Manish Tomar

I taught during the rise of Chromebooks in classrooms and it was a nightmare Kids cheating rampantly, Googling every single fact, refusing to read assuming that copy and pasting things from Wikipedia counted as an answer Students were regularly able to circumvent controls to watch porn, play video games, and watch movies or YouTube in class Students used shared Google Docs to gossip, bully each other, and plan crime (not joking) Everyone knew it was a disaster but the district refused to stop using them because “this is the future, kids need to learn computers”, plus massive amounts of funding were tied to them Mandatory testing was done on the computers and they were used for IEP accommodations so they were unavoidable Eventually, things got so bad that despite vigorous protests from parents and administrators, I went almost entirely analog, requiring students only use paper and textbook except for state mandated tests That worked really well until COVID, where remote learning once again became mandatory Even after the return to classrooms administration required everything be accessible online at all times, so there was no longer any option to stop the digital distractions A true nightmare for teachers and a system that has radically failed students