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Is Technology Making Kids More Intelligent?
Faithful contributor Ant sent in this piece about the role of computers in educating children. It presents arguments both pro and con; one researcher argues that computer use can reduce creativity and create anti-social kids (never met any of these, no sir) while another researcher contends that kids who use computers and the internet grow up reading, inquiring, and generally brighter.
As noted in the survey i have three kids.
11 years old lives with divorced mother. Plays handball, does a lot of fishing and other outdoors fooling around. Has a computer of his own running RedHat Linux only (no double boot because he has a Sega for games).
8 years old plays basketball, his team has won every match played this year. Lots of friends and girlfriends. Has a Mac.
4 years old reads and is beginning to write. Shares Mac with his brother and plays on my game PC. Has extaordinary hand/eye syncronization for his age.
All three don't watch much television, get lots of exercise and get great grades at school (A B+ range)
Computers are great for kids, so is sport and social activity.
Rubbish, the 70/80's spawned a generation of tech geek kids who now manage some of the largest corporations on the planet. Most kids with zx81 and spectrum and other hobby computers gained some level of programming skill from them. It was only the emergence console which limited the experience to simply playing games.
from Sweden indicate students may get poorer overall grades in schools dedicated to "IT". In one recently inaugurated "it-school" (for students 13-15 year olds) they got poorer grades, after the it-programme had commenced.
The reason for poorer grades was attributed to the complexity in using the internet for information search, among many other things.
Strangely, they did not mention Q3A or UT.
I have been on the internet and bbs's for about 9 years. Instead of going to college I went to work for a computer company and have been promoted twice. I would not be able to get very high scores in mental erithmetic tests but can do technical tests with out problems.... so... Because i can not do square root in my head does that make me unintelligent? I know how to key it into a calculator so why bother trying to learn how to :-)
Kirk Anderson created a very funny cartoon about this.
Ah, the incessant cry of psychologists: correlation does not imply causation.
one researcher argues that computer use can reduce creativity and create anti-social kids (never met any of these, no sir) while another researcher contends that kids who use computers and the internet grow up reading, inquiring, and generally brighter.
Oh really? I'd say it's just as likely, perhaps more likely, that it's the less-creative, anti-social, but better-reading, more-inquiring, and generally brighter kids who tend to use computers a lot, rather than it being the computers that produce those characteristics. "People who use computers" is a group whose demographics differ significantly from the average population, so any differences could very well be due to the self-selecting nature of the group, rather than computer themselves.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
There are fewer people who can do simple arithmetic in their heads as a result of the availability of cheap calculators. Is that a problem? You be the judge. I can quickly make change for dollar in my head. A surprizing number of young cashiers don't seem to be able to do that.
There are fewer good, fast typists around due to computers.
Children are getting fatter. They play less outside. They do less hands-on stuff. Are kids today more intelligent? It all depends on how intelligence is defined and measured. By not doing the hands-on activities, they will not be exposed to many enriching experiences. For example, when I was a kid, we played with fire. We made super 8 movies where we squirted flaming gasoline on battalions plastic army men with green avenger water pistols. It was dangerous as hell but we learned things about flaming gasoline. I'll bet that kid who burned himself imitating the Jaskass stunt had little experience playing with fire. He probably figured his buddy could extinguish the fire on his legs before it burned him. Had he played with flaming gasoline prior to doing this, he would have known better. Instead, I'm betting he had spent all his time playing video games. Yeah, we could have ended up on fire but not deliberately because we knew better. We had learned by watching other stuff burn; he had not. Computers divert kids from first hand experience which is often more enteraining than any video game. Yessir.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Just like any other kind of entertainment or hobby, whether computer use hurts or helps children learn and develop depends on what they do with them. If you sit around and play console games all day, you're not going to learn a whole heck of a lot. If you're obsessive about it, you might even become a bit of a social recluse. On the other hand, if you learn programming and start actually creating something with a computer, you're challenging yourself intellectually, reading, and learning new and useful skills. You might even join a user group or (gasp) get on IRC or Usenet where you'll at least be using the computer to interact with real people in some capacity.
Computers, like any other tool, don't have an automatic inherent effect on their users' development or behavior. Like all other pieces of technology, they amplify the effort the user puts into them. If you want to waste time, a Playstation can help you waste a great deal of it really effectively. If on the other hand you want to learn and create, a computer is a wonderful tool to help you reach those goals.
It's not that computers are bad, or good; it's a question of what they're bad or good compared to. Every dollar that goes to buying a computer and then maintaining that computer is a dollar that could have gone towards more textbooks or paying/training teachers better (hopefully attracting/producing better teachers). And if you're going to justify a large budget item for a school or for teaching a child at home, you'd better make sure your scarce dollars are going where they can do the most good.
Computers and the internet can be great tools. There are really good pieces of educational software out there. Most are garbage, of course, but there are some good ones. And the internet can be a great reference, if you sit down and teach the kids actual research skills. (Yes, there are research skills beyond ``go to http://www.google.com, type in what you want, and print out what you get.'') And besides using them as tools, you might reasonably want to teach a `computer skills' or even programming sort of class where the computers are an end in themselves.
But to do this properly requires thinking the use of the computers through carefully; training the teachers both how to use them and how to teach the children to use them; and spending the money it takes to buy the computers and keep them maintained and useful. And this generally isn't done. Classrooms worth of computers are bought, used for a bit in not-horribly-useful ways, and frequently it never goes beyond that.
Sure, even then, there will be kids who find the computers and start playing with them on their own and learn a lot; but those aren't the kids you have to worry about, they'll learn on their own pretty much no matter what you do. Buying labs of computers for a few kids isn't the way to go; set up a few in the library and in one or two classrooms.
Certainly schools should have a few computers available. But the biggest problems in todays schools, and with the education of todays kids, are not that the kids don't have expensive computers on their desks.
I was being told that "these days, kids spend- -
too much time inside on the computer. of course
the kids who have antisocial tendencies have them
caused by the computer. it's the new part of the
equation!"
I argued, and I believe I'm right, that kids with antisocial tendencies have been around forever. computers are simply putting them in the limelight, and the computers are not a cause, but there is merely a positive relationship between the two (computer usage and antisocial behavior). as any simple psych or stats class will teach you, there is NO way to "prove" a cause-and-effect relationship with a positive relationship between two things. I think these people are simply predisposed to this behavior, and in any other time and society they would have found something else to do.
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All that glitters has a high refractive index.
You see, without that little doohicky, the universe stops.
http://propheteer.org
I think the internet provides the perfect opportunity to teach these skills, but the teachers have to be well versed in the technology themselves before it can be used effectively, and most teachers don't have the training yet.
Shop Smart, Shop S-mart!
But more seriously, not beeing an english native speaker, I am sure it helps to learn the language. It is a well known fact that learning while playing is the best way...
I can see my little brother who at 7 was able to read english in videogames...
There is also a logic in the use of technology that helps to develop a logical/mathematical approach to things.
