Count Khan Academy CEO and online learning innovator Sal Khan among the fans of nationwide legislative efforts to limit screen time in schools.
He further challenges superintendents to expand regulation beyond screens and devices to include social media.
Lawmakers have introduced bills this year proposing limits on the time spent using edtech in public schools, NBC News reports. It’s a movement fueled by educators and parentsconcerned about their children’s screen time.
In Rhode Island, Utah and Vermont, for example, edtech would undergo new vetting processes for public schools.
“I think it could definitely hurt [edtech companies] in the short term,” Khan told District 91心頭istration. “Anytime people go to extremes, it’s usually not the best place to go.”
However, regulating screen time is a well-researched and valid approach to improving engagement and achievement. At the , where he serves as chair and founder, cell phones have been banned for years.
“Kids do not have their devices open all the time at that school,” Khan says. “We are very thoughtful about our use of technology.”
He’s not arguing screens versus no screens. The question is whether teachers can drive meaningful classroom engagement. He says kids can cognitively offload (reduce the mental demand of tasks and responsibilities) with or without a device in front of them.
“You can cognitively offload by using ChatGPT,” he says. “You can also do it by pretending to be awake while you don’t understand anything in a lecture. We all did that for decades of our lives in school.”
A healthier approach to screentime, especially for younger students, would be to avoid tools that endlessly suggest and auto-play videos, allow ads and offer hard-to-control content. A recent Khan Academy provides additional guidance for teachers and parents.
Broader tech restrictions also make sense.There’s a concept he calls “social media creep” that occurs when a family bans the platforms while a school relies on social networks for clubs and extracurriculars.
“In my own house, we’ve banned Instagram for our kids, and they’re like, ‘Oh, but the robotics team requires us to use Instagram,'” Khan explains. “I would even put pressure on clubs, because there are other mechanisms they can use that might not be quite as sexy as Instagram, but I would definitely take a hard look at that kind of stuff.”
Preparing students for an AI-driven workforce
As AI reshapes classrooms, students have quickly overtaken teachers and administrators in expertisestudents like brainstorming ideas, conducting research or refining essays.
Students must become AI literate to the extent that they know how the technology generates answers and what biases may exist.
Meanwhile, Khan argues that schools should prioritize teaching accounting, finance and law skills, which remain as valuable as they were 10 years ago.
“Everyone’s life is hugely affected by those, and schools don’t teach it today,” he explains. Instead, there’s been a push in recent years toward financial literacy, which he believes schools could expand upon to include learning about capital markets and real-world accounting applications.
“You learn about the amendments of the Constitution, but you don’t learn about the criminal justice system versus the civil courts, the state court system versus the federal court system and the differences between them. That seems very important to me.”
There’s also a lingering fear that AI will inevitably replace teachers, which Khan refutes, explaining that teaching is one of the safest jobs in the job market. No matter how advanced AI tutors become, students benefit most from the human connection and an educator who can hold them accountable and motivate them as “the conductor of the orchestra of the classroom.”
Another misconception is that technology alone can dramatically improve academic performance. Since the release of ChatGPT, nearly every edtech platform has incorporated AI somewhere in its suite of offerings. Khan cautions against using AI in isolation.
“You can make the absolute best tool and give every student in the world access. I think you would see shockingly small gains,” he says.
Access doesn’t equal motivation and support, he adds. Unless human interaction is at the root of AI use, the academic inequities that exist in schools willpersist.
“That’s why we have been so focused on going deep with districts, especially high-need districts, supporting teachers, teacher tools and admin tools,” he says. “On both extremes, AI is not going to replace teachers and it won’t solve all the world’s problems.”
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