As a new parent I was surprised that schools have even gotten into a state where iPads or Chromebooks are used regularly in the classroom. I don't understand how kids can learn on them.

iPads especially, they aren't a tool for productive work. Not many people use iPads professionally - they are designed for consuming. If I was in school today I think the distractions they provide would make me a far worse student.

I see iPads (class 7 to 13, german school system) very positive. Let me just point out 3 aspects:

My students can really work with book or materials (make a photo, then annotate, cut, copy paste, extend the pages ...)

It added a lot to how I teach (make a podcast, produce videos, simulate, ...)

And as parent: I was more than happy when my son had (for the first time) all learning materials together in one place and not scattered in bags, on the bed, in the school locker...

Let me assure you from personal experience that iPads can (used right) contribute to better education.

I have seen tons of university students taking note on their iPad with a pencil. Felt like a legit usage: read the course material on the iPad instead of printing everything, annotate PDFs, take notes.

Back in my days we were printing the slides and annotating (sometimes) them. That was a big waste of paper.

I was issued an iPad in high school in like 2014. Even then, they were distracting. We all played games on them. They did have some benefits, though. They ensured that every kid consistently had a small, portable, fairly rugged device to take home so that they could take online quizzes, write essays, do digital homework assignments, do research or reading assignments, scan paper documents, do video assignments, check schedules and announcements, etc., all without requiring parents to spend hundreds of dollars on devices for their kids.

Our school district uses Lenovo laptops and Microsoft for everything. My daughter couldn't do her homework yesterday b/c of the Microsoft outage. They use teams for absolutely everything.

I'm not a parent and none of my friends are. what's the benefit they're supposed to be providing?

Is it just grading and parental access?

Procreate, Nomad Sculpt, Final Cut, Logic Pro, Garageband and the Affinity Suite would love a word.

I disagree about the Chromebooks.

This was years ago, but my son went to a middle-school that provided them for all the kids. In class they had a rack of them at the back where they recharged. During a student-teacher conference with my son, she asked him to go grab a Chromebook and pull up an assignment he had done so we could talk about it. He went and grabbed a random computer off the rack, it instantly woke up, he logged in and had his lesson loaded for us to see in literally seconds. I had never seen the Chromebooks in action before and as a techie I was amazed at how smooth it was.

I have no idea how iPads are set up for use in educational environments, but seeing how the Chromebooks were used really impressed me. I also don't know if things have changed in the years since, but they definitely worked great for kids a decade or so ago.

Heh. To tell you how long ago this was, my son is actually a high school teacher himself now! So obviously it wasn't an impediment to his education.

It isn't for learning, it's for spying. Edutech in American schools are very much into surveillance.

All it takes is two decades of relentless lobbying by some of the richest companies in history