Some of the early pioneers of the tech industry have banded together to earn about the dangers of tech addiction.
Hopefully, they will warn about the dangers of data mining, invasion of student privacy, and the false promise of replacing skilled teachers with computers.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Yes, very promising. How do we get their point of view included in computer science syllabi and other classes? I use such items in my first-year composition classes.
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I hate to be so cautious but it’s my nature 🙂
Be careful. No one is better at branding than tech – they care A LOT that they’re perceived as public spirited.
Let’s see if this is an industry-funded group created to protect the brands.
These folks are really sophisticated actors in the marketplace and they very much want to open up the 600 billion public school market.
Let’s just tread carefully about “grassroots” groups that spring up and get immediate major media coverage.
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This is a very good caution.
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Their reputation as idealistic inventors is hugely important to the tech brand.
They can’t be seen as ordinary corporate actors or the magical unicorn dust disappears 🙂
It’s a business. Never forget that.
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“Crab grass roots”
Crab grass shoots
Are hard to kill
Crab grass roots
Are harder still
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especially when the crab grass roots are secretly being “fed” by those who wish to profit from an endlessly produced crab grass
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Yes, so somehow Comcast is also involved in the funding. I do not understand how, but it’s in the article.
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Your caution is well founded, Chiara, but according to the article, their focus is against social media and tech addictions and they don’t seem to be promoting any product.
I very much like the sentence from the article
The new group also plans to begin lobbying for laws to curtail the power of big tech companies
Among many other things, this would prevent tech companies’ push for more data mining, but could also curtail their influence to push tech in schools.
After I skimmed through the website of Center for humane tech, it seems these guys want to change the culture of big tech companies by talking to them. Who can talk to tech companies better than those who know them inside out?
http://humanetech.com/
They give some really good advice on their webpage on how to reclaim your time from your phone
http://humanetech.com/take-control/
At the end, they list some apps (I know what you are thinking) some of which appear very useful, like the one that prevents you from receiving calls from robots. I just installed it and also grayed out my whole phone as they suggest. 🙂
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This is sort of contrary to what I usually think, but I think kids themselves will reject getting this shoved down their throats.
They are MUCH more skeptical about ed tech than the adults- high school age kids anyway.
They may save themselves from people like Betsy DeVos. It isn’t magical to them. It’s like telling someone my age that educational television would “revolutionize” schools.
My son’s in a “personalized learning” science section and he’s NOT impressed. He seems to realize he’s taking a heck of a lot of “assessments” – he spends more time inputting data on his “progress” than he does making “progress”.
Ed reform consistently over-hypes. They over-sell. People will eventually see thru it.
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I agree. The students will be crawling the walls. Robot instruction is totally inappropriate for young students, and it will never work with the poor. A few motivated, middle class students may be able to tolerate it for some instruction in math and science, and perhaps some other types of rote learning. Districts need to look before they leap.
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I wonder if it’s as popular as we’re told it is. We had a school planning commission a couple of years ago and we got a hard sell from some ed tech salesperson posing as a consultant and the group voted it down.
It went down in flames. Maybe that’s a one-off in my area but it was NOT popular.
Look at how hard they have to sell it! DeVos is browbeating people into swallowing this. She insults anyone who questions it.
If it’s so great why do they have to push it so hard?
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They want to sell as many units as they can before the public catches on that many students will reject it.
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I don’t know about studies or anything, but my junior high students HATE so much tech. They get really bored by it. And why wouldn’t it be boring? It’s worksheets on a screen. They crave the human interaction, especially from teachers.
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People will eventually see through it, but it might be too late.
People eventually saw through Common Core, but by then, it he already infected millions of school children across the country.
The people who come up with stuff like Common Core, Facebook and Google understand this very well. In fact, they bank on it — on the fact that by the time the public recognizes what they are up to, it will be too late to stop it.
The latter is why I don’t believe for a second that those two clowns pictured in that article are sincere.
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He spends more time inputting data on his “progress” than he does making “progress”.
Don’t fret, he is learning a very important (perhaps the most important) lesson: it’s the data that count.
“Accounting Principles”
The data count
And nothing more
The end amount
Is to adore
Progress measured
By a score
“Measure” treasured
Nothing more
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No, SDP, the best data are money. How much you raise from finders. How much you are paid. People who think like this can’t undrstand why anyone becomes a teacher or why people act because of principle. They can’t cash in principle. They can measure and cash in principal.
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The Soviet Union exploded itself through attempting to control data and the economy. No it wasn’t Unca Ronnie who vanquished the USSR, they did themselves in with millions, hundreds of millions of examples of the effects of Campbell’s law.
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Gorbochev stated quite categorically that the explosion of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor was actually the proximate cause for the collapse.
