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I've seen studies that have shown that they interfere with learning, but none (that weren't sponsored by someone trying to sell stuff) that showed they improved learning.

I'll help you since your workplace must be blocking Google. From what I was able to briefly find, the meta-analysis of current research shows three things:

1) Blended use of technology and traditional learning probably produces the best results.
2) We are still figuring out how to best use technology in the classroom, but we are improving.
3) There has not been nearly enough large scale research to "prove" any assertions about the effectiveness of individual techniques in bringing technology to the classroom.

Does the Use of Technology Improve Learning?
The Answer Lies in Design
Effective Use of Technology as a Learning Tool
Learning with Technology. Evidence that technology can, and does, support learning.
Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning. A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies
Using Technology in Education: Does It Improve Anything?

And depending on your definition of "sponsored by someone trying to sell stuff", you are probably unlikely to find many studies at all like that (a fact brought up by a couple of the above studies). Since most school districts cannot afford to spend money on unproven technologies, a large percentage of these studies have their devices donated or heavily subsidized by the device manufacturer. Here are some iPad specific ones, but even though some of them may have had iPads donated they still back up their research with actual test scores.

Five Studies to Prove the iPad’s Educational Worth
iPad improves Kindergartners literacy scores
Study Finds Benefits in Use of iPad as an Educational Tool
iPads Improve Classroom Learning, Study Finds
iPad a Solid Education Tool, Study Reports

I found another link. It's one of those you know, Hellen Lovejoy "think of the children" sites but it lays out the arguments for gun regulation and preventing gun-related crimes committed by minors.

Really? Around here (Toronto, Canada) you can send your kids to whatever school you want. Junior high schools even have field trips for the students so they can pick the best high school for them.

But even if it's like you say, I find it hard to believe that a parent couldn't rectify the situation with some choice phone calls.

Wow, it's nothing like that here. My city is divided up into districts, and each district has a bunch of schools, and each school has a section of town assigned to it. Your kids go to the school who's area you live in. If you bitch enough (and I mean a LOT) you might get to move your kid to a nearby school in the same district. Going to a different district is right out. Unless you move, of course.

Actually, one of the biggest reasons schools in poor neighbourhoods tend to have worse schools is because they already have a system similar to what you described, under the guise of bake sales and other kinds of fund raising. The only difference is that this additional funding only really goes toward equipment, and not salaries.

In the US the majority of public school funding comes from property taxes (PDF). Poor neighborhoods get less money from property taxes, which means they get less money for schools.

I could equally explain away these results by saying maybe that those children who play games on school nights are not being challenged enough by their schoolwork, and are thus disinterested and seeking other means of entertainment.

The 'motivated' self-reporting high performing students are enthralled with the meaningless busywork that is being forced upon them, and aren't smart enough to be bored with it.

I'm not going to read the paper because I've got games to play, but I'm betting that they didn't break down the kinds of games that the kids were playing. Previous studies, from what I recall, have found that playing certain kinds of games can improve academic performance (let's say something with logic puzzles) --- here, I found an URL for you: http://www.futureofchildren.org/information2827/in formation_show.htm?doc_id=69830. What if the game playing was chess? What would we be saying?

Remember, social sciences solely rely on statistical magic. Depending on your data model, you can prove anything. This isn't hard science --- hell, it isn't science at all --- and I wouldn't put too much stock in it because a contradictory study using the same data was probably published yesterday.

It isn't uniformly that way. It depends on the nature of the filtering process. A counter example is kids who come into school already reading. Their advantage is gone by grade 4. Why? All kids pass into the next grade so there is no filtering process.

Huh?

Care to explain that? Because my experience has been exactly the opposite. And I've heard a lot of stuff that would seem to suggest that children who learn to read earlier, tend to do better in school, and this success in elementary school translates on down the line.

This review study, Long-Term Effects of Early Childhood Programs on Cognitive and School Outcomes, says that of five studies reviewed "All five estimated that [early childhood reading education] had a large effect on the [high-school] graduation rate." (Only 3 of the 5 were statistically significant, the sample sizes of the other two were suggestive, but too small for significance.) That seems pretty good to me, although they do admit that children who read earlier often have adults who are more involved, etc., and that may contribute.

