Parents' Coalition of Montgomery County, Maryland: Schools are reducing their reliance on laptops and tablets following a damning international assessment and concerns over the impact of social media on learning

Monday, April 11, 2016

Schools are reducing their reliance on laptops and tablets following a damning international assessment and concerns over the impact of social media on learning

"The reality is that technology is doing more harm than good in our schools today," the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's education chief Andreas Schleicher told world leaders at a global education forum this month.
Last week, John Vallance, the principal of one of Sydney's most expensive private schools, Sydney Grammar, said that laptops were not necessary in class and that more traditional teaching methods were more effective.

Schools in the Catholic sector are also moving away from laptop centred learning after an OECD report found that countries which have invested heavily in education technology have seen no noticeable improvement in their performances in results for reading, mathematics or science.
Australia has spent $2.4 billion putting laptops in the bags of as many schoolchildren as possible through the Digital Education Revolution of the Rudd and Gillard governments.
"Education is a bit like the stock market, it overshoots." said St Paul's Catholic College principal Mark Baker. "Computers have been oversold and there is no evidence that it improve outcomes. Giving out laptops was the educational equivalent of putting pink batts in people's roofs"...

...The Manly school has banned laptops for one day a week in an effort to get pupils out onto the sporting field and away from LCD screens. "If you say that at an education meeting you are branded as an educational dinosaur," the principal of 17 years told Fairfax Media.