Not only is the latter almost certainly an outcome of Campbell’s law in action (what happens when one emphasizes perception over reality/safety), but the explosion at Chernobyl and attempted cover up afterward exposed the entire system as a fraud and a pack of lies.
It quite literally blew the cover off the entire system.
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“What will our Chernobyl be?”
What will our Chernobyl be?
What will really make us see?
Faker back behind the screen
Pulling levers, sight unseen
Will it crash of Wall Street be?
Will that really make us see?
Or will Orwell rule the day?
This or that I can not say
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Trump, the Koch brothers, ALEC, Bill Gates, Betsy DeVos, the Walton family, et al. are America’s collective Chernobyl.
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“Chairmenobyl”
America’s Chernobyl
Is really rather global
There’s really nothing noble
About the Chairmenobyl
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The men are radioactive
And often quite redactive
Though many find them factive
And really quite attractive
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Did I miss something? I didn’t get the idea that the focus was on personalized learning so much as it was on social media and the overuse of I-phones and I-pads. I thought they were more focused on targeting children with Facebook and Google aps that really are focused on entertainment value. When you see adults walking down the street talking into the either or staring at their feet, can we really wonder at whether children will become addicted if the industry focuses their energies (even more) on them? I agree with Chiara to a certain extent about students rejecting tech in school but more because it can be incredibly boring particularly the testing and more pernicious data mining activities.
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http://humanetech.com/designers/ More than one techie has commented on some hypocrisy here, in that the website for Humane Technology serves as way to promote apps that the humane techies like.
Even so, the damage being done by the enticements of tech is clear. So is the push to get this generation hooked in school, as well as through online programming. There is also an organized international effort to make devices and systems “interoperable.” That is part of GERM global educational reform movement. It was also a major topic of interest and concern to bankers who convened in Devos.
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This group is a step in the right direction, but I doubt they will be able to muster much support among the tech community entrepreneurs. No one knows what the long term health and psychological impact of exposure to technology will be. No one understands what the long term risks will be of continuous tech. exposure in developing brains, and the tech lobby will be working to ensure we cannot find out. Laws always lag behind new innovative technology and are always playing “catch up.”
Data mining should be a concern to all of us. Currently, there are few privacy laws that protect the rights of individuals. Facebook owns the largest digital file of facial recognition on the planet. We should all consider how this may be used. There was a story on the news about smart TVs. Unless the owner adjusts the setting, these devices will continuous gather information on the viewer and send the data to marketing companies.
In education the value of “personalized learning” is presumed, not proven. Young people will be used as guinea pigs unless school boards and administrators reject it and stand up for the rights of students to learn in a social setting. There is a difference between using a computer as a useful tool and offering education driven by algorithms. Once again students’ abandon any privacy rights in computer assisted instruction. All of these issues need to be discussed prior to any large scale adoption.
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“But a year into her tenure as President Donald Trump’s Education secretary, DeVos generally steers clear of the words, “school choice,” a phrase she once used often that’s freighted with racial, demographic and religious implications. Instead, she opts for gentler terms such as “innovation” and “blended learning,” and speaks of coming together and “finding solutions.”
Besty DeVos hired a political consultant to help her change her rhetoric and mislead people about her goals.
Good to see the US Department of Education is making such wise use of tax dollars!
These people are REALLY slick. Be careful. Unless you’ve been a political operative for 30 years like DeVos they will manipulate you.
They know the public isn’t behind privatizing public schools. The plan is to trick them. God knows what Frank Luntz makes an hour but I bet it’s a lot.
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/07/betsy-devos-school-choice-education-397633
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If a person was once a serial killer who killed with a gun, does that make them a credible spokesperson for gun control?
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Parents Across America has been researching this topic. Here is a link to their important work: http://parentsacrossamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Documentation6-29-16JW.pdf
Parents Across America has developed a position paper and associated informational materials
which detail a number of concerns about the invasion of EdTech* into our schools, and which we
have collected under the title, “Our Children @ Risk.”
This document is an annotated bibliography of resources we used to inform our position paper and
materials. References to the outline letters and numbering below are used parenthetically throughout
the informational materials to indicate the corresponding supportive research, documentation,
expert opinion, and anecdotal and other background information. There is some overlap in the
categories, and, of course, many of the sources quoted address more than one area of concern.
A. Effect on children’s mental/emotional health
B. Impact on student learning
C. Physical effects – screen time
D. Physical effects – vision
E. Physical effects – sitting
F. Effects on schooling
G. Questionable effectiveness of EdTech
H. Constant testing/lack of informed consent
I. Privacy issues
J. Who benefits?
*We use the term EdTech to cover the many terms and buzz words associated with digital learning.
