At The Island School we limit children’s access to technology because we believe:
- building deep, conceptual understanding and higher-order thinking requires intensive teacher-student interactions, and technology can distract from this valuable human engagement.
- that when seeking information children should expend effort and time, developing important executive functions in the brain (vs. immediate gratification of getting the answer from Google).
- student-teacher engagement is precious, and we value face-to-face interaction over electronic devices.
- that when students reach 4th and 5th grades they should be introduced, on a limited basis, to Chromebooks for research and word processing in order to prepare them for middle school.