Navigating School-Issued Laptops: A Parent’s Guide to Productive Dialogue
In Singapore a few months ago I had a conversation with a parent who, during the course of our chat, became increasingly frustrated as he recounted his struggle to teach his children digital boundaries at home.
In a nutshell, his stance:
“How can the school expect me to teach better digital wellbeing and screentime boundaries to my kids when the school assigns them every single piece of homework on their [school-issued laptop]? They end up being online way more than I would want. So I do my best. But then the school calls us parents in to tell us we’re not teaching the kids digital boundaries and blames us?”
Unfortunately, it wasn’t the first time I’ve heard this from parents. It’s frustrating when you get mixed messages from your child’s school.
The Tech Paradox: Navigating the Friction Between Schooling and Digital Wellbeing
On the one hand, the school must teach some level of digital literacy to students to remain competitive and ensure students are tech-ready before they graduate (also, paper-free homework is more ecologically friendly); on the other hand, schools ask parents to collaborate with them on mitigating the negative impacts of tech at home.
After working with parents, schools and kids on this issue for years as a consultancy, here’s the reality check we share first with parents: most schools are trying their best on this, trying to balance setting up responsible and intentional tech use policies while also educating parents to become allies in this domain.
You may have received a newsletter about a morning coffee talk or workshop about digital wellbeing or screentime, or seen a flyer for a guest speaker who is an expert on the subject, or remember the head of school talking about cybersafety basics during parent orientation. You may also remember that you didn’t have time to attend, or had a scheduling conflict and dropped out last minute, or completely missed that email or newsletter and found out months later after an issue arose at home and you needed urgent help.
You do so much as a parent. Schools do, too. And things get lost or missed.
The reality is that most schools want to partner with parents on digital wellbeing. They just may not know how.
4 Constructive Questions to Ask Your School Leaders About Intentional Tech Use
Based on our experience building bridges between parents and schools on digital wellbeing and intentional tech, here are 4 questions every parent and school leader should ask together, and continue asking on a regular basis:
What is working well about tech use for learning in my child’s life? What is not working well? [Parent answers first.]
What is the role of technology / devices in supporting my child’s learning at school and at home? [School leadership answers first.]
How does technology directly support or detract from my child’s academic, emotional and social wellbeing? [School leadership and parents both give their perspectives.]
Has the school / my child’s classroom teacher defined what tasks and contexts are important for learning using [device] in [what way] to [what degree] on a day-to-day basis? [School leadership answers.]
Bring these questions to your next parents’ association meeting or introduce them as a collaborative roundtable with your school’s IT department, edtech instructors, and senior leadership team.
Strategies for a Successful Approach: Be Collaborative, Be Consistent
It helps to bring these questions in a collaborative tone of voice, since the solutions you come up with or hear from them will need to be implemented both by you, at home, and at school.
Prioritise consistent messaging for your child, so that they can develop healthy behaviors and relationships with tech across their academic and home environments.
Tech as a Tool, Not a Default
Tech should support learning outcomes in the classroom, not define them.
It should not be a default for teachers or students to keep devices out during in-person class time 24/7. It should not be a default for schools to assign 100% screen-based homework from kindergarten onward. It should not be a default for parents to sit passively by while their children become dependent on tech for learning and lose the fundamental benefit of in-person and multimodal learning and instruction.
Early on in my 20’s I learned a crucial skill from one of my mentors that has served me well in my career: to say only the things that were required to get the work done well, and not overuse words. If it wasn’t absolutely necessary to say, wasn’t watertight and didn’t add direct value to the situation, better not say it.
The same lesson should be applied to tech. Tech should not be a default for learning. We need to be clear about the bare minimum and know that when we do choose to use tech to support learning and growth, it’s because we are certain it’s adding value.