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Thanks for the link. Parents are asking the right questions, and they have good reason to be concerned. We need to stop using children as guinea pigs for entrepreneurs as it is irresponsible and potentially harmful.
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This brought a much needed smile to my face this morning, after teaching adults from all over the world online all night, with no coffee or sleep. Kids are just too easy prey for swindlers, so they truly need a lot of advocates to protect them from predators. I really hope these guys live up to the role they claim to want to play now.
I’ve taught online courses to adults for ten years at two colleges and I don’t know of anyone who has gotten away with claiming that adult students in credit bearing courses don’t need teachers! At one school, we never had tests, and at the other, we had to eliminate them after students uploaded the tests and answers to websites, so many of them had been cheating.
Now we have optional quizzes, intended to enhance learning and help students review content, and they do not count at all towards students’ grades. We teachers are the ones who evaluate students, not computers. Basically, there are a number of inputs like lessons, readings and videos, and a variety of outputs, but basically, students are expected to demonstrate comprehension and learning of content in forums and assignment, through analysis and synthesis, including summarizing relevant information from professional/academic sources, in their own words (I don’t permit quotations) with citations. That often results in high level discussions and some very interesting student projects. Of course, some are less diligent than others and try to skate by, but I have a pretty good BS detector.
Believe me, if the schools I’ve worked at could have gotten away with not having teachers, I have no doubt they would have done it. I don’t think they can because accrediting bodies won’t permit it and because adult students often comment about the critical role teachers play in their learning experiences. If kids could speak up for themselves, I suspect they would say that as well. Is anyone asking them?.
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My son took some on-line and hybrid classes in college, mostly in computer networking. While he learned from the format, he found it tedious and boring, but he was motivated and from a middle class background. Not all students or subjects are the same.
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Did he have and want teachers? Online courses are definitely not the best match for everyone, certainly not for me. I much prefer bricks and mortar classes.
I think it’s primarily the convenience of online courses that’s the major attraction for adults pursuing certificates and degrees. It could be different in other disciplines, like perhaps computer science, but I’ve yet to hear adult students in my program say they think they would be better off if there were no teachers in their online classes.
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Some courses were only available on-line including all the computer training courses. He had real teachers for most of the social science courses, and a couple of hybrid classes. The most ridiculous course was a hybrid speech class in which he had to form a group in the first class where they met in person. The group then had to meet weekly for the assigned speeches and videotape their public address. They then received feedback via computer. My son thought it was ridiculous.
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I’ve read that both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs limit and/or limited their children’s internet time and didn’t (or don’t) allow them to have mobile phones.
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“Off Cash cows and addictions”
We’re here to help you now
To beat the tech addiction
Cuz Facebook was our cow
And cash is our affliction
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Yes, no doubt, SDAMP. On the other hand, people can change their ways, can’t they, and their past experience can even be very useful and definitely insightful.
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Does one need inside information to recognize that the “like” button on Facebook is just like nicotine and was intended that way?
Or that data collection is what Facebook and Google are all about?
I can’t see where these techstitutes really offer anything valuable in the way of advice.
And what they should be primarily focussed on are the practices of companies like Google and Facebook whose goal is to get people addicted because these companies are exactly like the Tobacco companies.
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Their main focus is exactly addiction. They write
They are part of a system designed to addict us.
href=”http://humanetech.com/problem/”>http://humanetech.com/problem/
We do welcome various converts from the reform movement: from NCLB, from charter schools, from Success Academy, TFA, etc. Many of the posts here are quotes and opinions from these converts. While suspicion is well founded, I think it’s useful to be ready to shell out benefit of doubt, or else, we are only left with cynicism.
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“Does one need inside information to recognize that the “like” button on Facebook is just like nicotine and was intended that way?”
No. But to convince and pressure Facebook to avoid these practices, experts could be useful. They know the language of these tech companies, they know about memos that were circulated at time when these addictive apps were developed, so they know how to press the tech companies’ buttons—and they may even know their political connections.
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People can change their ways, can’t they?
A perfect example is the host of this blog.
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That’s what I was hinting at.
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We spiked our products good
With lots of techotine
Like RJ Reynolds would
If you know what I mean
And now we ask forgiveness
For doing all for green
It really was just bidness
And so our hands are clean
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They are pushing a product – Common Sense Media’s digital citizenship curriculum. Common Sense’s funding comes to a large degree from the tech industry. Not sure how much Center for Humane Tech is involved in that part – but there are very concerning things about the fact that this is apparently a big part of the first solution. I’m not opposed to digital citizenship curricula, but the funding of common Sense should have been disclosed, and the fact that there non-profit business model depends on schools buying their curriculum. Why isn’t Common Sense pointing out the tech industry’s influence on schools has driven the problems of overuse of tech in schools?
I am interested in Center for Humane Tech.
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