Parents Across America (an independent group of parent activists that is critical of the commercialization and corporate takeover of education) has created a valuable resource about the effects of screen time on children.
It is titled “Our Children @ Risk.”
The paper is 26 pages long. It contains extensive documentation.
It is a valuable resource in light of the profit-driven effort to promote EdTech in the schools without regard to is effects on children.
Here is the introduction:
“Children have a basic right to live in environments that promote their social, emotional and intellectual well-being. They have the right to grow up, and parents have the right to raise them, without being undermined by greed.” Susan Linn
“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?”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
Re- posted at https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Parents-Across-America-A-in-Life_Arts-Diane-Ravitch_Education-Technology_Effect_Information-Technology-180226-925.html#comment691352
WITH THIS COMMENT
We are at A MOMENT in time where the conversation turns to CHILDREN — and how this plutocracy is failing to protect them from predators…like the tech companies pretending to be ‘teachers.’ When children are murdered in school, it shouldn’t be the only time when we talk about protecting and enabling them to survive.
“Children have a basic right to live in environments that promote their social, emotional and intellectual well-being. They have the right to grow up, and parents have the right to raise them, without being undermined by greed.” Susan Linn
Never Again should our children be slaughtered by a military weapon in the hands of disturbed child, but never again should the trillionaires be allowed to disable our educational system, by bamboozling our citizens with lies that sell their business model for the classroom.
They own the legislatures where gun rights are protected, and where the needs of our nation’s children do not exist. They own the media—and sell their narrative about school ‘choice’ and learning technology that will replace real teaches who know what learning looks like, and this, can enable and facilitate relationships acquisition of skills.
Millions of kids are starving because of what Congress has done to social programs. Millions cannot get health care.
And few of them will have the skills to travel that road to income equality, once the schools that teach thinking skill are gone from K to 12 and beyond!
I read a lot about education and schools, but little about the war on teachers – because teachers are denigrated– treated as mere servants by the plutocrats who are making education into a profitable business. The voice of the professional teacher-practitioner has been silenced as tens of thousands of the most experienced, dedicated and talented teachers were sent out the door… to be replaced by trained employees and/or teaching ‘screens.’
The plutocrats CONTROLLED the national conversation until those Florida kids pointed a finger at the savage neglect -saying “Enough.” You cannot do this!
Now they say Never Again” so do I! You cannot ‘sell’ your high tech solutions as a way to replace authentic learning as it is enabled in real classrooms.
YOU cannot sell your poison–these games and products that merely entertain children, so that they do not practice speaking, and reading and writing, which is the only way to acquire the thinking skills that underly literacy.
KIDS “…do not practice speaking, and reading and writing.” I just read an article about how little kids are coming into preschools/kindergartens without fine motor skills. The logic connected this to “swiping” rather than using the hands to color, cut, paste, draw…etc.
exactly… so imagine learning any skill… read about riding a bike but never get on one, or watch pianists play and look at how-to play on line but never play on a piano…. Skills need practice, and that means, Ciedie, that our future citizens will be illiterate in ways that boggle the mind. The shared knowledge of history will be gone.
They win!
Sadly reminded of the song lyric about a future where people only see trees in a “tree museum…”
It has all started with $100 graphing calculators.
I blame the slide ruler.
At least the slide ruler will not solve an equation and plot the graph for you. But while philosophers and pedagogues may want to ponder about whether and how calculations of school-level problems should be simplified with tools, the industry has already went all it, flooding schools with “technology”. And if you look a bit further in the past, it were pre-printed worksheets with multiple-choice answers that ruined the ability of American students to solve problems in “free-form” fashion, that is, like it has been done for ages. So, in a way the fight has been lost long ago.
A rewrite of THE IMPORTANT PARAGRAPH that SHOULD READ: They own the legislatures where gun rights are protected, and where the needs of our nation’s children DO NOT EXIST! They own the media—and sell their narrative about school ‘choice’ and learning technology that will replace real teacher–professional practitioners of PEDAGY– who know WHAT LEARNING LOOKS LIKE, and WHO, can enable and facilitate the GENUINE acquisition of skills.
GEEZE..I HATE AUTO CORRECT : pedagogy!
Reblogged this on Mark's Text Terminal.
Thank you, Parents Across America!!! And thank you, Diane!!! This resource and all its links to important research is — I do not have any adjectives strong and positive enough to describe it. Bookmarked, copied/saved, and soon to be forwarded and referenced ad infinitum. Save the children from ed tech creep. Thank you thank you thank you!
Oops! Grammatical error: change ‘is’ to ‘are’ up there.