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I’ve been reporting on children’s mental health for over a year, and one of the concerns that always comes up in interviews with parents and experts is school apps. Blackboard, Schoology, ClassDojo, the list goes on. These apps help teachers communicate with families and parents and other caregivers track children’s learning. That’s good, right?
The tool started appearing in the early 2010s, but really took off in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, when millions of schoolchildren were forced to adapt to learning from home. says author Leah Plunkett. Sharing: Why you should think before talking about your kids online He is also a faculty member at Harvard Law School.
Some, such as Blackboard and Google Classroom, function as “open gradebooks,” allowing parents and children to see the grade for each assignment entered by the teacher. There are also services, such as ClassDojo, that allow families to track their child’s behavior at school. Additionally, some can be used to send messages or manage extracurricular activities such as band or sports.
Apps are now ubiquitous, and open report card tools are used in the majority of public and private high schools in America, Gail Cornwall reports for The Cut. These tools are an improvement on the system that many millennials remember, where students and parents didn’t know their grades until almost the end of the school term or term.
By then, “it may be too late to improve your grades,” says Meg St. Esprit, a Pittsburgh-based journalist and content creator. Meg St. Esprit uses Google Classroom and PowerSchool at her almost 13-year-old son’s middle school. Children and parents can now track their progress and challenges together.
But these apps have raised privacy concerns, with some experts saying sensitive data about children could end up in the hands of cybercriminals or later be used to limit children’s opportunities. I’m concerned about the possibility.
Others worry that by encouraging parents to monitor every fluctuation in their child’s performance, the tool could foster a culture of achievement and lead to stress and burnout among children. “It can feel like you’re always plugged in,” Saint-Esprit says. “It can feel a little bit like hustle culture.”
School apps are convenient but also stressful.
If you don’t have school-age children at home, you may be surprised at how many apps are needed for modern education.
St-Esprit, who has four children, including one in middle school, uses Seesaw, Remind, Bloomz, ClassDojo, PowerSchool, PaySchools Central, CutTime, and TeamSnap as well as Google Classroom and PowerSchool. Notification alone can be time-consuming for parents. Every time I called for this article, I received at least one notification.
Still, for many families, apps are a more efficient means of communication than, say, a flyer stuffed in a child’s backpack. Many parents appreciate the transparency of the Open Gradebook app and the ability to instantly message teachers instead of setting up a meeting during work hours (some teachers prefer the flexibility (I highly rate it). “It’s fundamentally good and constructive for school systems to be able to communicate with parents in real time and in a reliable way,” Plunkett said.
Phone apps aren’t a reliable means of communication for everyone. Some families do not have smartphones. There are tons of login and setup steps, some of which can be confusing even for relatively tech-savvy parents (and I’m not speaking from experience).
With open report card tools and other school communication technologies, “there are very clear ways in which privileged stakeholders benefit and others do not,” said Katherine, assistant professor of educational technology at Northern Arizona University.・Shelton told Edweek.
App developers are aware of these concerns, and some have taken steps to address fairness issues. For example, ClassDojo and Seesaw allow teachers to translate messages into students’ native languages.
Apart from accessibility, apps also come with other issues. It can be anxiety-provoking for children to have their grades for all their assignments displayed on a cell phone or computer screen, which you can also see. Saint-Esprit’s son recently received a low grade on an assignment, and “he was worried about it while he was waiting for his grade to improve,” Saint-Esprit said.
“Google Classroom is a source of stress for me,” her son, Eli, told me via email. “It’s hard to navigate.”
Apps can also encourage a relentless focus on grades at the expense of learning. “She’s always like, ‘Did they grade that test? Did they grade that essay?'” one parent of a 12-year-old told The Cut.
Emily Weinstein, lead author of a recent report on teen stress and burnout, says apps and the atmosphere of “constant quantification” they create are contributing to the high levels of academic pressure felt by young people today. He said this may be a contributing factor. Other experts say that because children can be tracked through apps, parental hypervigilance can lead to limiting children’s autonomy, which in turn harms children’s mental health and helps them develop important social skills. They argue that the development of cognitive skills may be hindered.
“The closer we are to our children now, the more information we have, the more direction we have, the more control we have, the better their lives will be. “I have this idea of becoming,” says professional therapist Lynn Lyons. He told me last year that he suffers from an anxiety disorder. “And research shows the opposite.”
Apps also raise privacy concerns
In addition to mental health concerns, some experts worry that the apps could make schools and families more vulnerable to hackers. Plunkett said some apps are used to communicate transportation plans, which can include a child’s geographic location. “If that app is compromised, someone who gets that information suddenly has access to where every child in that school or district goes.”
Meanwhile, records of students’ behavioral problems at school could come back later and harm them, Plunkett said. Additionally, the use of AI by schools and districts makes every conversation about student data more dangerous. Plunkett said that while it’s possible that schools could use student behavioral information to deny a student a letter of recommendation, “what I’m more concerned about is the possibility that there won’t necessarily be a human review.” If there is a gender,” he said. Computers can be used to make predictions and draw conclusions about students.
Schools have long stored data on student grades and test scores. However, apps currently in use have the potential to collect and store larger and more detailed information that may be used in ways that students and families do not understand unless appropriate guardrails are in place. We are increasing our sexuality.
Plunkett said updating the federal Youth Privacy Act would be a first step. App developers must also provide schools with “nutrition label-style information” about what data their apps collect and how it is used, he said.
Meanwhile, schools can limit app overload by communicating really important information, such as a child’s illness or serious behavioral problems, by email, phone or in person, Saint-Esprit said.
The goal should be for parents to have “enough information to know what’s going on,” but not to be “always looking over their child’s shoulder,” Plunkett said.
“There was something to be said for the brick-and-mortar era” of the ’80s and ’90s, she added. “We went to school, but our parents didn’t necessarily know what we were doing every day at school. I think that was probably a good thing for everyone.”
A growing number of states are considering legislation to protect the privacy and compensation of child influencers.
Additionally, many states are using opioid settlement funds to support “grandparents,” or grandparents who are raising children whose parents struggle with substance abuse.
Today’s youth apparently prefer gummy Halloween candy to chocolate options, but this is an incorrect opinion.
My older child and I just finished reading the “Creepy Elementary School” series about an evil elementary school that eats children (this setting really resonates with kids who have mixed feelings about school). ). Now I need to start a new book series. I’m open to recommendations.
In response to last week’s newsletter about teen stress and burnout, a 17-year-old reader wrote to me, “The experience for students in high school (and even middle school!) has become much more demanding and demanding.” I wrote this. “To pursue my field of interest, I had to do a huge amount of work just by applying to reputable universities, but I realized that a large number of papers were waiting for me. There are 9 at Caltech alone. Over the past four years, I have held research competitions, non-profit activities, math competitions, astronomy competitions, quiz bowls, etc. just to make my application more competitive. I’m still worried about the future because I don’t know if what I’m doing makes sense.”
This is difficult to hear from young people, but it also confirms what the researchers found in their report. This is a reminder of the need to examine the economic and cultural pressures that make children feel like they have to achieve a lot at a young age.
Finally, I would like to ask your family and teachers about apps: Do you, your students, or the children around you use apps to track their grades and extracurricular activities? Do you love them, hate them, or both? Please contact anna.north@vox.com.