But to be honest, I am sure technology is far from being the most important factor, stimulation and encouragement from parents is THE thing that helps. Having your kids sitting in front of the TV is very unlikely to raise their IQ.
So if you want your kids to be smart, you don't need to buy a PC, just get rid of the TV and get off your fat ass!!!
Black holes occur when God divides by zero.
it has been my personal experience that the pros and cons originally outlined in the article both pertain to a 'split', if you will, in today's youth. There are those that are technically inclined and those that are not. This has been the trend over the past hundred years or so and the number of those technically inclined appears to be increasing, with 'con'ned effects. While this is both good and bad, it is difficult to say which way the trend will continue in the future.. while technology helps us out, it also hinders the younger generation in that they don't really learn about older things until later in life, thus creating a rather nasty 'gap' in learning curves.
I wasn't really fond of Oregon Trail. Lemonade Stand was my favorite. It was a neat way to learn the basics of supply and demand. It's also where I started to learn about programming. A few tweaks, and you'd be amazed how much people will pay for lemonade when it's 10 million degrees out.
Another game I remember fondly and forgot the name of, had you put together a sequence of machines, that did various things to a square part. There were machines to rotate, punch holes, and paint stripes. One part of the game, it'd show you a finished part, and you had to figure out the sequence of machines to build it.
Or another game, Omega, in which you built tanks, and wrote code to control them in battle against other tanks. Had a nice single step debugger in it too.
Mainly it comes down to what you do with the computer. Is the computer the tool, or is the user the tool?
Give 'em Python. Great programming language, easy to learn.
Although that doesn't resolve the big problem: there are no *small* problems left. When I was a kid, I was hacking on TRS-80 Model I in the school's office after hours.
I'm not entirely sure what they used it for: no one did word processing back in those days. Perhaps they were handling accounting on it.
Anyway, point is that this was the first year of the TRS-80, which means it was also pretty much the first year of publicly-sold computers, not counting Apple mail-order.
Which, in turn, means that there was bugger all out there for software. A couple cheezy games, a couple business programs, and that's about all she wrote.
So it was pretty damn easy to write up some cheezy-ass program and feel like a hero.
These days, anything that's easy is already done. There's no point in writing the program: someone's already done it.
Which rather takes away the desire to program. What's the point? It ain't gonna impress anyone.
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
We don't wish to be antisocial. It's just that society has put a stigma on us JUST FOR BEING DIFFERENT. I suppose everyone here has read JonKatz's series on the Hellmouth. They are the ones who ostracize us to begin with, and we wind up ostracizing them back. The vicious cycle needs to be broken.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
It's kinda apropriated to this discussion the fortune at the bottom of the page, to wit: "A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education. -- G. B. Shaw " - which was my take on the subject, that computers in education (a neverending debate it appears, like abortion in the Supreme Court) are beneficial to some students, while others might be better off learning how to punch a time clock on time, keep a clean uniform, operate a Msft desktop, and contact your network administrator for anything else ;)
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
It's well written, but it's pretty funny how dated it is:
... so what are you complaining about again?
We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals.
Those profiteering gluttons seem to have made it dirt cheap; in the year 2001, an Internet connection costs next to nothing, long distance costs next to nothing
So if this guy's point is valid, why do we have more crackers than ever, and - for that matter - nastier ones than ever?
I remember when most people who broke into systems did it because they were curious; now they want to stage DOS attacks. And in that context, I am in full agreement with 'The Konscience of the Kourier' (see Anonymous Coward's message "That's bs man").
D
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You are, of course, absolutely right. I was quite surprised to do a few sums based on the figures you gave, and it looks like a middle class income in India is less than 10% (maybe way under 10% depending on how you define middle class) of what it is here. As a result, quite understandably, prices that are virtually identical here and India (you pay about US$42.54 a month for your cable modem access; we pay maybe US$39.95) are trivial here but prohibitive there.
However, bear in mind that the person writing what I was replying to was American, and I was responding to his comments about greedy corporations.
Unless things have changed radically in the last few years, India's phone company is still state-owned, and it suffers the plagues of state-owned enterprises everywhere: High prices and lousy service. My point was that "greedy corporations" do an awfully good job at getting prices of stuff like cable modems and the like down; I would say you have not disproved this theory; you have just shown that it hasn't happened in the third world. Understandably; you have state-owned enterprises, or - almost as bad - state-sanctioned monopolies.
So let me be Clintonesque and say that I feel your pain; it must really be lousy to know that there is a world out there, and in that world Internet access costs about as much a month as a dinner for two in a decent but not especially fancy restaurant.
But I would surely argue that my basic point stands, at least in my own country, and I was surely not claiming otherwise.
D
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Good old analogue dead-tree technology.
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Bullshit. Multiplayer FPSs are an absolute counter-example to this, and even in cooperative tactical games that I play (particularly Myth II: Soulblighter) there is a terrible amount of cheating and other antisocial behaviour.
I'm not arguing that. I'm just saying that the original poster's statement about online multiplayer games requiring social skills is generally a crock of shit.
Why the fuck does technological hype always take center stage in any of these sort of studies. You can set a computer in front of a monkey for years if you want but it isn't going to magically get smarter. You'll probably balk at my analogy but it is exactly the logic the Clinton administration was using when they decided to use "surplus" money to buy computers for schools all over the country. Fuck technology, what makes people more intelligent is access to information; once they have that access you can help them even more by helping them understand it. I'd much rather have a couple thousand dollars per classroom spent on up to date well written books and repairs to the classrooms which so many schools need. Computers are as much horse shit as the internet. While the web does hold a few gems these are few and far between and filtering through the 99.9998% bullshit of the WWW is an entire project within itself. The technology is useless without actual content for people to absorb. What they should do is split a high school class into three groups, a control and two test groups. The control you leave be. One test group you give a computer lab and internet access and the other group you give access to a university library system. If the group with the internet does better on whatever tests you want to give them all then I'll be wrong and technology DOES make a difference. But if the university group does well then it will prove that content is a thousand times more important than the medium the content is presented on. What the bajillions of dollars spent on computers ought to be spent on is a system which will convey masses of easily parsed, searched, and organized information to students. Technology of it aside, the content ought to be most important.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
"Information is the lowest level of thinking, as opposed to higher levels like judgment, interpretation, evaluation, or mastering great ideas," Roszak explained. "Take an idea like 'All men are created equal.' That's not information - it's a moral assertion about human equality.
Funny, I did a paper last semester on that very topic -- an interpretation of Jefferson's various assertions in the Declaration of Independence. That was one of my favorite classes, taught by one of my favorite professors at the University of Delaware, David Allmendinger. That was the second class I chose to take with him, because I had enjoyed his first class so much. Unlike other dull lecture-based multiple choice history classes, once you get up into the 300-400 level here, you are FORCED to begin analyzing and interpreting the material given. The professors do a wonderful job, IMHO, of introducing you to this way of thinking, and the best thing for any student to do is to take at least one workshop-sized class during their college career. I can't tell you how much I learned and how much my way of thinking expanded after taking these classes.