Anyway, I would argue that there definitely is a filtering effect in schools -- at least there used to be, anyway, back when they actually "held back" students who couldn't meet standards at the end of the year. I'm not sure that this is done in elementary schools as much as it once was, but you used to be able to pick out the under-performers pretty easily, because they were always the kids that were 2-3 years older than everybody else.

Putting the issue of academic standards aside for a second, there is an age cutoff for kindergarten in most school districts which is identical in effect to that you talked about there being in hockey. Usually in order to enter kindergarten, children have to be at least 4 years and 10 months old (so they have to have their fifth birthday before November of their kindergarten year); this probably varies from place to place. But the net effect is the same: there are some kids who will just miss that 'birthday cutoff' and end up being the oldest kids in their class, the year later. And there are some kids who will just barely sneak in, and be the youngest. Obviously, school is different from hockey, and there's (hopefully) less of an emphasis on physical size and strength, and kids mature at different speeds. But the result is the similar: in any given 'grade,' you're going to possibly get some kids who are a year older than each other. Even more, if you have a system that allows for the acceleration of gifted students and the holding back of underperforming ones.

I've never seen any studies relating birth month to later academic performance, that would show whether it's advantageous for parents to hold their kid back a year if they're near the birth-month cutoff for kindergarten. I suppose it might be tough to do, since places presumably have different standards. It would be interesting, though.

Report 1; warninig pdf

Schwartz (1988). He set out to compare customary teacher-based tutoring of reading and comprehension with practice on a set of computer games derived from analysis of the reading process. 24 primary school children were selected, who were of average intelligence and who were 18 months or more behind their peers in reading comprehension. The children were split into two groups and assigned to teacher-based tutoring or to a computer game training group where they received practice on four computer games. Training in both conditions focused on word decoding and phonics. The study found that almost all students improved their reading comprehension test scores after training, although the poorest readers made significantly greater gains in the computer game condition than in the teacher training condition

study 2 - warning pdf:

"Marble Madness" and effects on spatial skills: A study of 61 children, ages 10 to 11, compared the effects of two computer games on the development of spatial skills--the cluster of skills required for children to visualize and manipulate objects or images in their minds.1 Practice on Marble Madness was found to reliably improve the children's spatial performance, while practice on Conjecture, a computerized word game similar to the TV show Wheel of Fortune, did not. The children playing Marble Madness used a joystick to guide a marble along a three-dimensional grid, trying to keep the marble on the path and prevent it from falling off or being attacked by intruders. After playing the game, children were found to have improved their ability to anticipate targets and visualize spatial paths. ?"Concentration" and effects on iconic skill: A cross-cultural study carried out in Rome and Los Angeles examined the effects of playing a computer game on the development of iconic skills--the skills that enable people to read images such as pictures and diagrams.2Researchers found that after playing the game Concentration on a computer, undergraduate students offered more diagrams in their analysis of an animated simulation of electronic circuits, whereas those who played the game on a board offered more verbal descriptions. ?"Robot Battle," "Robotron," and effects on visual attention skills: A study compared the effects of computer game expertise on college students' visual attention skills, the skills required to keeping track of several different things at the same time--not unlike a pilot keeping track of a row of several engine dials simultaneously.3 Researchers measured participants' response time to two events at two locations on a computer screen, where one target icon appeared more often than another. Predictably, participants who were expert players of Robot Battle (scoring above 200,000) had faster response times than participants who were novice players (scoring below 20,000). But after five hours of playing the game Robotron, all participants responded significantly faster to the target at the low probability position on the screen, demonstrating a causal relationship between playing a computer game and improving strategies for keeping track of events at multiple locations.

So there's more than just getting a job - there's actually advancing mental development.

StocDred says, "Heck, our founding fathers couldn't even fathom the high-powered, super-accurate, full-automatic weapons of today

This is exactly to the point. They held weapons of equal power to the government. Today private citizens with, say, shoulder launched stinger missles would be insane. (Don't like your business competition? Shoot the company plane down.) This is a far cry from a dueling pistol.

The scope of weapon power has increased to the point where armed overthrow of the government is a joke (there is a great AC post about this above) - but that is exactly what the founders intended.

They specifically state that to be the only reason the right to bear arms is protected. That gone, we should not have that right, so sayeth the founders.

