• over 90 percent reported that they believed their digital technology was negatively impacting their everyday lives. However, when we matched these reports with school administrative records, clinical assessments, and reported mental health symptoms, we did not find evidence of impairment.
• when researchers frame social media as addictive (versus neutral), they are more likely to find negative associations.
• in her laboratory-based study, Simone Lanette and colleagues (2018) reported that over 90 percent of parents and teens responded to open-ended questions about their phones using language that suggests feelings of addiction, defensiveness, and/or shame.
• ngela Yuson Lee has shown that the most harmful thing about social media with respect to mental health may be how much control, or agency, adolescents perceive themselves to have when interacting with it
• However, it is through many of these same channels that students seek out help and support. Many teens go online to seek out information about mental health, especially when they are struggling. In a nationally representative survey of 1,300 adolescents (Rideout & Fox, 2018), 90 percent of those with depressive symptoms reported going online for information about mental health, compared to 48 percent of those without symptoms.
• Simply put, pointing a finger at unproven causes of mental disorder will not make the youth mental health crisis go away. Instead of rushing to implement restrictions on social media, consider teaching children that such platforms are tools over which they have control. Teach them self-efficacy, and self-regulation will often follow. Instead of scaring children about “strangers” and “predators,” teach them about problematic behavior, both in people they know in person and for those they may not know online
• Instead of making the problem about a tool that provides access to information and data, teach children to critically examine their sources and turn information into knowledge. Misinformation and data illiteracy are some of the greatest threats to society today, and schools have a unique opportunity and responsibility to influence our future in this regard.
• Above all else, model the behavior we want to see in our children.
• Use your own phone and social media in responsible ways, think critically about your own media consumption,
• and engage with students and their devices thoughtfully and intentionally.
• Have a conversation with the young people in your classrooms about who they are interacting with online; what interests them; and what type of information, support, and experiences they seek when they spend time in online spaces and turn to social media feeds.
• Young people are early and enthusiastic adopters of new digital technologies, and simply restricting access is not going to work.
• Choose communication over conflict when it comes to managing devices
• A first step in supporting the young people in our classrooms with their digital technology and social media use is to question the narratives we are fed about these issues. If we continue to just accept the messages that we are hearing about social media, we risk driving a wedge between generations and restricting access to the larger set of supports for students who need that lifeline.

12 more annotations...

• For Stager, the notion of tech-bans or bans on devices in schools is a farce. For him, the notion that the teacher should be the centre of attention at all times, or that an arbitrary assessment or curriculum agency is more important than the personal development of a child, is problematic
• “If your stance is that kids have to pay attention to an adult, whose expertise may or may not be questionable, for inordinate periods of time in order to perform on an arbitrary examination, or write a paper on a topic no one could possibly care about, then you are not preparing anyone for any kind of meaningful future,”
• “Assessment is judgment and inherent in that is a desire to rank and sort, rather than to uplift and empower, and that’s problematic. We should be asking, ‘What can a student do?’ – and the way we know what they can do is by knowing the student, by spending time with them, by collaborating with them, by talking with them, by having a more collegial relationship and breaking down the hierarchy,” he says
• “Schools should be in a position of preparing kids to be in charge, as opposed to being mere consumers or victims of a force that they neither understand or control,” he says.
• “It was only a matter of days before the 10-year-old was humiliating me on the tennis court. But during one session, he was complaining of a headache. He was agitated and wasn’t making a lot of progress. When we took a break, I asked him, ‘If you could run the lesson, what would you like to work on? And he said, getting better’. That was one clue to me that he had no cognitive investment in what he was doing,” Stager recalls.
• “It’s arrogant to suggest that a program can replace the wisdom of adults in proximity to children they care about,” he says.
• “I think it’s important for educators to recognise that that sort of light exists in the world and that there’s some kid who’s not doing well on NAPLAN – or as I like to call it, napalm – who is the next Charlie Rosen or Casey Neistat who can potentially change the world and make it a better place for the rest of us.”

5 more annotations...

• the bots are still prone to basic errors that make them impossible to trust. In some cases, they may be even less accurate now than they were before.

• AGI — AGI stands for “artificial general intelligence
• AGI is the equivalent of a median human that you could hire as a coworker, and they could say do anything you would be happy with a remote coworker doing behind a computer,” Sam Altman
• Alignment is the practice of tweaking an AI model so that it produces the outputs its creators desired

1 more annotation...

• understanding the learning goals behind assignments helps students commit to them
• We agree with this approach (link is external) from Inside Higher Ed: “Go big. How do these tools allow us to achieve our intended outcomes differently and better? How can they promote equity and access? Better thinking and argumentation? … In the past, near-term prohibitions on … calculators, … spellcheck, [and] search engines … have fared poorly. They focus on in-course tactics rather than on the shifting contexts of what students need to know and how they need to learn it.”
• Changes in assignment design and structure can substantially reduce students’ likelihood of cheating— and can also enhance their learning.

• we know that students are less likely to cheat when they:

   
   
  • Are pursuing questions they feel connected to
   
  • Understand how the assignment will support their longer-term learning goals
   
  • Have produced preliminary work before the deadline
   
  • Have discussed their preliminary work with others
• Many of the above characteristics can be integrated into authentic assessments
• require authentic evaluation
• cognitively challenging
• have a sense of realism to them
• Engaging with ChatGPT as a tool that exists in the world and having students critically engage with what it is able to produce

7 more annotations...