So my contention is this -- it's not the fault of computers that kids are losing their analytical skills. It is the fault of the students themselves for not TAKING these classes that are so infinitely valuable (because *gasp* they have to THINK!) and to a lesser extent it is the fault of professors in that more of them don't teach in this way.
--=Major
One useless man is called a disgrace; two are called a law firm; and three or more become a Congress. -John Adams, 1776
"It's here, but no one wants it." - The Sugar Speaker
He calls himself the mentor because he's patronizing, predictable, and annoying?
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There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
At least they are letting their anger and agreesion out in the virtual world rather than in reality. Online gaming is a safe and harmless outlet for pent-up aggression.
Both sides of the article have interesting points,
but I believe it is best summed up in the final few paragraphs where they question what the meaning of intelligence is anyway.
Is intelligence the knowledge of alot of facts and information in an instant, or is it knowing where to find this information and the ability to cipher through all of it, evaluate it and come up with your own conclusions.
I'd say it's a combination of both.
This difference is what should be emphasized in schools and children should be taught that they need to focus on all the various aspects of intelligence. In the end the net can be a valuable tool in retrieving information, but children need to be taught what to do with the information once they have it, whether to believe it without question, or whether to do further research and come up with their own conclusions.
I believe that it's more a general problem with society and is not unique to technology and the internet.
We now teach our kids that they are not to believe everything they see on television and other forms of media, but do we teach them not to believe everything they read on the net? I think we should.
I'm not sure anyone has good data on this. It's hard enough getting people to agree on what "more intelligent" means. I certainly can't agree that all home computers have always just been used for games, and I doubt there's ANY data supporting this contention. I've seen kids use computers very creatively when given proper guidance, but that's anecdotal.
As my daughter gets older, I'm going to look hard for software that requires her to think, to create, and to write her own programs. The best tools for this sort of thing have been around for at least a generation: programming languages, word processors, and paint/draw tools.
The article makes the point that this is the first generation to be raised with computers. The problems they have as a result are most probably the result of the previous generation's ignorance of computers. The first generation of anyhting is loaded with bugs. We have the chance now to learn from our mistakes and really use technology as a tool to make the educational process really hum, instead of as a glorifed pacifier.
Helium balloons want to be free.
One parent I chatted with noted that instead of going out to play with other kids, they were much more likely to become self-absorbed in a computer game. While this may build up some good motor skills (OK expect neuro-surgeons with amazing kinestic coordination), the lack of social interaction (learning how to negotiate, compormise, etc) was distrubing. When it easier to copy (plagerise) than to think, to accept than to question, to spam/flame than to craft a reflective response, then extrapolate to wider society, it makes you think what the next generation will evolve. Already you see situations where people accept evidence of bank statements just because it comes out on a screen than if they went through the effort of checking the outcome. Where people ignore the fine print (e.g. prepaid mobile phone cards disguised as actually an unsecured loan) and outsource your memory (familiy photos hosted on external sites) or rely on hot stock tips instead of creating your own opportunities.
Unfortunately education (aka school of hard knocks) is about learning from your mistakes. The computer is not a nnay, it is not a wise teacher, and it most certainly is not a magical fountain of wisdom. As with all technogical devices, people are finding new social interactions, from MUDs to chatrooms. Dabbling in the cocktail circuit is quit different from a formal acquisition of valuable skills (understanding regular expressions and finite state machines for pattern searching). Mental discipline, inner curiosity and creative energies are traits which can be enahnced, but never replaced by a computer. Any school that considers otherwise is only fooling themselves and their charges. If you really want to learn, go visit another country, ask your parents to read to you at night, volunteer for social programs, discuss world events over dinner, or just randomly select non-fiction books from your library.
Never ever let formal schooling get in the way of an education.
LL
W have a 12 year old son who likes to use computers. At one point we decided that the amount of time spent playing computer video games had gotten out of hand.
He is good in math and science, so I figured he was bright enough to learn programming. So, now the requirement is that for every hour he spends playing StarCraft, he must spend another hour of his time time learning programming and writing programs of his choice. His total computer time (outside of homework) is also limited.
It has worked out great. He is learning Java (he heard that's what he'll need to use in high school and college), and has begun writing some simple but interesting programs.
The end result is that he gets his recreation (games), but also comes away with some "real" computer skills that will be useful to him later in life.
It actually would have surprised me if Microsoft (or any company that relies on income from computer using customers) had found that computers ARE retarding childrens intellectual growth.
Somehow - I think that no matter what they found - this conclusion was pre-ordained.
If children are actually really reading more (more than what? More than kids did when I was their age?) I'll only believe it when I see it.
Car advertisements which show kids with their eyes glazed over, watching built in tv/vcrs does not bode well.
Now - if car makers were installing more reading lights for kids who like to read during long trips,
then I'd be more likely to agree.
I'd like to see a company that does not have a vested interest in books OR computer generated revenues conduct the same survey.
First they burn books, then they burn people.
I think I clicked the wrong button by mistake
realkiwi
Maybe having thought about this since I first posted it - intelligence is mesured how?
I think anyone smart enough to use a computer and have a real life is more intelligent than the average hacker who spends more than 10 hours a day in front of his computer.
Just because you dream in C++ doesn't make you a genius. I'm going to teach the kids about programming. I'll also teach them that it is not more important than goofing off on a sail boat or getting invited over to classmates birthday parties.
realkiwi
I'm dyslexic, maybe he was too. In my case I never had any trouble reading. In fact I was reading on the university level in 6th grade. My problem was with math, specifically with multi-column addition, subtraction, multiplication, etc. Once I realized what the problem was I sat down one summer and went through my 8th grade math book and practiced until I could do it well. As a result my natural abilites were no longer hobbled by difficulty keeping the numbers straight on the paper. Unlike many others I know, I am not having a problem with high-level math in college. Rather than being a struggle it is nothing short of an adventure.
If someone is having problems reading, it isn't always because they were taught poorly. I was taught to read phoentically but I only do that on words I've never seen. Once I've seen a word I remember what it looks like and switch over to the "whole word" method.
Many people who are particularly bright are dyslexic. Exactly why this is I don't know since I'm neither a psychologist nor a neurologist. Many of the so called disabilities that some people have, carry with them greater abilities in other areas. The human gene pool is large enough and our species social enough that specialization can and does occur. This is what things like dyslexia and ADD/ADHD represent, a specialization that leads to greater abilities in some areas with a corresponding decrease or difficulty in other areas. That doesn't mean those difficulties can't be overcome though.
Lee Reynolds
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
There are some people who are naturally inquisitive and who will seek out information and knowlege. Then there are others who will not. The presence or abscence of a tool that might help someone do this has nothing to do with whether they actually will or not.
