level, touch-typing, how you can access knowledge…and that a lot of companies and people are hostile).
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/11/sweden-says-ba...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manfred_Spitzer
Your remark about the suppliers wanting to get the kids "hooked" on their products isn't new btw, this was happening 20+ years ago already with MS Office and co.
I hope this becomes a trend! I’ve always hated the idea of being dependent on electronic devices during school.
He wants handwriting and books back in the classrooms.
In my experience, what ended up happening was that pupils who already knew their way around a computer didn't really get any extra benefit from using cmputers in the classroom and those who didn't like using computers hated it even more when forced to write out an assignment on a keyboard as supposed to handwriting.
Most importantly though, they were a HUGE distraction. Any time the lesson got boring because the teacher wasn't good or just not good at getting the kids engaged in the lesson (which happened quite often sadly, but that is another discussion) we would all just start playing on the computers. Some kids came to school just to play videogames and barely learned anything.
Now, some of these issues (like bad professors, smart kids getting bored because of slow pace of lessons) have always been present in every school all over the world but I do think that having tech in the classroom just makes things worse, as now even those who would have normally followed the lesson are tempted to just turn on their computer and pretend to take notes when really they are playing Candy crush. It's bad enough being a teenager and being bombarded with stimuli from your phone and social media, having that kind of distraction at school just makes things even worse.
So yeah, I think tech in school is one of those things that sounds great but usually just back-fires in spectacular ways (imho).
But envy is one of the most powerful forces in politics, even when it doesn't make sense. So the idea that children in Namibia were getting laptops, while kids in Virginia weren't — even though it was a money-saving trick — that was just unacceptable. And unlike in the OLPC, schools bought laptops from a variety of vendors, mostly interested in upselling lots of unnecessary features rather than providing a lightweight textbook device. Anyone familiar with the history of the TI-83 understands that corporations selling technology to schools are the lowest form of life.
I can't say for sure that this is what caused it, but it was right around the time that laptops started showing up in schools, and also when the concept of the "netbook" was introduced. The early netbooks certainly seemed to be imitating that weird green blob-shaped thing that OLPC hoped would revolutionize education in the less developed world.
I would not fault computers here. At my school time, when pupils were bored, they covertly played card games like Skat [a German card game] or graph paper games like Battleship, Racetrack, Connect Four, ... under the school desks.
I still remember this one girl who, when the teacher confiscated one deck of Skat cards, the moment that the teacher looked away, simply took out another deck from her school bag, and play continued (she played Skat semi-competitively, so she nearly always had, I think, dozens of decks of Skat cards in her school bag).
Another former friend had an insane creativity in turning stuff that one could find in a pencil case into contraptions for shooting rubber pieces.
Technology changes over time, humans don't.
i.e. "Word processing only" "specific website(s) only" etc
I'm aware that actually implementing this in a fool-proof way is non-trivial - but would it in theory solve the issue and allow the benefits of tech?
I can't imagine taking notes by hand any more.
Whether they like it is not is secondary; did they learn to use the machine? Because some amount of ability to use computers is rather important in the modern world.
While IT skills are important and should be taught at schools, please do it in the traditional fashion; have a computer lab, make everything abuse resistant, and get a favorable repair / maintenance contract.
We have a 15 year old that managed to destroy 3 or 4 laptops and four phones in the span of five years.
My kid’s elementary school policy for iPad damage was $100 for the first damage, $250 for the second, $500 for the third.
This was problematic for a few reasons: 1) they didn’t have anyone to debug devices in a school of 1000 kids, so any problem was damage and parents were fined; 2) the iPad was several years old and costs $300 to just buy; 3) if the iPad was stolen then the full $500 was due; 4) they wouldn’t provide cases and asked the parents to purchase only specific cases and any other cases were removed. Their approved cases weren’t very good; 5) location tracking was turned on even outside of schools.
When I tried to talk with the administration they said something like “this is as good as we can do.” They said that it was mandatory for kids to use these devices. I bought my kid their own iPad refurbed for 289 or something with AppleCare for $7/month and used that for 3 years of elementary school. Arguing with the admin every year when they tried to say this wasn’t allowed.
Thankfully, my primary education was before computer tech in schools or I'd have been sidetracked by the technology and it's pretty certain I'd have learned much less. Even by that age I was fascinated by electronic stuff and invariably I'd have pull it apart or tested it to destruction.
Right, had I had the tech I'd have lost out on two accounts, not only would I have been distracted by it but I'd have likely lost it or rendered it useless by the time exams came around. Not having the compulsory tech necessary for exams would have added further unecessary stress and distraction.
