Exactly my thought on reading the article.
In the US, even regulatory capture follows partisan divisions… Insanity.
Exactly my thought on reading the article.
In the US, even regulatory capture follows partisan divisions… Insanity.
The most interesting insight from this article, imho, is that abortion rights in Florida are on the ballot in 2024, abortion rights have passed in every referendum on the topic since the recent Supreme Court fuckery, and that women coming to the polls to vote for their reproductive rights might skew the numbers more in favour of Democrats, independent of polling.
So Democrat victories in Florida (including a senator seat) are looking like a real possibility.
Teacher:
Myth: The job is mostly about delivering lessons and grading tests and assignments, so once you’ve done a course once, you can coast forever.
Reality: designing and delivering a lecture is just about the easiest thing in teaching. And also very ineffective teaching, so it’s not done very often.
Myth: School is the same as it was a generation ago, when parents were in school.
Reality: There have been huge shifts in education, with research-sorted practices replacing a lot of old, ineffective strategies. The teachers who are “old school” are usually ignoring educational research out of arrogance and/or laziness.
I recall hearing a story about law enforcement identifying an otherwise-anonymous phone by other phones that pinged the same cell towers at the same times. Essentially, the person had two phones on them, so they were able to uniquely identify the individual based on the shared location history of the two devices.
So there’s that, too, assuming my memory isn’t just some CSI bullshit. (It seems reasonable that this attack vector is technologically possible, though, and it may not matter if it’s legal if the identification technique isn’t used as evidence in court.)
Oh, maybe? Windows 10 EOL is coming up soon, though, so Windows 11 is relevant for almost all Windows 10 users.
The actual analysis itself makes it clear that the research specifically on cell phone bans is lacking. In particular, of the 1317 studies, only 22 were relevant, more than half of which were Master Degree research projects, not peer-reviewed studies. It’s fair that the evidence for cell phone bans in schools is inconclusive, but that’s because there isn’t enough quality reach yet to draw conclusions.
I was actually referring above to studies on cell phones in general for task success, non-specific to schools.
You’re missing the point entirely, I think.
If you want to learn about the research, Jonathan Haidt’s book includes links to studies on the effects of cell phones. I don’t have time to find the sources for you right now, but you can look there if you want to learn more.
Sure, but lots of people are looking to install it anyway because they “need” it to play Valorant or whatever.
Seriously… I’ve downloaded 2TB in a week before.
I get that it’s not about the bandwidth, though; it’s about needing to upgrade their security since they scrapped the site without needing to log in, so obviously their site wasn’t secure. They’re claiming IT costs as damages.
It’s a shame your child’s teacher used the tool incorrectly. That was unprofessional of them.
If it helps, there are people like me running training sessions for educators to let them know what LLMs are (and are not) capable of. The main point I was pushing this year was that LLMs don’t know or understand anything. “The I in LLM stands for Intelligence.”
By age 16, there’s reason to think that youth can handle the addictive nature of phones, with support. Same for adults.
That said, yes, we probably should make dark patterns illegal, in general.
Smart phones in pockets being a problem is supported by robust psychology research. People do the worst at tasks when phones are on the desk in front of them, worse when phones are in their pockets, and best when phones are left in another room even if the devices are turned off, in all cases. It’s even worse if phones are on even without any sort of notification, like vibration. (And, obviously, notifications make things increasingly terrible.)
The research is not at all unclear or anecdotal; it is very strong. Phones are damaging to attention, task completion, and learning. This is established; the only disagreement is to the degree of the effect.
Re: phones in “class”, I think we’re misunderstanding each other due to terminology. Here, “a class” means a single instruction period. I thought you were for banning use during instruction time, but against phones being fully banned at school, but if you mean “class” to be the entire time from first bell to last bell, then we’re in agreement. No smart phones at all during school hours would be a good step.
Hopefully, that might also make parents more aware of the damage smart phones are causing and support a societal move away from giving youth addiction machines.
You’re only considering one narrow use of LLMs (which they’re bad at). They’re great for things like idea generation, formatting, restructuring text, and other uses.
For example, I tend to write at too high a writing level. I know this about myself, but it’s still hard (with my ADHD) to remain mindful of that while also focusing on everything else that crowds my working memory when doing difficult work. I also know that I tend to focus more on what students can improve instead of what they did well.
So ChatGPT is a great tool for me to get a first pass of feedback for students. I can then copy/paste the parts I agree with for praise, then “turd sandwich” my suggestions for improvement in the middle. Or I can use ChatGPT to lower the writing level for me.
For tests, it’s great to get it to generate a list of essay questions. You can feed GPT 4 up to 50 pages of text, too, so the content is usually really accurate if you actually know how to write good prompts.
I could go on. LLMs are a great tool, and teachers are professionals who (I hope) are using it appropriately. (Not just blindly copying/pasting like our students are… But that’s a whole other topic.)
To add to your last point, academics aren’t even the biggest problem: it’s youth mental health that’s in a crisis right now. Focusing on academic “success” itself is a problem. Academics will come if students have mental health and resilience.
Yes, that’s why I specified above that “home schooling” usually comes with lots of extra funding.
In my jurisdiction, an autistic student gets ~$30K of funding, half of which is earmarked for education specifically. In a public school, that gets maybe 45 min of EA time + being on a learning support teacher’s caseload. With “home schooling”, that $15K can pay for enrollment in a specialized small-group part-time program for academics.
The other $15K funding can pay for respite workers, if parents need more time for work, or lots of other things.
Also, parents are much better equipped to follow their children’s interests with authentic experiential learning than any public school can be. Schools can’t afford 1-to-1 attention, and parents know their children best. With academic support covered, parents can focus on following their children’s interests.
These students are also followed by a teacher (like me) and a learning support teacher to help coordinate resources, support workers, and other planning. There are layers of support.
It’s an incredibly effective educational model.
I don’t know if something similar is available in the US. I imagine it varies by state, and I would not expect Red states to support programming like this.
I’m certified to teach in my jurisdiction. I have a teaching degree, and I have completed additional professional training specific to this topic through conferences, books, and other professional development (PD).
I can’t source conference talks or teacher PD groups, so I sourced a popular press book that’s approachable to laymen.
Phones in pockets are damaging, too, FYI. Children 15 and under shouldn’t have smart phones at all, ideally, but definitely not at school
A dumb phone can do that without the damage caused by smart phones.
You seem to care about this, but just FYI that it’s well studied at this point that having a smart phone at all during school hours is a problem.
It’s not about cyber bullying. Having a smart phone in their pocket is damaging. Children should have dumb phones exclusively until age 16.
Outside of class time sounds good, but it really means that students become fixated on checking all their notifications between classes. This is an experience blocker. Instead of engaging with their peers or teachers, they’re screen zombies caught in addictive dark patterns, generating anxiety constantly all day.
I’ve plugged it already in this thread, but The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt explains this really well , and he brings receipts.
You can get a cheap mp3 player for literally $5. Digital textbooks can be viewed just fine on a laptop, and schools have hundreds of those.
Smart phones are addiction machines. I’m very glad to see schools banning them. Hopefully, parents take note and realize how harmful they are for child development and start buying them dumb phones instead until they’re older (16+).