When television first came out it was heralded as a tool for education. There were people who believed that it would be used by the masses to learn. They believed this because they were the type of people who seek to learn themselves, and so they interpreted the motivations of others through their own desire to learn. By and large television has not been a tool for education because most people simply don't want to learn. Their desire to not know is truly bizarre to me, but that is the only expanation I know that fits.
It is true that today we've got things like TLC, the Discovery Channel and the History Channel, but how many years did it take after cable tv became popular that networks like these became a profitable enterprise?
If you need further proof of what I'm saying just look at books. Books are educational, yet how many people out there actually read anything? Most people can read, but few actually choose to read anything past street signs and the occassional newspaper.
If someone is intelligent and/or inquisitive, then they will use the tools available to them to learn. If they are not then the nature and usefullness of the tools available makes no difference because they aren't going to use them in the first place.
Lee Reynolds
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
"Information is the lowest level of thinking, as opposed to higher levels like judgment, interpretation, evaluation, or mastering great ideas," --Roszak explained
It seems to me that information is a fundamental building block to any form of thinking and being able to find information should be one of the first, as well as most important, skills we learn. Of course , this can be abused, like anything else. I'm not religious person in the least, but isn't there a quote that goes along the lines of "Moderation in all things" (I apologize in advance if I got that wrong, but I think you get the jist).
I also believe that it is the lack of this skill that has allowed so many stupid laws to be passed, so many beliefs to be upheld, etc..
I mean come take some responsibility!
*My net connection is down for the next couple of weeks so I will not be able to receive E-mail, but I will be lurking*
Computers are only a small part of the equation here. The main purpose of a home PC is to provide convenience, productivity, and education. For adults, that is. Nothing on a computer is geared for a regular little kid. Yet over the last... oh, 6 years, there's been a crapload of 7-13 year olds getting online permanently, chatting over their instant messages, checking their email, and playing online games. I know some of you think that this is a good thing, but here's what I think... it SCARES me to think that there's a 9 year old out there, boy OR girl, who plays Diablo II for more than an hour a day and is pretty good at it. It's just shocking on so many levels... cause some 20 year olds can barely get the hang of it all.
However, it's just one more thing that's thrown onto little kids in order to get them in the rat race sooner. High school and even grammar school are focusing less on education and more on achievement... some states with their mandatory standardized tests for high school graduation, the rise of magnet schools, the fierce competition for college admissions, etc. Basically, the more you know, and the younger you know it, the more amazing you are... and the pressure is on kids to excel tremendously in piddly-widdly knowledge categories at the expense of everything else that's healthy or vital to them. It's a nationwide spelling bee culture... how the hell does some seven year old kid who can spell "chaturnaliontics" get on the news? That's almost sad to me. Maybe I would prefer to watch a news program where kids run around outside and play dodgeball (whoops, can't do that either... don't even get me started).
So all these kids are being pushed around to achieve, achieve, achieve. And for what? So they can become our future doctors, consultants, mathematicians, programmers, and the like... but not managers! Hahah, joke's on them, cause in the future, the upper management of every company will still be the CEO's frat buddies, and that will never change. For the rest of their lives, the achieving kids will be working for other people... that is, if the never stop and think about it. After slaving away in kindergarten, grammar school, middle school, high school, college, internships, and in the workforce... well, the business world actually wants them to do nothing else ever, since that's the best thing for the bottom line. Basically, it's a road to burnout... or suicide, which usually comes in the early teens when kids can't handle their shit and they're too stupid to think about the long term picture and how they can do better for themselves. Hey, if I were 14, and I got a C on a test, and everyone would be disappointed cause that would mean I can't go to Harvard... I'd kill myself too.
Computers are just one more thing to throw at kids to force them to achieve. And then, even worse, it's another electronic babysitter. What's more dangerous to you... running around the local park every day and one day falling off the monkey bars and knocking out a few teeth, or sitting on a computer for your entire childhood talking to w@r3Z d00dz and pedophiles? This is only exacerbated by the lack of kids' champions in politics today... increasingly, no one gives a damn about kids cause kids don't vote at least for another 30 years. Kids have nothing to do anymore because all of their fun stuff has been getting phased out in the interests of "childrens safety". We generally can't afford to have a friendly police officer monitor the local playground to keep the crack dealers out, but we can afford metal detectors for grammar schools. We can also crack down hard on some kid who brings a nail clipper to school by accident, saying it's a deadly weapon.
Oh, and it's not only the smart kids who are bored. EVERYONE is bored. The smart kids just find intelligent things to do. The dumb kids get into drugs. If smoking pot were an academic achievement, we'd have a nation of geniuses.
If you don't teach your kids to think for themselves, someone else is going to do their thinking for them. Granted, that someone may not hurt them, but you can be assured, they won't have their best interest at heart.
But people who can think for themselves, tend not to buy as much, and they tend to be unpredictable. Why, who knows who an independent thinker will be voting for this election. So the system tends to discourage it. And for some families, critical thought has been missing for at least 2 generations already.
Computers are only relevant, in that they amplify the state you're already in. If you're a critical thinker, a computer is just another sword in your armory. If you can't think, a computer is just another set of chains that bind you to the person(s) who is(are) thinking for you.
In short, I think Microsoft is responsible, not for computers helping our children to be smarter, but for reducing our offspring to drooling idiots when it comes to computing. This is why I advocate Linux on the desktop - because you have to learn about Unix systems to effectively use them, so Linux could bring hope of computer literacy back to our children!
If I had not been bought that zx spectrum when I was about 9 years old, there is no way I would be employed as a programmer today - and I really mean that. I have had no formal computing education (frankly, it seemed boring as a school subject - I preferred maths and physics acadamically) and most of the basic knowledge that I built upon later came from experimenting with zx basic and z80 assembler.
I have to say though that I certainly do not believe that computers made me more intelligent, but rather they provided something constructive and rewarding for me to apply my intelligence to. To the untrained eye, that could look very much like it increased my intelligence, but the two are very different.
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
As much as I hate to say it, spam has a use, after all. You should probably have an abundant supply of it by now, so you can use it to teach your kids about false advertising and netiquette.
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Humans have self-determination. They will do what the like doing, are good at, or for other reasons. In this case, using computers takes a certain skill, and certain tastes to like it. Some kids have them, some don't. I doubt using the computer changes these. Kids are not astabula rasa [blank slates] as teachers and parents think.
Let's just not educate kids. We can keep them in factories and make soylent green out of them.
--
microsoft, it's what's for dinner
bq--3b7y4vyll6xi5x2rnrj7q.com
it's a sig, wtf?
The computer is just another tool that can be used or misused in the education process. It can be used to help children learn to be creative, questioning, skeptical, and independent.
Or, it can be used to teach a kid to be passive, unquestioning, and accepting (in short, perfect fodder for today's society).
Of course the same can be said about any other part of the educational process, e.g. textbooks, teachers, etc.
Most education done with computers is less effective and possibly more damaging than education in a classroom simply because of the incredibly reduced levels of interactivity. Most educational materials on the internet may have a very small level of local interactivity (choose a path or parameter), but they are disconnected from a larger social and informational context (even with hyperlinks).
