Em Rusciano: Should we be ditching laptops in schools?

A WHILE back, the Australian government spent more than $2 billion on laptops for our children at school. It may have been the absolute wrong thing to do.

St Monica's Catholic School year 3 students L-R Rishika Bhaskar Rao, Jordan Basha and Jessica Crowle use iPads in class. Story about NAPLAN. Picture: Toby Zerna

“THE reality is that technology is doing more harm than good in our schools today,” the Education Chief of the OECD, Andreas Schleicher, told world leaders at a recent global education powwow.

Say what Andreas?!

Besides having a name better suited to a Bond villain, Andreas thinks that we’ve really stuffed up by whacking a laptop and or tablet device in front of our kids at school.

Fun fact: A while back, the Australian Government spent more than $2 billion doing just that, and now there is a chance that was the absolute wrong thing to do.

D’oh!

Studies are now suggesting that kids may not be using it for the educational purposes they were intended, that they’re on social media, getting stressed, comparing themselves to others and generally forgetting how to interact with fellow humans. That their creativity is being stunted, their capacity to learn lessoned and their attention spans reduced to almost nothing.

My kids both go to a school that heavily uses technology. In fact my 14-year-old who is in Year 9, doesn’t own a text book, she works exclusively on a Surface Pro.

Should I now be worried?

Kids having fun with iPads at school. The technology is there, whether we like it or not, so it really a good idea to take it away? Picture: Toby Zerna

Just to really screw with you, I present the following fact:

The director of executive communications at Google sends his kid to a technology free school.

Are you even reading this?!

Wait!

It gets better.

The chief technology officer of eBay sends his offspring to the same school. Yeah you read that right, the head honchos of Silicon Valley send the fruit of their magnificent nerdy loins to a school with NO SCREENS!

These two aren’t part of some renegade tearaway group. Oh no, many employees of Apple and Yahoo subscribe to the old ways, choosing a hands-on, tech free learning environment for their children.

It kind of feels like if Willy Wonker put the kibosh on chocolatey treats for his kids or Michael Jordan said NO BBALL little dudes or … You get the idea.

So how am I supposed to feel about all this? Who is right? Who is wrong? Should we burn all the laptops and iPads?! Am I a good or bad parent for allowing my children access to these devices?

Honestly, I don’t know.

The facts are that the internet and all it’s trimmings exist in the world. So totally ignoring it seems counter productive and ignorant. Schools need to teach how to use it effectively and minimise the drawbacks and dangers of it. But I also believe that kids don’t need it to learn — they will learn with or without it. I did, you probably did too, and we turned out OK!

With the rate of change in our current society, no one knows the types of skills required for tomorrow’s adults, so the most important thing is to teach them how to learn and make them adaptable learners.

And we need to see computers as just one tool and medium within a range of options, rather than an entire educational approach. Ensure students are just as skilled producing and learning away from technology as they are on it.

The scary part is, our kids are a huge science experiment. They’re the first generation not to know what it is like not to have the internet. Only time will tell if we have done them a service or injustice by how little or how much we allow them access to it.

Terrifying isn’t it?

But really. Can you BELIEVE that thing about the Google dude and his kid?

His name is Alan Eagle, look it up!

Em Rusciano is a comedian, writer, singer and regular news.com.au columnist. You can follow her on Facebook.