itsthejam.bsky.social
Middle school US history teacher, lover of public schools, proud union member, expert in Real Housewives and the extended 90 Day Universe and also I do like some other stuff I just don’t talk about it as much.
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Exactly. “Oh you can use it to project something while you’re walking around the room.” Oh can I? Not if you won’t buy me the app that allows me to connect from the iPad to my projector.
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I know iPads still exist. And they are useful for individuals who want a bigger phone but not a laptop. But they literally didn’t do anything for teachers or students and they only bought them because *someone* insisted it was life changing technology for education, and no one asked any questions.
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As my colleagues and I scream at the top of our lungs at every meeting, pd, school improvement conversation, data dive, evaluation, literally any place student progress in ELA is discussed…Social Studies teachers ARE reading (and writing!) teachers!
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If you’re projecting it, I might consider adding a little more visual contrast for the words and different sections, but if it’s on their individual screens I think it’s clear enough.
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I would also consider making it numbered steps. 1. Gear check. 2. Answer the prompt…etc. Maybe visually lay it out in the order you want them to read it a little more obviously?
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Is this going to be projected or something they look at on their individual screens? I think it’s a little busy for 6th grade. I would try to more visibly divide the prompt options (a line between, box them, more space) and I think they’ll gloss over the gear check at the bottom.
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Oh 100%. The speed with which we moved from “technology is a tool that helps us do things we couldn’t do before” to “if it sounds shiny it MUST be better” has been devastating and alarming. And deeply frustrating.
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It’s not an end all be all solution, but it’s what we can do within the realm of our control and I try to think of it as a harm reduction philosophy vs trying to “solve” something no one knows how to actually address.
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We know we’re not keeping them off social media, or protecting them from the vast uncontrollable internet. But it gives us and them a few hours that it’s a little bit easier to focus and connect and communicate, and just pauses some of the challenges their phone use had created.
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We’ve banned phones and anecdotally it’s made a huge difference just in the classroom and school environment. I think these things are really hard to measure in terms of impact because it’s so impossible to isolate the variables, but honestly it just feels better, and that feels worth it.
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It’s hard! You have to put on sunscreen every day and then do it again the next day? So much work.
(They also have a body one that I equally like, same gel consistency and no sunscreen smell)
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Highly recommend the Trader Joe’s invisible face sunscreen (or the supergoop one that it’s a dupe of, but tjs is way more affordable). It’s a gel so it’s not runny and feels light on your skin. I haven’t had any incidents with it getting in my eyes yet, even on a sweaty day.
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That’s fair, every teen/young adult child in New Jersey is too involved in adult business. I think she just gets the brunt because we’ve seen her completely grow up. Which is weird! We all know too much about all of them.
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Like the moment I got annoyed was when she started trying to be a friend on RHONJ instead of a dorter.
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I don’t hate her, but I really have no interest in a Teresa junior on my tv. One was plenty!
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Calling people’s legitimate concerns and thoughtful conversation about AI “hateful” is…..embarrassing.
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Because the things that I know hold value in education- relationships, the care a teacher puts in to planning for their students, meaningful feedback…it makes me really worried that people are trying to take that away from us, more than they already have.
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So I appreciate the desire to figure it out and have an open mind to its possibility, but I don’t understand why the possibility and value is assumed, instead of something we’re demanding be proven to us.
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A problem I can’t identify. I can’t think of a single thing it could do for me that feels worth the trade off. But I can name a lot of really serious concerns. And there’s something that makes me deeply uneasy about how tech companies are bending over backwards to force people to use it.
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One can. GoogleDocs solves some actual problems (no more lost work that a kid forgot to save, sharing files, easy collaboration, etc) and it isn’t the only way for kids to write, so we can figure out how and when to use it. But AI, we’re being told is a necessary and inevitable “solution” to…
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I appreciate the thoughtful response! I think where I’m stuck is, with most of those other messy in-betweens that you’ve named, we’ve had the room to figure things out. Decades to work within grading systems and figure out how to uphold our values while still meeting system expectations, as much as…
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Put a space before the minus sign
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I feel like most Ed tech companies at least could tell me what their product supposedly does that is good. This is like “no we swear we’re going to figure out what the good purpose is, you just have to use it first so you can figure it out for us.”
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I cannot think of any other invention/product/etc that has gotten the benefit of “of course it’s useful and good!” Before any user/consumer got to decide if it was good and served any purpose.
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If you just tell it don’t be biased, everything is fine! 😒
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Be quizzed ahead of a test? But AI is just going to take the test for them so why bother?