One online educational system which is a bit different is Oomind (http://www.oomind.com/). Oomind takes advantage of the Internet's inherent interactivity capabilities by providing multiple levels of feedback and multiple means to participate in the system itself (not just in the learning materials). Of course, it is still not nearly as interactive as a real classroom, and it could never replace a physical location for learning the practical aspects of drama, the arts, etc.
But check it out. Oomind is pretty cool and is based on some principles familiar to the world of Open Source developers. It is still quite new, and personally funded so be patient with it!
http://www.oomind.com/
Helping with organizational effectiveness is our job.
Kids generally aren't bureaucrats. Employees in a large hierarchy have an incentive to place greater trust in machines -- namely, to justify the costs of their machines, and to safeguard their jobs from higher-ups who also feel the need to justify the costs of their machines (and thus, given the choice between human and computer judgement, might be somewhat biased towards the computer).
Kids, OTOH, aren't generally subject to being, say, disowned, and they're usually hired by people who spent millions of dollars on mainframes and software that's been trusted for so many years that it must be right -- or somebody will look like a fool.
Whether or not they have employ critical thought may be a more general problem; for instance, whether or not they believe gossip, or sensationalist "news", or so forth.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
And your statistics and research to back them up are... ?
Can you cite NEAP estimates? Refute the Flynn effect? Refute the trends in Iowan test scores -- Iowa has a long history of state exams, including methods for determining relative difficulty from year to year -- which have actually been positive, IIRC?
Can you claim that educational standards have been _dropping_? Or contradict the studies that show that, contrary to popular misconception, teens DO read and aren't just TV drones?
Or make any factual points at all?
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
That may be more of a function of your school not asking for much more than quickly-answered questions. A profound synthesis/analysis question that actually requires a significant amount of thought requires comprehension and logic regardless of the storage medium -- and in that case, search efficiency is a good thing.
I find that the mundane details are in the resources I'm hunting for -- whether they be research papers and books that may be related to my work, or for unrelated queries such as analyses of Constitutional law. The actual process of searching a card catalog and hunting down physical volumes isn't terribly informative by itself.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
A computer can be no smarter than the person who programmed it. Considering what's come out of Microsoft, I don't have high hopes for Redmond...
I don't believe that a computer can help make a kid more intelligent. Rather, it takes intelligence to begin with to operate a computer efficiently.
In my job as an on-call on-site consultant & tech support tech, I get people saying "how-do-i-do-such-and-such" or "it don't work"... on a program I've never seen before. So I have to learn how to use the program instantly and teach them how to do what they're trying to do.
Couple of things that come into play here: the understanding that *most* programs work in the same manner, and having the guts to just try stuff and see what works.
Working with computers requires reasoning and problem solving abilities, probably more so than not working with 'em. People have this grand illusion that computers will do the problem solving and reasoning for them: THEY CAN'T. If it does, it's not the computer doing it, it's the person who programmed it that's doing it. The computer will do this in exactly the same way that the programmer would; the comp. just does the dirty work of data analysis and mathematics. How it works depends on how it's programmed, which in turn depends on the mind of the programmer.
Now having your kid be online 4 hours a night playing games does more for teaching problem solving & reasoning than sitting in front of the boob tube for 4 hours, but if you really want him to get smart, send him outside to weed the garden, fix the fence, paint the shed... whatever, but don't tell him how to do it. He's gotta figure that out on his own. Being forced to figure it out does far more for building intelligence than being shown.
Remember how you hated story problems in algebra in school? Well, guess what... life's a story problem. There ain't no abstract equations out there waiting to be solved. It's up to you to take the problem, find the equation that fits, and solve it. If teachers would give more story problems, we'd have smarter kids.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
If intelligence is encouraged by society (also creativity, curiosity), then _any_ tool will encourage intelligence (creativity, curiosity). If you want to learn, it will happen regardless of what tools you use.
Andrew.
One of the kids I knew in high school didn't do so well in his classes. He didn't fail them, mind you, but he got a lot of C's because he wasn't doing his homework (he did excellent on the tests, IIRC).
What was he doing? He was spending most of his time programming and learning various assembly languages. He had more logical thinking skills and practical technical knowledge than just about anyone his age because of all the programming he did, and in this respect it made him "smarter." However, according to our blatantly flawed education system, his grades said he merely "average."
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
You don't become better at problem solving, you become better at solving specific problems. Still, problem solving is not a great measure of intelligence. You learn tricks and methods for doing things that will not apply for all situations, but may for some.. It just gives the illusion of real intelligence.
Buying a Dell computer is equivalent to dropping the soap in a prison shower.
I believe the kids of tomorrow are going to be heavily influenced by the new technology available. I don't think it will make them that much smarter though, and it certainly won't make them less lazy. There are alot of pit-traps to fall into, in for instance online gaming and chatting. These can be time-consuming activities that ruin the social life, spelling and even "the whole education" of the kid (*gasp!* *choke!*). However, they'll also learn to appreciate real life as they mature. When they start thinking about how much time they (and others) have "wasted". Therefore, I firmly believe the market is going to be satiated after a while. There's only that many cool games the industry can make, until most kids are fed up with the concept. Kids will want to socialize more, even outside the games. You can't turn whole nations into hardcore gamers you know.. (At least I hope so) Perhaps they will find a balance between gaming and other chores, just as kids have managed before. The key element here is that what we find stunning and addictive today, will be pretty ordinary in 5 years.
Programming is perhaps one aspect of computers that will affect how kids think drastically. More and younger kids will think in vastly more complex and logical ways. They will learn sooner that the real world doesn't always operate that way though. Again, it'll be easier to find a balance than before. Because they'll start younger. Gaming often inspires new wanna-be programmers, and there are alot of new techno-toys even outside the realm of computers. Think Lego Mindstorms. I believe many of these can counter the death of creativity created by consuming media. Kids will always need an outlet for creativity, and the mind-dumbing of TV and games will have a counter-action.
The Internet is going to make everyone more aware that we're all in this together. Kids growing up will not understand why we have international borders at all. To them, it will seem old-fashioned and irrational to segregate populations in such an unnatural way. They will feel less part of their nation, and more part of their online and local communities. As always, they won't understand why we have wars.
So all in all, everything will pretty much remain the same.
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Great, so you were able to finish a project in half the time without doing any real research work yourself. :) When you are able to quickly access so much information, it encourages you to remember only the way to access what you need. Why bother with the time-consuming process of committing things to memory when you can just fire up Google and search for it later?
-Brett
I suppose you're right about your friends digging up as much info as they could to satisfy the requirements of the project, but I'd say that the legwork involved does some good. I'll bet that the extra time spent searching and sorting through the references allows more of the information to be absorbed than by doing an internet search.
More importantly though, I think there needs to be some sort of balance in place. Sure, quick access to information can allow one to cut through the fluff and form an opinion a bit more quickly, but to truly comprehend a topic one needs to spend time pouring over the mundane details. Many seemingly useless and random pieces of information, when put together, serve as the foundation for a complete grasp of a subject.
