Join the Conversation A free statewide community conversation about The Digital Delusion A teacher watches a class disappear into their Chromebooks and wonders whether the lesson would have landed better on paper. A parent reads a screen-time report from the school portal and has no idea what to do with it. Those two people should be talking to each other. That's what this is. This fall, The Balance Project- Central Virginia is hosting a six-part community conversation around Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath's The Digital Delusion: How Classroom Technology Harms Our Kids' Learning — and How to Help Them Thrive Again. We read about fifty pages every two weeks, meet on Zoom for an hour, and talk it through. On January 25, Dr. Horvath joins us live to answer the questions we've gathered all fall. It's free, it's open to anyone in Virginia, and you don't need to have made up your mind about technology in schools to belong here. The best conversations happen when people who see things differently actually sit down and talk it out. If you teach, or lead a school, you'll leave with: - Language for what you've been noticing: the research behind why a room goes quiet and unproductive the moment the laptops open - A clear read on what the evidence actually supports, so when a purchase or a mandate comes down you can respond with something sturdier than a hunch - Colleagues in other divisions working through the same thing. This is a statewide room, not a building-level gripe session - An hour with a Harvard-trained learning scientist who spent years teaching If you're a parent, you'll leave with: - A grounded sense of what screens are doing to learning: separate from the screen-time panic, and separate from the marketing - Specific questions to bring to your teacher, your principal, or your school board, and the confidence that they're the right ones - A much clearer picture of what teachers are actually working with, which changes how those conversations go - Company. 4,041 Virginians have signed our petitions on this. You are not the only one asking. The details - Six Monday evenings, 7:30 to 8:30 p.m., on Zoom October 19 · November 2 · November 16 · December 7 · January 11 · January 25 - Free and open to anyone in Virginia - About fifty pages every two weeks — and come even if you didn't finish - You will need to obtain your own copy of the book. - Live only, never recorded, so people can say what they actually think - Register once; the same link works for all six evenings Register by October 5 and the reading schedule reaches you in time to start. After that you're still welcome — you'll just be reading a little faster.

This event is presented by Harvard Book Store. The event is free but registration is required through the EVENTBRITE link below. Harvard Book Store, the Harvard University Division of Science, and the Harvard Library welcome Natasha Singer—a Pulitzer Prize finalist for National Reporting who has covered tech industry influence in schools for the New York Times for more than a decade—for a discussion of her new book, Coding Kids: Big Tech's Battle to Remake Public Schools. She will be joined in conversation by Cathy O'Neill—CEO of ORCAA, a founder and board member of OCEAN, and author of Weapons of Math Destruction and The Shame Machine. The presentation will take place in Hall E, downstairs at the Harvard Science Center, located at 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge. Elevator access is available for attendees who need it. Ticketing RSVP for free to this event or choose the "Book-Included" ticket to reserve a copy of Coding Kids and pick it up at the event. Following the presentation will be a book signing. Note: Books bundled with tickets may only be picked up at the venue the night of the event, and cannot be picked up in-store beforehand. Ticket holders who purchased a book-included ticket and are unable to attend the event will be able to pick up their book at Harvard Book Store up to 30 days following the event. This offer expires after 30 days. Please note we cannot guarantee signed copies will be available to ticket holders who do not attend the event. About Coding Kids The inside story of how Big Tech catalyzed, co-opted, and ultimately came to capture computer science and AI education in America. Fourth graders doing Google-branded coding lessons. Amazon schooling seventh graders on its warehouse robots. Advanced Placement computing courses from Microsoft and Apple. Many educators and parents would object if Exxon wrote their school’s climate curriculum—or if schools assigned nutrition lessons from Coca-Cola and McDonald’s. Yet today, tech giants influence nearly every step of the education supply chain. They provide the classroom devices and software many students use to do assignments. They sell schools on the latest artificial intelligence tools. And increasingly, tech companies are launching their own corporate-branded school curricula, shaping how and what millions of children learn. In recent years, the tech industry has helped spread computer science and AI education in schools at astonishing speed and scale. In Coding Kids, award-winning New York Times journalist Natasha Singer draws on a decade of reporting to reveal how tech titans used the promise of coding (high-paying jobs! change the world!) to weave rosy industry visions of technology into the very fabric of American education, sometimes sidelining crucial ideas like civics and critical thinking. Along the way, Singer takes readers through the powerful playbook Big Tech used to scale coding lessons nationwide. Then she shows readers how tech companies are now applying the same playbook to mainstream their AI tools in schools. A revelatory account of the powerful forces shaping education and our kids’ futures, Coding Kids also offers hope. It tells the compelling stories of pioneering teachers fighting for a broader vision of tech education—one that not only teaches kids algorithms and app-making, but also asks students to grapple with the societal impacts of tech giants and their disruptive digital tools. Bios Natasha Singer has covered tech industry influence in schools for the New York Times for more than a decade. Her school tech reporting helped prompt California to enact a landmark student online data protection law. In 2019, she was part of a Times team whose tech coverage won a George Polk Award and was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting. Photo Credit: Bella Wang Photography Cathy O’Neil earned a Ph.D. in math from Harvard and worked as a math professor at Barnard College before switching over to the private sector, working as a quant for the hedge fund D.E. Shaw and as a data scientist in the New York start-up scene. In 2016 she wrote the book Weapons of Math Destruction: how big data increases inequality and threatens democracy, and in 2022 she wrote The Shame Machine: who profits in the new age of humiliation. She is the CEO of ORCAA, an algorithmic auditing company and a founder and board member of OCEAN, a non-profit defending the public interest against algorithmic harm.

Join us for an essential lecture by the acclaimed Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath, on Monday, November 2nd from 5:30-7:30pm at Sanctuary Hall (1126 SW Park Ave. Portland, OR 97205). Jared Cooney Horvath (PhD, MEd) is a neuroscientist, educator, best-selling author and expert in the field of human learning. His new book "The Digital Delusion: How Classroom Technology Harms Our Kid's Learning - And How to Help Them Thrive Again" pulls back the EdTech curtain and explains the research showing how digital tools in the classroom consistently undermine learning. It also explains how parents, teachers and schools can push back with purpose. As a leading expert in the field of learning and technology, Jared testified at the US Senate about EdTech, and is an internationally sought after speaker. Sponsored by the Institute for Families and Technology and OR Unplugged. Reserve your tickets at the link below!

This event is FREE and open to the public! We will have free appetizers available for as long as supplies last. Bring your kid after practice! Or get a sitter and make it a date night! Drop in any time between 6-9pm to learn about and test out various kid-safe, alternative devices.

At WC Unplugged, we’re working to raise kids well in a digital age. At our November meeting, we will be joined by special guest John McGowan, Director of Technology from West Chester Area School District. We believe face-to-face interaction is a cornerstone of mental health, that free play and childhood independence are critical for healthy kids, and that parents should be the architects of family culture, not big tech. We meet on the second Tuesday of the month and rotate between virtual meetings at noon and in-person meetings at 7:00.