Thread by @grubreport

Thinking about writing a story that involves all the IDIOTIC apps our children are supposed to access for school every day and all the DIFFERENT IDIOTIC apps parents are supposed to use to know what's going on at school.

Dreambox
Razzkids
Clever
Google Classroom
Alt School
School Messenger
Parent Square
Seesaw
Big Ideas
Khan Academy
Finger Type
Twig Friend
ThinkBox
Treehead
Bullshit

During your work day, let us send you a million emails with long videos from your kids' classroom with UP TO THE MINUTE and if you don't click on their personal journal within 3 mins, we will keep sending you emails EVEN IF THERE AREN'T ANY UPDATES

"Mom, in school today we --"
"Not now, honey, I have to log into SwingSet to watch what you did in school today."

Also, the UNMITIGATED GALL to assume every family has a good enough internet connection and a computer that can be DEDICATED to the HOURS of homework a home with multiple students needs. At this point, our sons have to take turns doing their APP-BASED HOMEWORK.

My math prof husband has Stanford freshman telling him how much they hated learning math via computers. Teachers need to stop being so in love with all these tech platforms. They aren't innovative, they are frustrating, user-unfriendly in many cases, and TOO MUCH SCREEN TIME.

My laptop -- the thing I do MY work on -- is the computer they have to use for all of this. Why? Because the web platforms demand you have up-to-date IOS to use them and because we have not issued individual iPads to our children and aren't likely to in the near future.

Additionally, this is a district choice, not an individual teacher's choice to use all these things. I know plenty of teachers who are not thrilled with them either.

And we never get answers on what they are doing with the data that is obviously being collected when our kids use these apps. Or what they will do with the data when our kids age out of one particular platform. Oh, and some of these platforms are owned by Facebook, so yeah.

And sure, some parents might like this constant interaction with what's happening in the classroom but if teachers constantly tell ss: "Make sure your parents watch this on Seesaw!" and the ss go home and repeat this and there are REASONS why the parents can't ...

I mean, just think about it. And maybe our district is excessive compared to others but we've been pushing back on it for years and yet every year they just do more and more. And the frustration at home increases.

Finally, we are told as parents -- if we didn't already know this -- to monitor our kids' online experiences. Do you realize how much monitoring that means when you increase the amount of time spent on computer-based learning at home?

I never considered myself a Luddite before, but given where we live, the word "Innovation" makes me break out in hives.