Much of my opinion comes from personal experience with this. I had become so accustomed to quick answers while in school that when I was faced with designing complex solutions of my own, I was left floundering when I couldn't find something comparable out there.
-Brett
I'm not sure exactly how you'd classify real research work, but I'm pretty sure the people who went to libraries weren't memorising the contents of the books either. I know my friends attitude to such projects was simply to dig up as much info as possible and put it together to fulfill the criteria of the project. If you asked them to recall stuff then I expect they'd be better at remembering which book to look it up in, than recalling the details.
I appreciate your point that the ease of finding information makes the process of actually remembering it redundant, but is this a bad thing? Wouldn't it be better to teach kids how to find information, derive equations, and form opinions rather than stuffing them with facts that they'll probably have little use for in later life?
Not trying to flame; just playing Devil's advocate
The topic was Buckminster Fullerenes, and with it being a fairly new subject (this was early '96) the school library was pretty short on info. The more enthusiastic students were arranging to visit local universities to use their libraries, but I just sat at home and did a few searches on Lycos.
The difference was significant - I could produce totally up to date info, and include screenshots of 3D graphics people had rendered of the molecules, where other people were hand-drawing stuff. Hell, I could even have given my Chem teacher's Harry Kroto's (who was largely involved in their discovery) phone number at Sussex Uni. In all, I put in about 8 hours research, had the best-presented project, and got the highest grade in the class (plus the teachers hadn't seen a URL in a bibliography before, so they were very impressed).
My point is; you can't just bury your head in the sand, because although there may be negative side-effects to kids spending way too much time on computers, those who are familiar with computers will have an advantage over other kids when it comes to education.
Keeping your kids away from the net might make it more difficult for them to get pr0n and lessen the chances of them becoming a 1337 h4X0r d00d, but it'll also affect their grades when kids like me screw up the curve.
Growing up in an urban area I think its better for loner type kids (I was one) to turn to computers. When the other options tempting you are herion, crack, crystal meth, or maybe join a gang to feel better about yourself. Most kids parents (like mine) weren't there or just didn't have time to raise their kids.
Even though I got involed in a lot of bad things I think my computer ate up many hours that would have been spent on the streets. Now I am 27 years old and have an almost 6 figure job as a sysadmin thanks my interest in computers. If only the internet was around back then I would have learned so much more.
Yes it's offtopic, but that sentance in the article jumped out at me. I suppose it's an indicator of the author's political views...
--Fesh
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
Average IQ has actually been rising about 3% per decade since 1900, mainly due to lower levels of lead content in the bloodstream. It strikes me that getting rid of the rest of the lead paint out there would be cheaper than buying everyone a computer, and would have more scientific evidence to back it up.
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
These studies are just surveys, not experiments, and there are no controls. Computers are more likely to be found in the households of intelligent, upper income, highly educated people. Of course their children are smarter. Constant conjunction != causality.
If you don't beileve this, there was a study last month that found that the children of smokers are twice as likely to have cavities as the children of non-smokers. Does second-hand smoke make your teeth decay? No, disgusting habits are just a proxy for social class.
It would be considered immoral to conduct the experiments needed to prove anything one way or the other.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
You do realize that you can still write and run Basic programs on your Windoze? Or do you? I read my first Basic book that my !grandmother! bought for me at the age of 12 and I really liked it. I did not have a computer (living in Russia at that time, and all) so I wrote my first programs on paper and traced them in my head with pen and paper. I did not need a complex or a simple computer to do that at all. Once I got access to Atari 600 and later 800 at school, I tested my programs on built in Basic and they worked. That was 13 years ago. Today, building an insurance system on a cluster of BEA servers running on Solaris boxes, there is not much difference in approach, I still do design on paper, whiteboard or with some tools like Visio, Rational Rose and Together/J. The design does not get to the level of code but the problems are much more complicated these days.
Anyway, all I want to say is that nothing has actually changed, in case you forgot, you can still run DOS or even Amiga emulator under your current OS.
You can't handle the truth.
I do believe that the opportunity exists for today's students that didn't exist when I was in school. Virtual information overload and instant gratification. What has happened is that we are now facing a flood of "lazy students" that are too reliant on technology. It is nearly impossible to hire someone these days who can compose an intelligible business memo that a high $$$ client wouldn't ask "what retard sent this to me?" after looking at it. Or a systems guy who, while walking thru the data center, could do some long division on the back of a business card to figure out how many servers would fit in x racks on y sqare feet of floor without running for a spreadsheet. Wait that's pretty hard stuff - how about just figuring out floor sapce in a room with 1 foot square floor tiles. When it comes down to smarts many of these guys are at the top of their field but sure don't look it when something actually must be communicated or documented. Not many people recognize the value of knowing how something is calculated or communicated without the benefit of technology. Until its too late and a career limiting event occurs because they can't write legibly or do math without a computer.
I would tend to believe that these types of correlations between intelligence and computer use would be better attributed to the fact that "Smart kids" better understand computers and therefore use them more. Same goes for science. Kids that don't understand physics and chemistry don't want to grow up to be scientists.
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Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Mark twain is reported to of said something like
"A person who reads garbage is no better then a person who does not read."
Parents need to be reminded of this from time to time. If you spend all your time reading stuff that does not challenge you in some way is a waste of time. sometimes a book that is a waste of time, is just fun, and thats ok. In moderation.
Computers should be banned from all class rooms, except computer class's. Teacher often think its some magic bullet. Kids are individuals, and they need to be treated as individuals. Computer give no room for originall thinking. Do what the computer expects, or fail.
of cours I also think its wrong to allow a student to do a book report on a magazine, that calculators should be banned from all, except the most advaned, math courses. Teacher should be allowed to teach the novel in middle school, and a second language should be mandatory.
I also would like a 25cent gas tax where 24 cents goes into education
unfortunatly, most people seem to want tax breaks on money not yet recieved, instead of a plan to put that money into eduaction as it becomes available.
this soap box seemed to get a little higher then I expected. oh well.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
and if your child asks you a question you don't know, find the answer together.
man I hate when parents get upset and try to ignore a child who asks thing they don't know.
as a parent I have given my friends permission to slap me upside the head if They ever see me do that. and believe me, there just waiting for that opportunity!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Failing that, well, playing at the bit-cruncher is better than staring at the tube
doesn't that depend on whats on the tube that he's staring at?
The tube gets a bad rap, but it to is just a tool.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Personally I would replace IBM with Apple. They where the first ones to use the educational system as a marketing and sales tactic. Using the false belief that computers==intelligence.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
so Kid 1981 has the know to tell you, off the top of his head, the how thick to make the structure of the airplane for X speed, altitude. . .
Kid 2001 has the know-how to figure it out.
Thanks, I'll fly on Airline 2001.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
Near the top of the article, in a list of "who would have thunk it?" examples.
