Boulder parents join national protest against AI, tech in education

Frustrated parents gathered at sites across the nation Wednesday to protest what they say is too much tech being introduced to their kids at school.

In Boulder, a group of parents gathered outside Google's campus to protest not just technology like Chromebooks and tablets in schools, but AI.

Leah Leonard was one of the parents at the Boulder protest.

"Are the decisions that we made in response to a global crisis actually the best decisions for how to educate kids and for them to learn?" she said.

"I'd like to see more time taken before we just decide to roll out something that's going to be guinea-pigged on my kids."

That's what a growing number of parents are asking as more and more tech replaces school textbooks.

"They're embedded in every single school now," said another concerned parent, Miranda Fan.

One of the parent's big issues with additional tech in schools is the lack of choice.

"I don't like to be told that this is the age at which you get to be given a computer, and it gets to be sent home, whether I like it or not," Leonard said.

Anna Segur says she took it a step further and dove into the data.

"From the way I've seen the Chromebooks used, I see it as principally being a distraction," she said.

"I saw my son had 460 YouTube visits in a month, and so then I asked for the full records from the district, and I saw that he, in a period of six months, he watched 39 hours of YouTube at school."

She echoed a question from many parents nationwide, where is the data supporting an increase in educational technology?

"None of these products have kind of the gold standard peer-reviewed journal evidence that they actually improve learning and education," she said.