We have decided to keep the weapons, anyhow. We have the highest murder rate in the world (per person). Go figure.

The number of weapons in the US is staggering. Any plan to significantly reduce the ammount of weapons (beyond, say, buy back programs which are effective, yet limited) would be herculean in scope. Yet even modest proposals are rejected.

Right now Republicans are tyring to push through a bill to destroy all the "Brady bill" data within 72 hours. (Brady bill info: the info you must give to buy a gun outside of a gun show, in the US, at the moment. Given for a background check to ensure you are not mentally ill or have felony convictions). This at a time national security is at it's highest (arguably) since the end of the second world war.

This illustrates how ingraned the "right to bear arms" is in America. Even though it is totally tangential to the intent of the founders, and apparently extremely detremental to the public, the current right to run out and buy a gun (say, a hand gun, easily concealed) will remain unfettered for the forseable future.

Violent video games, on the other hand, are in serious danger of being banned. See, for example, this.

Simple, logical yet tough solutions exist and are not implemented. Example:

Jonny accidentally shoots Jimmy with Jonny's Dad's gun, Jonny's Dad's should be lookin at multiple years in prison. Still wanna have a gun? Sure, go ahead just be certain your kids can't get it, or if they can that it isn't loaded and they can't load it.

Sounds reasonable, sounds not too hard, buy a master lock, lets say.

Yet every year about 4000 children die from gunfire, and about 20,000 are injured in the USA. See thisfor an example with citations. And of those 20,000, about 4,000 are accidental injuries.

Okay, so people try to lock up guns and keep them away from children, but about 4,000 times per year it doesn't work. Still want to risk jail time for owning a gun? It would be your call. Remember, you kid is a kid for a long time (the statistics use 20 years but let's say 15) so during that time interval 60,000 kids will get shot accidentally with guns and (assuming few repeats) that is loads of families effected, perhaps about 1% overall. Statistically, you kid is about 10 times more likely to get shot if you own a gun than if not. I'm sure you can see where this leads. But like I said, be my guest but my kids aren't going to be playing with your kids (at your house) if you keep guns in the house, and I know about it.

Amazing how the Republicans who, nominally, favor personal responsibility cannot inact a law punishing parents for gross neglegence in keeping firearms away from their kids.

And, of course, the Democrats who propose stronger and stronger gun control laws find those efforts thwarted.

I personally don't care which road you follow. Pick one. Follow both. I don't care. Both parties have, at least nominally, some solution to this.

During the

The article lists several more sources for information:

• Warschauer, Mark. Technology and Social Inclusion: Rethinking the Digital Divide. Boston: MIT Press. 2003.
• Becker, Henry J. Who's Wired and Who's not? The Future of Children Vol 10 No 2; 2000.
• Warschauer, Mark. Reconceptualizing the Digital Divide. First Monday Vol 7 no 7; 2002.
• Athena Alliance
• Center for Scoial Informatics
• Community Informatics Research and Applications Unit
• Community Technology Centers Network
• Digital Divide Network

The responses to Katz's posting are mostly either

1. Computers aren't so educational anyway.
2. Computers are cheap enough.

Regarding the first point: a computer isn't a thing - a computer is capable of being literally millions of different things depending upon what software it is running. The proponents argue that with the right software, and in the right situation, a great learning environment can be obtained. Sure, kids have been given mediocre software and not much exciting happened. Sure, people have been learning for thousands of years without computers, but if they have the potential to significantly improve things then wouldn't it be great if they were accessible to all kids? For example, read the piece by Resnick in the report.

Regarding the second point, owning a computer isn't the best way to have a good computer learning experience. After school clubs, libraries, and yes, sometimes, even schools, are more likely to create the community, select the right software, etc. And many large corporations are supporting these after school computer clubs.

-ken kahn

Abraham Lincoln walked 10 miles to return a book. Assuming it were a 100-page book, I reckon he got about 192 bps.

Somehow, he managed.

Almost all kids today have easy access to a library Abe could only dream about. But how many high school graduates have read a single work of Shakespeare? How many know Euclid's Elements? How many can compose a coherent paragraph? Answer: almost none. That would require real work, and no one wants to do that. Instead, Katz wants to give them an Internet connect so that, I suppose, they can fail faster.

P.S. The study is here