There’s a lot of debate about whether or not kids should have smartphones at school. Many districts around the country are beginning to ban phones at school altogether amid concerns about distraction and the disintegration of the school community.
But, kids' personal smartphones aren’t the only kind of technology in the classroom today. Schools also give kids as young as kindergarteners their own laptops or tablets, which they use for lessons sometimes at home and in the classroom.
But, as The New York Times pointed out recently, parents are often concerned about the unfettered use of screens in schools — and no one seems to track it.
To find out how it works here in Arizona, The Show spoke to Andi Fourlis, superintendent of Mesa Public Schools, the largest district in the state. She talked about how they approach technology as a learning tool. But, it’s not always that simple.
Full conversation
ANDI FOURLIS: All of our students throughout Mesa Public Schools, from kindergarten to 12th grade, have access to a laptop during the school day.
Our junior high — so, our seventh to 12th graders — have what we call a one-to-one device. They have one computer that is issued to them at the beginning of the school year, and they can take it back and forth from home to school, back home, back to school.
Our elementary students — they keep their computers in the classroom, and so those are more regulated by the teacher.
LAUREN GILGER: OK, so do you know — or have any way of tracking — how often students are on screens in the classroom, whether it's educational or not?
FOURLIS: We currently — we could track that. That's not a data point that we pay attention to at a district level, but it is certainly a data point we know that our parents are interested in, and it's a data point that our teachers and our principals are paying attention to. Kind of the rule of thumb is, the younger the child, the less amount of screen time they need.
GILGER: Talk a little bit about how much this has changed in recent years. I would imagine the pandemic played a big role in jump starting the role of technology and screens in classrooms, because we were doing school through screens for some time, right?
FOURLIS: Absolutely. And so, we had a multi-year roll out of what we call that one-to-one initiative, starting with our high schools. Then, we rolled down to our junior high students, and it would have been about two to three years before we were going to consider rolling this out to our elementary students.
But, the pandemic accelerated that plan, and so we worked with the city of Mesa, as well as we had to shift some of our dollars around. We also received COVID relief monies, and that allowed us to provide one laptop per elementary student, and when those go home, we also have to think about not just the laptop, but also access to safe and reliable internet.
GILGER: So, you mentioned earlier that something you hear a lot from parents about are complaints or concerns about technology in the schools. What do those sound like? What are the biggest concerns?
FOURLIS: Much of the concern is that parents want their children interacting with one another.
They want them collaborating. They want them problem-solving. They want them to be exploring their curiosities in the face-to-face classroom because they know that much of the practice of the skills and content that they are learning can be done at home, and usually that's done through a device.
But, when they are with other typical age peers, they want them engaged.
GILGER: Do you understand those concerns? Are they addressed?
FOURLIS: Oh, absolutely understand those. And, as a mom, I've got three adult daughters now, but I will tell you that I would have had those same feelings if that was projected to 2024 and my elementary kids had access to a computer.
The other thing that we have to think about is that technology is just one learning tool. It is not the learning tool. So, when — we'll just focus on elementary. In an elementary classroom, that teacher then has to make a decision: Is that skill best taught face to face by the teacher, or can that skill be taught using a computer or some type of a web application or some type of educational program that we have that perhaps has lots of repetition with immediate feedback?
So, the teacher's decision-making has changed quite a bit with the introduction of new technologies into our classrooms.
GILGER: So, what are the checks and balances on this kind of access to technology, especially for kids at a young age?
I know Mesa Public Schools is not banning cellphones in schools, as we have seen other school districts and other parts of the country and other cities around the Valley do. Are there concerns about distraction? About kids just not being engaged in the class or the school community because they're on their phones?
FOURLIS: Yes, yes. There is a concern about the distraction caused by technology, social media, all of that lumped together. And so, to be really clear around our cellphone policy is that our cellphones are not allowed in our classrooms or learning spaces unless directed by the teacher.
So, again, if the teacher believes that a cellphone could be valuable in the instruction for that day, or for a portion of that day, or a portion of a lesson; if the teacher says, take out your cellphones, and I want for you to respond to a big question that I have, and I want to be able to collect data in real time, so you're going to scan a QR code and send in your thoughts.
That could be three minutes of a 52-minute lesson of take out your cellphone and then it goes right back into the backpack so that it is not a distraction.
GILGER: Do you have filters, restrictions on certain sites on computers? Can kids get to potentially harmful content?
FOURLIS: Yes, we have filters on all of our computers that are accessed through our network are heavily filtered. And we have people that are constantly looking to see where kids are going.
Oftentimes, a principal will contact our technology department and say, I'm worried about these maybe two or three children at my school. Can you take a look to see if they're going to places that are blocked? And yes, we can.
I will tell you — more so in our junior highs and high schools — students who have smartphones and they are not accessing our Wi-Fi through our network, that those filters are not turned on.
GILGER: Right, when they're on their network. Kids are good about finding ways around those things, aren't they?
FOURLIS: Unfortunately, yes.
GILGER: So, it sounds like a lot of this is about finding a balance. Finding a balance between how much screen time is good, how to make it educational, how to balance it with interaction in real life with real students that are peers.
I wonder how you find that. Do you feel like this is a little bit of a guessing game right now, because the pandemic changed the role of technology in school so much that you're still sort of trying to feel out how best to do this?
FOURLIS: I wish I could tell you that it was a perfect science. It is not a perfect science. It's a combination of, as you mentioned, a guessing game, but it's also you have to know your context.
So, for example, we have what are called the Franklin accelerated academies. We have four different Franklins throughout our district. It's very back-to-basics. We limit technology in those classrooms. Kids are writing in cursive. They're using a six-sided pencil. The classrooms have chalkboards in them. And so, the use of technology at a Franklin school is going to look very different than technology use at, let's just say, our STEM Academy.
So, instructional programming should drive the decision on when and how technology is used.
GILGER: All right, that is Dr. Andi Fourlis, superintendent of Mesa Public Schools. Dr. Fourlis, thank you so much for coming on. Thanks for taking the time to talk this through. I really appreciate it.
FOURLIS: Thank you for the invitation.
