Testimonial 6 - Dawn

Eleven years ago now I look back and remember the day that Apple started the 1:1 program in our districts - 1 iPad for every student. I had just founded an online safety organization and was speaking in schools about healthier and safer technology choices. I also had two young kids in the district. A kindergartner and a 2nd grader. Long story short, I have worked hard over the past decade to walk alongside my district in implementing stronger filters, safer monitoring, and direct teaching vs. digital media ratio in the classroom. I’ve met with the IT department, with the school board, with the Superintendent and I am a member of the SHAC (School Health Advisory Council) for our district to continue to be a voice in this conversation. The district has brought me in to lead online safety trainings on campus’ to help students, educators and parents understand the dangers online, on apps, even on “educational” apps. This message is so important, especially at the rate EdTech is growing in our public schools. I encourage all parents to stay involved in the decisions your schools are making when it comes to EdTech. Ask what filters and monitors the district uses to keep students safe. Ask how much time students spend per class on their devices. Ask about cell phone policies. When we speak up we show the schools that their community cares about these issues.

Testimonial 7 - Charles

1) What have been your experiences as a Civics of Tech parent?

On the whole, I’d say I’ve been a much better Civics of Tech teacher and researcher than a Civics of Tech parent. You might even say that I’m a poster child for “Do what I say, not as I do.” And that makes me feel...not great! I struggle with the convenience of having the device right there, and I’ve got to finish grading and make dinner, and what’s the harm if my daughter plays another 15 minutes of Prodigy on her school iPad? I note to myself that she also has been reading and reading and reading books on our family iPad, so there’s some broccoli to balance out the cotton candy. At other times, if I’m with my kids and there’s some type of automated thing in a book or movie or on the rare occasions we muster the patience to eat at a restaurant, I’ll ask a “Should” question. Should we have robot friends? Should we order our meal from a touchscreen? The “Should” question is something I learned from my professor Dr. Megan Bang and the Learning in Places curriculum she’s co-designed with teachers and families over the past several years. I think the question helps initiate the ethical deliberation that I do with students as a Civic of Tech teacher and encourages my kids to see the world as constituted of human-made choices where they have agency to intervene and make changes.

2) Where and how have you seen educational technologies manifest in your child(ren)’s schooling?

My earliest experiences with platforms and parenting started when my oldest started at her second daycare at the age of 15 months or so. Her first daycare had been run out of a woman’s house, and there was no digital technology involved, no electronic sign in, sign out, or reports each day. That all changed when we moved and my daughter started at a franchised daycare. We had to download an app. We received daily summaries of what she’d eaten, the number of her bowel movements and wet diapers, and a lot of pictures snapped with one of the daycare center’s iPads.

With my middle and youngest child, their daycares and preschools have used a combination of paper for sign-in and sign-out, platforms seemingly designed for daycare/preschool, and now Google Classroom.

For my second grader, she has a district-issued iPad, and from what I’ve gathered, they spend a not insignificant portion of the day using iReady for math. Last year, at least in the beginning of the year, her teacher used SeeSaw a lot, and we’d get updates, but those updates dwindled and then stopped halfway through the year. This year, social emotional learning was exchanged for coding (!), and I think they use either Kodable or Scratch Jr. Also, new this year is the option to observe my daughter’s actions on her iPad in real-time and/or with a weekly summary, thanks to Securly, the district-purchased monitoring software running on the iPad.

3) What do you see as being the benefits and drawbacks?

One benefit that I observe is how excited my daughter is to play the math games, especially Prodigy as of late. Which, cool. But also: is she learning? I try to sit with her and have her explain her reasoning (and to see how the game appears to be supporting her learning). In general, I’d say these games are behaviorist brain candy that, at least from what I can tell, aren’t helping my kid learn math on a deeper level. The drawbacks are many, from data capitalism to encouraging caregivers to surveil their kids in the name of care.

4) What have you/could we do about it?

I’ve sent emails. The first email that I sent was in reply to the superintendent. He’d emailed caregivers to say the district purchased new technologies over the summer and he was excited to let us know about the increased monitoring that would be happening in learning spaces. So I wanted to know more about what he meant and I eventually met with two administrators. Another time I emailed my concerns to my daughter’s school’s IT person about Securly. I wanted to know the decision-making process the admin used when Securly flagged “inappropriate” student behavior. I received an email describing the process and left it at that. I also crowdsourced questions to ask teachers and admin about educational technology...but I’ve never used the questions, and I think that’s a problem that I’m wrestling with. How much noise to make? Do I opt out? At what cost to my daughter? To the teacher? Because I think that’s another aspect that I know you know, Allie, that of the teacher who’s also often forced to use these platforms despite knowing their problems. What else do I do about my concerns? I talk with my wife and friends, especially about surveillance. I think they mostly politely listen. The entire ed-tech ecosystem feels so permanent right now that it’s hard to imagine a clearing, let alone cut away some of the strangling vines. I wonder if there’s some collective target that CoT parents can aim for, like the student monitoring software. And I think you may be doing this already, but have a template with a letter that challenges the one-sided rollout of these technologies. But then it’s like, “Great, I sent a letter or an email and then...what?” That’s where I’ve gotten stuck: I get the email in response to my concern and then I don’t escalate the issue because it feels so exhausting to do so and easier to accept the situation, know privately that I’ll never use Securly to spy on my kid, and hurry to flip the quesadillas before they burn. So that’s where I’m at right now.

Testimonial 8 - Paige

In all three of my daughters’ experiences with education technology in the classroom, I continually see a disconnect between teacher and student. For example, in my daughter’s 6th grade history class, the students spent every class period clicking through modules on a chromebook. The teacher sat at the front of the room. His job was to monitor student screens remotely so that he could close tabs when students attempted to do something online that wasn’t school work, he could quickly close their tabs. At that time, I remember feeling extremely frustrated by this style of “teaching.” In later academic situations, I would come to wish for the presence of a screen “officer” who would close tabs.

This same daughter, later in the year, started to listen to podcasts on Spotify during the school day. This was allowed, even encouraged, by her teachers. At 12 years old, she started listening to true crime podcasts throughout the entire school day. These podcasts described in graphic detail the rape and murder of young women. She became terrified of being home alone for any length of time, of walking around our extremely safe neighborhood. She worried that innocent family members may really be criminals who could hurt her at anytime. 

My oldest daughter, a sophomore in high school with ADHD, struggles with impulse control, particularly when tasked with working online. At her school, many teachers exclusively convey academic content through online platforms. Apart from movie streaming, there appear to be little to no blocks on what students can access on their chromebooks. Needless to say, when given the choice (in her mind) between creating pinterest boards and playing online games or completing online assignments, she inevitably chooses to pursue these mindless hobbies. She is now failing English. I’ve repeatedly asked the teacher to remove the chromebook, but he will not. I bought the book they are supposed to be reading on a pdf and offered to send that to school for her to read when she was struggling to pay attention on the chromebook. No response from the teacher. The only response I’ve ever gotten is that the district required benchmark tests have to be completed online. My daughter loves to read and to write. I know that if the teacher just put the chromebooks away and handed out books and engaged the students directly with the material, she would flourish in his class.

Maybe some students will always be disengaged in education. I know that many adults took English courses like the one I wish for my daughter and were bored to tears.  Still, the use of educational technologies in school feels like a choice to drop engagement altogether; it feels like a choice to prioritize data, standards, and a check-the-box kind of completion above all else.