If you're trying to teach IT to students, have a tech lab. If the students need to watch something, it can be done with a projector.
I now know that I never needed one. If a teacher uses the Socratic method, I learn very effectively as long as the dialogue is engaging. Note taking slows me down and doesn’t allow to me fully process what has been said. I always had to spend a large amount of time reviewing the notes after class and realized how much didn’t soak in when I was taking them.
The issue was, far too many teachers would add one random bit of trivia into a quick sentence they said and use that as a question on the next exam. Even if that bit of knowledge wasn’t in the related books or could be naturally deduced by understanding the topic.
The best teachers I had didn’t require me to use laptops. I realize that now that I am attending Greek school as an adult and only use a small notepad to take quick notes on something to follow up with later like vocab to add to Anki. A class of 12 engaged in dialogue is far more effective for myself.
Everyone else is pen and paper, shared computer labs, and home computers shared by all family kids.
I can't quite recall if this was before the covid outbreak, but I think we still had in person classes that year.
Honestly, I hated taking notes in lectures (and considered the necessity for it to be a distraction from paying full attention). On the other hand, there were these students who live-LaTeXed math lectures on their laptops ...
They do a lot of phonics in my kids class. She finished all her phonics lessons early in the year, so now she just uses that time to read a few chapter book chapters instead that I send with her to school, which is much more relevant than just doing extra phonics anyway (that's another story though).
I can't fathom while you'd use anyone's personal device to take tests, though. What could possibly be taught to a 12 year old that couldn't be tested in the form of a written exam? It's always the tyrannical anti cheat software that turns any good idea into a terrible experience.
If we are talking about high schools and mainly technical high schools banning tech is contrary to the point of the school. I think a balanced view is better: carrying laptops on classes where you need them and also adapt classes if laptop could be beneficial.
Even in elementary school, my child has robotics.
In general, I think politicians use binary yes/no options because they are lazy and/or incapable of working or thinking harder.
Apart from lessons directly about computing and/or technology - of which there may be a handful of hours per week in a regular highschool - the number of subjects which "need a laptop" in high school is vanishingly small.
> politicians use binary yes/no options because they are lazy and/or incapable of working or thinking harder
Lobbyists don't even use binary. They're always pushing their product.
The former is essential to a modern economy and way of life.
The latter is road to laziness, poor mental health and terrible learning outcomes.
No electronics. TV, Radio...
Are there any believable success story for this from involved people (= students+teachers+parents)?
As a happy side effect it also had a BASIC interpreter, which I would absolutely use to distract myself in boring lessons. I've been a professional software developer more or less since I left school. Not sure what the lesson is there... give kids laptops but only allow text editors and compilers?
But can one really hope, to prepare students for life then?
For actually learning things? It's like pet food packaging.
What do I mean by that? The pets don't buy the food, their owners do; the result is the packaging is designed to appeal to the owners. Does a cat care about the bright colours their retinas can't see, the metaphors they don't have the language comprehension to process? Or do they seem like picky eaters because they're put off food when it has subtle odours that their owners can't perceive? Likewise, are dogs meat-obsessed like pop culture tells us, or are they omnivores that will joyfully wolf down just about anything and wait for their digestive tract to figure out afterwards if it needs to be rapidly expelled?
Parents and schools buy stuff to teach with, it's sold to the adults because the kids have neither the budget nor the judgement to decide what they ought to learn. But how good are those things at teaching? We only find out much later, at first when the kids take exams and we see how well they learned, and later when we look at the same people in the workforce and find out if that exam itself is representative of the skills we care about.
Learning as an adult, I get to see if online courses teach me; I've gone from being a heavy user of Duolingo, even paying for a subscription, to giving up on it entirely as it morphed from lessons into an annoying kids cartoon.
I'm worried that I'm seeing similar from Brilliant.org, too. The older courses on e.g. using Q# to program quantum computers is still good — hard, yes, but good, it's actually pushing me to learn more, and in this it reminds me of when I started learning programming on a Commodore 64 from the user manual when I was aged about 5 or 6 — but the newer course updates over the last year or so have focussed on unskippable "cute" cartoons and the absolute beginner level content that parents and teachers will pay for, not filling in the gaps with the hard stuff that brings in the most educational value.
Although I say that knowing my grades in school wouldn't have been trash if I'd been able to use a computer and not get discriminated for my handwriting.
When I was a teenager in the 2000s you could still go to the mall, walk into an store and fill out a paper application for jobs, though even then they looked at you a bit funny. I’m pretty sure that’s not possible anymore, so it’s effectively required to at least be able to access the internet to find a job and participate in society. You’ll also almost certainly need to know how to use computers, and depending on the work, understand files and file systems.
