Converlation — a name derived from combining meaningful conversations with building lasting relationships — created a program to address problems arising from technology use outside of school, namely social media, gaming and viral video challenges. The program, which is being piloted by four New Jersey-area schools this fall, provides teachers of fifth through eighth grade with a tote bag of materials, including pre- and post-assessments, instructions from Converlation Chief Product Officer Kathy Van Benthuysen, and eight activities, broken into four sections, rolled out over the course of a semester. These include video lessons and guided conversations, which ultimately end with kids making their own conclusions about technology, and the semester ends with challenging kids to do a non-tech activity in a group.
“Everything we do here is for one purpose and one purpose only,” Converlation Chief Executive Officer John Schwind told Government Technology. “To generate a conversation.”
Schwind said the impetus for Converlation came from his experience with his own kids, and trying to get them to reduce their tech use. That started seven years ago, and led to loads of research on side effects of the use or abuse of technology, and what options were available to control that. He said that research brought them to the conclusion that tech use outside of school was causing a tremendous amount of problems in school through bullying, harassment and intimidation, as well as distractions, forcing teachers to devote a lot of time and resources to helping those kids. This led the company to pivot from targeting families to targeting schools and school districts earlier this year.
“This is a real problem for administrations, and it’s causing problems for the school boards,” Schwind said. “And nobody had a solution for this and it’s only getting worse.”
Initially the plan was to market to teenagers, but they found it ineffective, as Schwind said you can’t get to them.
“The older kids, unfortunately, they're there. They're hooked,” he said. “It's like if these kids were smoking cigarettes, and now you go to a high school, how do you get them not to smoke anymore? You know, that is the problem.”
Knowing that the high school-aged kids weren’t adaptable to the program, they changed gears to target 8- to 13-year-olds, he said.
“What we do is we educate the kids that they're being tracked, they're being manipulated, they're being intentionally addicted, that their eyes are making these tech companies lots and lots of money,” Schwind said. “So we pull back the screen on what's happening and why they're becoming addicted. And when you teach the younger kids that, they don't want to go down that route.”
The Converlation program, which starts with a 10-minute training video, was piloted at four schools at the beginning of this academic year and another four schools in June. Schwind and Van Benthuysen said the company is working on curriculum for third and fourth graders that is expected to roll out in January if all goes to plan, ultimately hoping to provide the program nationwide for third- through eighth-grade classrooms. And while the curriculum is for one semester, Van Benthuysen said the company has more activities lined up for future semesters.
“It’s also about changing their mindset about their recreational tech use, because they have no idea that it affects everything,” Van Benthuysen said. “It affects their mood, their attitude, their interactions with others, their well-being, their overall performance, and they have to understand how it impacts every area of their life. Once they do, that helps to change their behavior.”
Among the schools piloting the program is Calvary Academy in Lakewood, N.J. Principal Stephanie Cruz told GovTech that issues with technology have been slowly developing over the past two-and-a-half decades, and then accelerated in the years since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We saw the focusing issues at our school. We saw attentional issues. We saw peer relations declining because kids were more interfacing with their technology than with people in real time in the real world,” Cruz said. “We saw the need to implement something so we could change this trend.”
Cruz said that Converlation, with its activities and videos, helped lead students to engage and have more conversations in the classroom, including opening up topics with teachers that weren’t expected, giving adults a better perspective on their mindset.
“It was excellent on so many levels,” she said. “They gave us a lot of information that helped us better understand where they’re at, and the addiction that is really happening at this current time.”
Cruz said there has been no downside to the incorporation of Converlation into lessons, helping kids get ahead of the negative side of social media and other platforms. She said it helps kids open up, discuss topical issues and understand the balance they can have in life.
Schwind noted that while Converlation is highlighting the harm technology can cause students, never once does the curriculum say technology is bad.
“Converlation never says that tech is bad or to stop using it,” he said. “Devices are unbelievable when we use [them] as a tool. What happens is devices are being used as endless entertainment. That’s the problem.”
