Chromebooks are hot, but not in a good way: Should all devices be banned in school?

Students are short-circuiting their Chromebooks for fun in the latest idiotic TikTok trend, reports Christine Hauser in the New York Times.

"The 'Chromebook challenge' involves students jamming objects into their laptops until they spark and smolder," she writes. "Students then record the smoking laptops and share the footage on TikTok and Instagram, sometimes set to music, as viewers react with heart and thumbs-up emojis."

Sometimes, the sabotaged laptop melts floor tile, scorches desks and sets off fire alarms.

Students' willingness to torch their laptops has fueled a backlash against one-to-one computing, writes Lauraine Langreo on Education Week. "Classroom learning devices —such as Chromebooks and iPads — have become a major source of distraction, cutting into instructional time," according to an EdWeek survey.

“Giving some students a device is like asking an alcoholic to hold a drink — it’s just too tempting,” said a high school science teacher in Minnesota.

"Off-task behavior on laptops or tablets ranked as the second most common source of distraction for students," worse than cellphones, Langreo writes. Other students are the biggest source of distraction.

"Most districts have had a 1-to-1 computing environment, in which every student has a school-issued learning device, since 2020," or earlier. While 53 percent of teachers and administrators say the effect is positive, a growing minority, now at 27 percent, says technology has a negative effect in the classroom.

Teachers say they must monitor students' screens at all times to keep them from playing games.

"Students are very distracted by the Chromebooks," said a Tennessee teacher. "They want to play games, listen to music, and [use] math apps to solve problems. They do not want to think about problem solving because they [have] access to the answers without thinking."

Even teachers who see 1:1 devices as a net positive say it takes effort to limit distractions, notes Langreo.

Many schools are moving toward phone-free classrooms, writes columnist Laura Yuen in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. The next step in the war against distraction is for schools to "consider the tradeoffs" of giving every child an electronic device, she argues.

"In my friend group — we are all parents of sixth-grade boys — many of our kids have struggled with the lure of powerful forces of tech design while on screens supplied by their schools," Yuen writes. "Teachers have told us that kids are watching YouTube or playing video games when they should be listening in class or reading a book."

Yuen worries about the increasing rate of ADHD  -- one in nine students has been diagnosed -- and the ability of kids to get around school filters and access porn sites and other inappropriate content.

"As tech companies squeezed their hold onto American classrooms over the past decade, did we ever require these companies to convincingly show that their products improve student learning?," Yuen asks. "A 2023 report from UNESCO found that impartial evidence about the effect of technology in schools is in short supply — and much of the evidence about the benefits of tech 'comes from those trying to sell it'.”

Wake County schools in North Carolina issued every student a laptop at the start of the pandemic, but now plans to end its Chromebooks for all policy, reports Jamiese Price for WTVD. Paying for replacement laptops, software updates and maintenance is too expensive, the superintendent told the school board.