I’m follow some subreddits that tend to attract younger people who are interested in programming. Whatever you take for granted about basic computer knowledge, I suspect most people don’t have it. One recent example was someone concerned that if they saved more than one file in a folder, it would overwrite anything in there (like a video game save slot). I think for a lot of people their only computer knowledge comes from game consoles and phones.
(Story Time) I had a crazy woman teach a computer elective in highschool, but she made sure everyone left the class typing efficiently without looking and we all knew how to use Excel and PPT. It really helped in college engineering and of course in the work force knowing a little Excel. The ppt stuff sounds ludicrous, but I use it a LOT at work as research and analysis is often summarized and presented to less technical stakeholders in that format. TBH, she basically made sure we were experts in the blue collar aspects of computing that office workers everywhere use. She also taught some history of computing and made sure we all knew common computer terminology like what OS, GUI, DOS, RAM, ROM...etc all meant. In hindsight it was a pretty useful class. The weirdest thing in the class...the teacher had a question on the final that asked which book of the Bible was most like the history of computing. All of us 8th-10th graders were absolutely dumbfounded where this bizzare question came from. Apparently the answer was Exodus, but she couldn't explain to us why and indicated it should be obvious if we had seen Pirates of Silicon Valley.
This argument is often made (and also wrt preparing pupils for their professional life). I don’t think it the reasons you imply are right.
The problem is that nothing they could use now in school will prepare them for what they will need to use in the future. The software, tools and devices they will need will change as technology keeps evolving. What they need to learn is the basics, how to adapt to a new platform and core OPSEC principles. And they can learn that on pretty much anything.
> We need more hackers.
I was a kid of the 1990s, I know what you mean. But I also was a hacker. We had access to computers at school, which was great. But we did not have to use them all the time for things that are better done by other means of communication.
My kid just spent a couple of hours doing some programming on his school laptop, which is fantastic. What is not is requiring the same laptop to take exams with bullshit spyware and requiring it in the classroom for lectures that would be better without them. Then, they are a distraction and they do not help.
> I just spent three hours last night working on spanish homework on a school supplied chromebook with a high schooler, and it was pathetic how bad the UX was, how poorly the laptop performed, and just how painful the entire experience is.
Yes, Chromebooks are terrible. They are actually a hindrance more than anything else.
I would rather claim that this is a preparation for the corporate world where (except for the technology sector) work computers suck and are filled with corporate spyware. :-)
Woah what a reactionary! No ballpoint pens, right?
>2028 the effects of the tech ban were apparent, in mere years, the productivity of this countries students had dropped well below global levels. Graduates the year before were becoming first class citizens as inequality became based on the year you were born.
I'm not sure privacydad has ever deployed or maintained an IT department. A school system is very complex.
For what they offer - Chromebooks are actually very good. My kids' school computers are probably better than most of the corporate-issue windows laptops I've ever had. Google docs/classroom are also very good compared to grab-bag of apps my kids have to use.
--- (general computers-in-school rant) ---
The clear answer is to get computers out of schools as much as possible! I know they won't so if you happen to work on this kind of software - PLEASE advocate for shipping better software!
My kids aren't even taught how to type but are expected to put together slide shows and things every other week.
The testing and assignments done on the computer are full of UX issues like missing scroll bars and confusing + inconsistent <form>s - Some tests allow you to go back and read the material, some don't, some lose your answers in-between, etc.
Every year there is massive churn of "apps" the school district was corrupted into buying to replace last year's crop of junk.
Because Chromebook is Linux kernel + Google proprietary ecosystem & spyware.
When advocates say Linux they just mean the FOSS distros of Linux + FOSS software.
This typically means a standard image the school can manage that has reasonable device management, with a company they can pay, and that their in-house IT can contact for support when the unexpected, unforseeable issues happen.
I have yet to hear one suggest ChromeOS or any Android tablet; those run the Linux kernel, but don't (AFAIK) use nearly any of the GNU software.
And I kind of get it. We've all seen the copy-pasta, and this division took on a life as a joke about a crazy person that takes things too far. But most of the people that make that joke seem to have forgotten that RMS frequently starts off looking crazy, but is nearly always vindicated. Sometimes it's five years, sometimes it's twenty. But it happens more often that not.
On the refurbished laptop market, I see large amounts of the same series of laptops, often Thinkpads, for example. I assume this is because companies will replace entire collections of hardware dated for their purposes. I don't think it is too far-fetched to connect this market to schools in individual districts.
> a laundry list of other "technology solutions" which would be, obviously, impossible for a school system to smoothly maintain or even deploy.
See: https://nextcloud.com/blog/keep-your-data-in-your-school-use...
