Dear Editor,
As a reading interventionist at a Vermont public middle school, I witness daily how technology shapes our students’ futures. We use Google Chromebooks for statewide testing, diagnostic testing and even for daily instruction.
As a Vermont teacher, I am expected to have all my work available through the web-based learning management system, Google Classroom, to regularly check my Gmail and to use only Google tools in my job. Generally, this helps Vermont schools move toward Universal Design for Learning, an educational framework designed to improve and optimize teaching and learning.
Unfortunately, the Google spell-check feature no longer works effectively on student Chromebooks. Rather than helping students fix their spelling, Google’s artificial intelligence is constantly offering to rewrite the sentence or find links to related information. Google places so much emphasis on developing all the flashy AI features that it no longer cares about perfecting simple, essential tools like spell-check.
For me, this issue is deeply personal. As a dyslexic person, spell-check has been the crucial tool that allowed me to participate in the information economy. In my role as a reading teacher, I find it vital to teach students how to integrate spell-check into their writing process as an essential accommodation. By failing to fix this basic feature, we are depriving an entire generation of their potential for independence.
Vermont schools spend millions of dollars a year on Google Chromebooks and their software licenses. Because of these massive investments, Vermont teachers and students are trapped in the Google environment with no viable alternatives.
The state must now take a stand and stop sending any money to Google until it fixes the issues with spell-check in the Chrome environment.
I appreciate Vermont’s wish to embrace equitable access and the effort to get all Vermont students onto computers. However, it seems like an incredible waste of time and money if we can’t even expect basic tools that actually work.
Ben Mitchell
Westminster West, Vt.
