TechScape: Silicon Valley’s top schools quickly experimenting with technology | Technology

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This week on iPhone

Average usage time per day: 6 hours 2 minutes.

Most used apps: Yu-Gi-Oh! master duel. I just downloaded this app last week and it stirs up some nostalgia in me. teenage trading card era for better or for worse. Quite a lot of things in the game have changed since then, so there’s a lot of digital territory to explore.

Silicon Valley’s elite schools are testing temporary bans on technology

Leaders in the United States, United Kingdom and Europe are debating whether students should have cellphones in their hands during class. A growing number of people in power, from presidents to school superintendents, think they shouldn’t do that.

California’s governor last week signed a bill requiring schools to reduce screen time for students, and the Los Angeles School District, the second largest in the United States, passed a ban on public high school phones on campus starting in 2025. The UK is not making this decision piecemeal. Similar to the US, ministers announced plans in February to ban phones in schools across the country. Hungary now requires schools to collect students’ devices at the start of the school day. France is in the midst of trialing a ban on the use of phones for students under 15. The Netherlands has banned the use of phones in schools from January 1, 2024.

Consensus is growing. Taking up arms against screen time is a popular stance among both conservatives and progressives. There is a popular opinion that phones are bad for everyone, especially children. One of the problems is that it is a universally acknowledged fact that everyone living in our time must have a smartphone. How can we prepare students to balance the two competing needs of screen time and screen-free time?

An elite school in the heart of Silicon Valley is asking students to put down their devices and rethink their relationship with technology. The $62,400-a-year, private school for girls at Castile School in Palo Alto, Calif., has banned cell phones in classrooms since middle school principal Laura Zappas can remember. Also smart watches. The school has 185 students in grades 6, 7, and 8, aged 11 to 14.

Zappas instituted a completely technology-free week last school year, requiring all Castillaja students to lock their devices, including smartphones, smartwatches, tablets, and school-issued laptops, at the start of the school day for one week in March. The girls took notes, filled out all assignments on paper, and recorded data from their science experiments in graph journals. They wrote down the homework they needed to complete on paper planners that Zappas personally distributed. They complained of cramps because they handwritten more lines in a day than any other grade.

“We found that students with laptops had several screens open at the same time,” Zappas said. “They may be texting or playing games instead of taking notes. Or, a student’s urge to start class may be replaced by waiting for instructions from the teacher or what they are doing. Instead, I wanted to open my laptop as soon as I entered the classroom. I was always drawn to my laptop.”

The initiative, simply named “Tech Free Week,” served to reset digital-first educational practices during the pandemic, Zappas said. “I think before coronavirus, we were using a combination of paper and technology. And I think my own education has changed pretty dramatically with coronavirus, with all assignments now having to be submitted electronically. And since COVID-19, it has become our daily life.”

What does Unplugged look like as a way for students and teachers to think more deeply about our relationship with technology?

Administrators described Tech Free Week as a pause for rethinking. How can we participate as a community without screens?”

The results were positive, with 42% of students saying they were able to concentrate better in class and were less distracted during schoolwork, according to a survey conducted by the school. Almost three-quarters of teachers asked Zappas to repeat the effort. She is in discussions with administrators at the 9th- through 12th-grade high school to implement a technology-free week for older students.

Zappas emphasized that advance notice and careful preparation made Technology Free Week possible. She notified school teachers of the initiative four months in advance and pitched it to parents six weeks in advance. She asked both teachers and parents to consider how they can build healthy relationships. That a week without technology required so much planning shows that devices can be an inseparable part of modern life, even for 11-year-old students.

We have a French teacher and we gave them all the dictionaries and she said they had never seen a French dictionary before.

“We have a French teacher and we gave them all the dictionaries and she said they had never seen a French dictionary before,” Zappas said. “And it took a long time for them to figure out, ‘Okay, what’s the right word that I want to use here?’ How do I find that?”