At the very least, you have to be 18 (or is it 21?) to buy a handgun, pass a criminal background check, and possibly sit through a waiting period. In some localities, forget it...you are not going to legally buy a handgun at all.In my state of Kansas, you can fish without a license to age 16. After that, you walk into a sporting goods place and give your in-state address, pay your fee, and walk out with your license. What, you want them to bring it out to your house? How easy can it get?
I know the author was just trying to draw interesting contrasts. But he should at least stick to subject on which he has half a clue.
"Rub her feet." -- L.L.
Ick...I do hate to get linked with that "it takes a village" phrase. I would not completely disagree with the saying, but the truth is not quite as simple as it implies. It takes parents to raise a child, but they can sure use all the help they can get from the village.
Unlike the author of It Takes a Village, I would not extend decision-making about the child's welfare to the village, except in clear cases of abuse and neglect.
Also unlike that author, I would not force the village's help at the point of a gun. (If you think this is not what is happening, try not paying the taxes to fund programs "for the children.") Instead, I would urge folks to help those around them when they can, because it is the right thing to do.
"Rub her feet." -- L.L.
Yes, in the end, each of us is responsible for himself. But parents can increase the odds a child will want to learn. One way to make it more likely a child will want to learn to read is to read to him, a lot, from the time he is very young.
"Rub her feet." -- L.L.
A child needs to learn to read, write, do math, and think clearly. Teaching these things requires books, writing materials, and a motivated person to do the teaching.
A child needs to learn morals, wisdom, and how to get along with his fellow man. Teaching these requires continuing attention, role-modeling, and exposing the child to life experiences as appropriate.
If a child gets this good foundation, then how much he uses technology and whether it makes him smarter will be a much less important concern.
Parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, family friends, please get in the faces of the kids you care about! Listen to them talk about what goes on in their lives. Play with them. Work with them. Answer their questions. Talk to them about your experiences. Challenge them to think. You can make a difference that will last the rest of their lives.
</soapbox>
"Rub her feet." -- L.L.
I would have to say yes.....but then I would have been bright anyway :)
Please terminate paranioa() at favourite recursion level
Another reason they are both right is every kid is inherently DIFFERENT. Some will respond to computers and will be challenged, others, will not be. Too often (at least in public schools) children are taught based on the "lowest common denominator) i.e. the course work is laid out to be challenging to only the average student for any particular grade.
The point is computers are a tool, meant to enhance the education process. If teachers use the tool incorrectly to teach you will get kids who "suffer", by only using it for activities that they feel comfortable, like playing games, and interacting with friends on-line in the relatively safe and anonymous chat rooms/ IM programs.
If teachers succeed in showing kids that there is more to computers than simply typing a book report, sending an e-mail and playing the occasional game. By getting them interested in other topics, and using the computer to facilitate research, discussion and get this "EDUCATION" in that topic the kids will be better off.
Guns don't kill, people kill. Just like: computers don't teach, people teach. It is the people who make a difference. Our children need us to quit trying to blame everything for their problems. Media, tv, guns, violence, computers, porn, and on and on. . . My opinion is we need to give our kids attention, and understanding.
Teaching is a profession and a responsibility. Sometimes I think the teachers forget the responsibility part, and focus on the metrics of the profession. I.e. test scores, and grades, and forget the life lessons and the responsibility to the child. I believe that most of this is brought upon them by the climate we live in. Because administrators are clamoring for better scores, so the schools get more cash. The Parents are clamoring for better scores to inflate they're own egos, and as reassurance that they are "good" parents. While at the same time those same parents expect the teachers to raise their children.
Its sad. I come from a family with several teahcers and school administrators in it. I know they try and I here their frustrations. I am a parent now, and worry about the education my kids will recieve.
I believe they can learn more book smarts in a challenging environemnt of a privae school, or ven home-school, but at a young age I tend to believe it is more important to balance their early learning with people skills, and playing skills. I want my child to see kids and be around them. See how they play and how they interact.
I think I lost my point somewhere near the top of this rant. But hopefully my perscpective has added something to the discussion.
Thanks,
MS2k
"Kids that use computers are smarter" -- and they better be for what I spent on that cluster
"Kids that use computers are more anti-social" -- than the stupid people who don't
"I don't need a computer to do any of my daily tasks" -- oh there's a computer in that? an ATM is a computer? even in my AMEX Blue?
"I only want my cell phone for emergencies" -- 800 minutes a month
"I want my computer to study" -- where the best camping spots in the Facing Worlds map are
"I want to use my computer to write" -- down the best porn sites
"I meet more people on the internet than I do in school" -- and only one of them tried to lure me to the mall
"I think the DVD medium is important" -- to pornography
"A faster connection to the internet will help get me off the computer faster" -- oh I'm sorry I meant get off faster, God I love streaming video
"My child uses the computer to study" -- of course I can't get past that pesky Windows password to check
"Email has brought out family closer" -- by keeping us apart
"Chat rooms are for normal people" -- and agoraphobics
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This
Your view of Kid 2001 is a little depressing.
You say that Kid 1981 was smart becuase he/she knows things off the top of their head. Bah! Knowledge is not the ability to story lists of info.
You go on to say that K2001 has the ability to get info quickly but big deal, anybody can do that.
Well of course not everyone can, but more importantly your assuptions are heading down the path that K1981 is smarter by birth.
Didn't K81 get that knowledge somewhere? A book, a teacher, a movie?
Children have come in all flavors of intelligence for a long time but with our instamatic media we know more about everything than we ever did. Your local news puts up statistics like TEST SCORES PLUMMET 50% but fails to follow up weeks later when they find out the testing center was to blame for the low scores not the kids.
Technology is a tool. A hammer doesn't make you a a better carpenter anymore than a Macintosh makes you a better student.
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This
Now dont get me wrong, I LOVE computers. Im a verified geek. I have been ever since my parents sat me in front of the old Apple IIe at the age of six. (And gave be a BASIC book at the age of 7)
Computers arent the savior of education that everybody was hoping they would be. Computers are a tool and nothing more. You will always have the children who choose not to use the tools available to them, as well as the children who have no tools available to them.
I remember one time in elementary school we were in the computer lab of Apple IIe s and I decided to have a little bit of fun with the people in there - so I wrote a little program to show just how 3eet I was:
You wouldnt believe how much trouble I almost got in for that little stunt. I distinctly remember sitting in the hallway for the remainder of the class - with a large smile on my face. (This only got worse when I started going into Radio Shack Stores - Some of the messsages I came up with there probably affected sales quite a bit
Anyway - I remember in highschool (around 1995) when they built the computer lab full of older IBM 486 Lan Manager machines. We spent a large amount of time there (to my great surprise) - but it was only to waste time on substandard "education" games and work on composing some research presentation using some Powerpoint wannabe called "Linkway" or something.
The point is: Most of those kids learned absolutely nothing. Most of them just goofed off in the computer lab. The teacher didnt even really know what the heck she was doing in there.
