When classroom tech comes home

As generations of teachers and education researchers have known, supportive and involved parents play a major role in students’ academic success. And yet, as laptops and tablets have become an everyday part of the classroom, the voices and perspectives of parents have been largely absent from discussions about the role of educational technology in their kids’ lives.

In a recent meeting with parents from our well-regarded North Carolina school district about the impacts of tech use in learning, our conversation covered many of the “typical critiques” of EdTech — how the gamification of learning emphasizes the digital rewards (coins, avatars, badges) rather than the real-world skill (math, reading comprehension); the temptations toward distraction and cheating brought on by ready internet access; how tech can often steer the emphasis to the superficial “product” of learning (e.g. what color font, images and animation should one use in a Google slide) over the “process” of learning (e.g. critically thinking about the content and purpose of the presentation), and even the ways in which excessive screen time contributes to eye strain, poor posture and headaches.

More poignantly, many parents talked about the way that EdTech is fundamentally shifting their role in their own children’s education, crowding out family involvement for the sake of yet more screen time.

Consider the most pervasive instrument in the EdTech toolkit: the Chromebook. In the pre-Chromebook era, pen-and-paper homework assignments provided, at least for certain grade levels, an opportunity for parents to help their students complete assignments or study for tests. Moreover, when assignments were completed through “analog” means, it allowed parents an easy opportunity to sit alongside their student and “work through” the assignment — even if parents occasionally had to flip back through a textbook to “relearn” fractions or elementary biology.

As our community discussion revealed, this opportunity has been thoroughly displaced by the Chromebook’s presence. Encouraging or requiring children to bring a school-issued Chromebook home simply introduces one more screen into the home. The few hours that exist between coming home and going to bed have become dominated by screen-based work and digital distractions, often in contrast to a family’s previously established screen time boundaries. Homework time seems to take longer, opportunities for human connection are shorter.  With no clear view of the assignment, unless a parent has mastered the school’s online software, there is no way to gauge what the child should be doing or how long it should take.

In short, when the Chromebook came home, parents found themselves in the role of tech monitor rather than co-teacher, enforcing screen time limits, troubleshooting connectivity issues, or policing tech use (Is my child doing homework or playing a game? Is it possible that online game is the homework?) instead of engaging meaningfully with their child. A new kind of tech-induced stress and tension has been introduced to the family, and a new barrier erected between schools and parental involvement.

Alternatively, when a child brings home a set of math problems that they have to do on pen and paper, it is an invitation for the parent to be involved, and therefore an invitation for the parent-child relationship to have a meaningful role in learning.

What would it look like to see EdTech through the lens of a parent? Before the rollout or re-purchasing of any EdTech system, administrators and teachers would critically ask how the introduction of that system — e.g., bringing a Chromebook home from school as a middle schooler — affects the home environment, including the parent-child relationship. How does it encourage or isolate participation from the parent? Does it aid or undermine a student’s ability to focus on the academic task at hand? Does the presence of this technology enhance or potentially detract from a healthy family environment? 

Regrettably, considerations of the impact of EdTech on parent-child relationships is almost entirely absent from the current discussion about screens in schools. It is, in general, much harder for district administrators and school leaders to “see” the impact of EdTech at home — it does not lend itself to easily standardized metrics that can be cleanly associated with learning outcomes. And yet, just because it cannot be easily measured does not mean that it should be ignored.

If you were to ask any parent what they enjoy about their child’s education, why they picked this school over that school, they almost inevitably mention shared learning activities and relationships built with teachers and staff.  They long for the opportunity to get a sense of the style of the teacher, to share memories of reading the same book or poem, or to see the raw creativity of a diorama or a drawing. Most parents want to be involved, as much as time and energy allow, in their children’s education. Too often, however, EdTech like Chromebooks can get in the way — a physical barrier to human connection. As with many other aspects of life, the more that the activity of education is mediated through some technological device, the more that device crowds out other forms of non-technical interactions, including the ability of a parent to be meaningfully involved in the education of their child. 

Only the most myopic vision of education would reduce the overall impact of education to quantifiable changes in test scores and progress checks. There is an entire ecosystem of relationships that thrives or languishes based on how we go about the business of public education. First among these is the relationship between the child and parent. Parents are every child’s first (and lifelong) teachers. That role does not end when we let go of our child’s hand at the kindergarten classroom door.  For as long as there have been schools, parents and caregivers have played the role of teacher support — buttressing classroom learning at home — while continuing our own unique education in the “school of life” outside the classroom.

Anyone who takes education seriously knows that the teacher cannot be the only instructor. A critical examination of the ways in which EdTech strengthens or undermines the parent-child relationship takes that reality seriously.