The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

It seems the real issue here is that school devices should be locked down better? It's honestly shocking they aren't already. Why on Earth would kids be allowed to access TikTok over their school network?

Mind-boggling, seriously.

It's incredibly frustrating as a parent when you've taken care to make your network and devices work a certain way for your kids, then the schools send them home with devices that have unlimited access to Youtube and trash-tier Web games and whatever else, and no ability for parents to manage any of that (of course). WTF. Thanks, now I have some damn object I have to keep away from them, but also have to get back in their backpacks each morning. Wonderful.

^^ This!

My 4th grader has some sound sensitivity issues, so he uses that as an excuse to go out in the hall and read a book or listen to an auto book on his school-supplied chromebook when the classroom gets too loud for him

Well, guess what he's been doing? Watching unfiltered youtube! He's clever and sneaky, so it's been an arms race at home to block youtube enough for him but still allow it to work on my Roku for me. Why does the school allow 4th graders to have unfettered access to youtube?

Fascinating. I teach and believe the devices should be more open. I've personally witnessed student agitation, anger, anxiety etc when barred from changing their wallpaper, from adding a bookmark to Chrome, from changing basic accessibility settings. I have a hard time seeing how we can lock these devices down any further.

Though I do believe schools need an edu version of YouTube. YouTube kids is too childish for older students. But regular YouTube has too much inappropriate stuff on it. That's a tough one.

we use Screen Time on iPad and iPhone with some limited time for YouTube, while google.com has different time limits for school...the end game went like this:

a) you can search anything at google, go to Videos and watch youtube with no limits, the url is still google.com

b) he did come up with an idea to screen record everything and then re-watch everything using Photos app. After that was blocked, apparently you can access same photos thru Camera.app :)

I get culture shock on HN these days. People on HN advocating for locking down school computers? What in the dystopia is happening?

I'm personally glad that they're circumventing these "protections." At least, they'll learn something along the way.

Isn't an edu version of YouTube basically Nebula or those other platforms I see big YouTubers talk about?

I honestly think people should stop trying to make sanitized versions of YouTube though. It doesn't really work (YouTube Kids is still a disaster and often inappropriate IMO), but all the extra rules and regulations severely inconvenience the creators and viewers who are happy with it as an entertainment platform.

Yep, we found the google-youtube url issue too.

Right now, I have youtube filtered by MAC on my Roku. I would like to add granularity so that they can watch some youtube, but they make that too hard. So we all just share the living room TV right now so that I can just keep an eye on things.

I'm still getting outsmarted though. I have locked-down parental controls on Minecraft so that my two kids can play together but not invite or be invited to stranger's worlds. But somehow, I see other people in there. Microsoft parental controls leave a lot to be desired. I don't know how non-tech-oriented parents do it.

So you're fine with your tax dollars going towards your kids browsing TikTok all day in school instead of fucking learning?

I’m pretty certain the previous commenter was specifically talking about restricting unfettered network access to YT/Tiktok, and not locking the wallpaper or bookmarks.

We use Safe Vision to access YouTube by allow-list only https://safe.vision/

Yes! For this reason our school district has stopped sending them home in the lower grades. Most parents are thankful.

Our district uses Light Speed Content Filter. It uses a web proxy with tls decryption to read the page content and block certain videos flagged by the AI. Works way better than our previous system. That being said, now the issue is a matter of distractions. They can watch "appropriate" videos, but they just watch at inappropriate times...like during class or at lunch. As a parent, I take an allow-list only approach to YouTube. they can only watch individual videos/channels I select. everything else is blocked.