But does it need to be?
School private networks seem unnecessary, especially nowadays when most apps are cloud-based and don't require installation. Many modern routers support domain blacklists to prevent access to inappropriate content. What else is needed?
We need to keep our data in Denmark and become less dependent on American companies (and especially Microsoft/Google). But the change needs to be led by IT professionals who care about usability and know better than forcing Linux and LibreOffice down the throat of elderly office workers.
One approach is to identify the business processes they are using Microsoft/Google apps for and then offer the entire process through well-designed web apps hosted in Denmark.
Sure, instead of replacing Windows/M$-Office with Linux/LibreOffice, replace them with a web app which requires the elderly office workers to change their habits even more?
Why not sponsor developers to contribute to LibreOffice and fix the parts that aren't working or are causing problems instead? If all the public sector entities interested in replacing M$-Office in Europe contributed, they could really make a difference...
The main problem with Linux usability is installing and updating it. If all you do is browse, fill web forms and write documents, and you have the software to do so installed and maintained by someone else, I don't see how it can be much harder to use than Windows. It could even be easier in the sense that they could safely open "catvideo.exe" while slacking at work without causing a disaster.
I moved my mum to Linux over Windows about a decade ago and her only requirement for a computer is that it has to run that "minty thing" - bless her, she has no idea what an OS is or why she should care.
I say there's a fair bit wrong in that sentence that needs unpacking:
Sadly, most schools do not have "IT professionals". They get the person who knew a bit about computers and rose into the role - often by attending a few week-long Microsoft training sessions pushed at the school.
We need to get more real IT professionals in to schools, those who have professional chartered status and observe codes of ethical practice such as those the BCS advocate.
Secondly, IT professionals do not necessarily care or know anything about usability. That suitability is for the teacher to discern. Administrators care about budgets and ease of administration. It's their convenience and usability that comes first. Usability is context dependent. Which leads us to....
There is nothing wrong with the usability of LibreOffice or Linux. They are both excellent products and in my subjective experience far superior to those from Microsoft or Google.
We are talking about kids who have minimal needs and are working on school projects, like a 1000 word essay, not important business deals, safety critical systems or urgent reports with pristine scientific typesetting that need to be published yesterday in Nature.
Pay is too low compared to what they can get elsewhere.
I was writing book reports on that exact stack over a decade ago. Its perfectly fine for students. Most people don't even explicitly chose Windows. They just use and adapt to whatever comes with their computer.
>forcing Linux and LibreOffice down the throat of elderly office workers.
Let office workers chose their needs on a case by case basis. But that shouldn't affect the stack you give to students.
Though Google now feels familiar and relatively easy (though try moving documents from one folder to another online...), I'd almost forgotten that when it was first introduced, it was met with a lot of resistance, and teachers and students alike were confused for years.
Microsoft spaces (Teams, Edge) are far, far worse.
Since the schools I've worked at run their own servers locally, I think using Nextcloud as your main platform should be very doable. The apps you can install are mostly very slick and modern. (I use Talk for calls now, for example). https://nextcloud.com/blog/keep-your-data-in-your-school-use...
I see the point about the clunkiness of LibreOffice. But as a teacher, I see great value in thinking carefully about what you introduce students to, because once a decision is in place, the effect multiplies with each new cohort of students.
Fedora? Yes please.
LibreOffice is downright terrible, please do not lump it into a problem of OS replacements. I'm 100% convinced there is some M$ plant that deliberately makes the GUI bad. I still use it, and I use Google's.
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You can see how much young Danes idolise the US. This could be said for more EU countries, but by my experience living in Denmark, it is much more pronounced there.
> Danish schools will no longer be allowed to use Chromebooks and Google platforms
The ACTUAL Title of article, and leading paragraphs, may (sadly) tell a slightly different story:
> Final Decision on Chromebook Case in Denmark
> 03 Feb, 2024
> This week saw a conclusion on the Danish Chromebook case. The result, long-awaited by father and privacy activist Jesper Graugaard, shows that the Danish Data Protection Authority has issued an injunction regarding the tracking of children's personal data via Chromebook and Google platforms in schools.
> From 1 August 2024 onwards, Danish schools will no longer be allowed to enable Chromebooks and Google platforms to collect students' personal data for processing. Each municipality will need to give an indication of how they will comply to this injunction by 1 March 2024.
Now seriously, if Chromebooks didn't exist, couldn't you imagine a Black Mirror episode around this very theme?
"From 1 August 2024 onwards, Danish schools will no longer be allowed to enable Chromebooks and Google platforms to collect students' personal data for processing."
Sounds like some crazy person just screwed up education for everyone.