The morale of the story kiddies: Computers are like an encyclopedia - they are only useful if you are willing to open the cover and explore. Until then - they are useless.
Gam
I love idealists not because I am one, but because they make life bearable for pragmatists such as myself.
I know plenty of people who use computers every day, like my dad, who don't really know what they're doing with the computer. There's nothing wrong with that, per se; It enables people like me to have jobs. Usually. I don't have one now, though. *snif* But in any case, you can use a computer and not really become any better educated.
Now, we really don't know that much about intelligence, for all our crowing. Hell, we barely know how memory works. I think the science of development of intelligence is going to be hazy for a long, long time. What we do know is that the better educated you are, the more able you will be to capitalize on your intelligence.
I myself am very glad I was exposed to computers at an early age. Between the logic puzzles I was exposed to in GATE programs in school, and the early exposures which got me interested in computers, a solid foundation for learning was laid. In the end, it's still based on curiosity. I was intrigued by seeing what computers could do, and the knowledge that even very large programs are still based on the same steps. They gave us AppleBasic to play with in third grade, and later Logo; It was a little while before we used Logo procedurally, and that was what really got me. When you can write your own functions, given sufficient time and a lack of screwups, you can make the computer do damn near anything.
Are we making our children smarter by giving them access to computers? Probably not. What we are doing is giving them a chance to find out if they are suited to a life and/or career in a high-tech field, and letting them learn some simple skills which will help them communicate; How to use a computer in general, how to type, how to compose and respond to email, et cetera. My typing skills are up to about 100wpm at 99% accuracy on a good day, perhaps as low as 75wpm at 90% accuracy when I'm intoxicated. I've never taken a typing course, and in fact I don't use the home keys method. What's responsible for these M4d S/? IRC.
If I spawn one day, I will definitely give my offspring as much access as they can not abuse. I will not allow them to sit at the computer endlessly while the sun is shining and the birds are chirping, though. I also realize that computer-based social interaction, while it can be healthy and useful, is no substitute for actual face time. You're also seriously impaired if you can manipulate data, but not physical objects. Specialization is for insects; Humans should be able to do anything.
--
ALL YOUR KARMA ARE BELONG TO US
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
My house has 6 computers, with 5 kids. They are on the net all the time. Usually playing games. When they first got started, I believe it did help. Even the multiplayer games, which we watched them learn about team work. But now we cant get their lazy tails up half the time to do their chores, its always "just a minuite". In general I believe it helps, but only if there is a limited time. If they are on it all the time, it detracts from the normal functions of interaction with other people.
At my former high school, we had 3 groups of people: The Jocks/Cheerleaders, the Middles, and the rejects.
The "Middles" Are the ones who only knew people at school and didn't do much (socialy) outside of it. At home they would usually find hobbies that involved technology.
The Jocks/Cheerleaders were involved in all sorts of POINTLESS extra curricular activites.
The Rejects were the ones that were opposite of popular culture. They did everything outside of school.
The Anti-Social "Middle" were the ones that had a higher GPA overall.
So, Is it logical to say that if you are Anti-Social you have a better chance of being more intellegent?
For examples, go watch "The Breakfast Club"
syndicate
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"Smartness" is the ability to solve an intellectual task! It has >= 4 components, like a vector space. 1=intelligence (brain structures which process perceptions & ideas), 2=knowledge, 3=motivation, 4=personality. 5=? In areas where I had experience and Fred had little I blew him off. His IQ "intelligence" was >200: my IQ=(a LOT lower). He was as intellectually aggressive and was a very picky, persistent person! This article confuses the result of more tech knowledge with intelligence. Intelligence is the result of brain structures which process thoughts. "SMARTNESS" includes knowledge, whether you care, and how you attack a problem.
This article confuses the result of more knowledge with intelligence. Intelligence is the result of brain structures which process thoughts. Like more CPU MHz, better buss, etc. But wihtout data computation takes much longer. "Smartness" is the ability to solve an intellectual task! An engineer who can look up an answer is "smarter" than one who needs time to calculate the same thing! It has >= 4 components, like a vector space. 1=intelligence (brain structures which process perceptions & ideas), 2=knowledge, 3=motivation, 4=personality. 5=? In areas where I had experience and Fred had little I blew him & his 200+ IQ off! My IQ=(a LOT lower). He was as intellectually aggressive and was a very picky, persistent person!
A math professor asked me once if Cauchy, a mathematician who wrote over 700 papers, would have been able to write all of those papers if television would have been around back then.
I don't think so. But if you were to replace television in that question with computers, then I would say yes, in fact he could have done more. The internet is not as addicting as television, but a computer is a good tool, we just need to learn how to use it for a tool instead of as a pasttime.
Hmmm...
[begin vent] I almost stopped reading the article after the " Or that it would be easier to get a handgun or rifle than a fishing license?" falsehood. Why did the author decide to include this bit of tripe in the preamble? It doesn't help his case. Usually one puts tautologies in the preamble. These help to open your reader to new ideas. Putting a blatant falsehood/ media-fabrication in the preamble only serves to put the entire following body of " research" in doubt.[end vent]
Well, having vented... I've been appalled by the numbers of college freshman who can not easily remember the last time they read a book for enjoyment. They can easily tell you how many minutes it has been since their last online experience. Usually the only books that they do remember reading were those assigned in some HS class! Any read the newspaper? Nope. (well ok, i guess i get most of my news online also...) Do they read their textbooks? Nope: usually just skim them for the right-seeming formula to cut-and-paste.
Now, having said all that... I'm not sure that I agree fully with the first teacher in the article. Will my child have a computer? Yeah. Kinda hard for the kid not to have one. I'll just let him/her use one of the spares... Will I try to limit their time spent online? If it's nice outside? You bet... If its nasty outside? Not sure. If I can, I'll try to interest them is a communal sort of game. Failing that, well, playing at the bit-cruncher is better than staring at the tube (imho).
For all it's worth, I could end up being one big hypocrite. Check back in a few years: My first kid is due in 9 weeks 4 days (plus-or-minus a big delta).
-dean
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-dean
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hey, well, its just my $0.02us
It is a tool. Plain and simple. My children will spend as much time learning how to use the computer as they do learning how to use a drill press, stove, etc. They will have at least a basic level of skill on how to use all of the tools I have. If they choose to pursue it more, fine. Just as long as they maintain balance in their activities.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
I've been using computer since back when Commodore 64 was high tech (some 10 or so years ago). This was the same with one of my friends, but he had an amiga. Onto the point, its now that I'm in my last year of high school and I'm finding that, myself and my other computer related friend are much more smarter intellectually then any other of our friends. But for myself when it comes down to doing school work, I'd much rather go and sit on the computer and do anything but. (I don't play games, they don't interest me. I'd rather read slashdot.. ).
Overall I'd believe that being on the net for the last few years has given me a greater edge over most of my friends towards technology, I'm not so sure towards school tho. Maybe I'm just lazy.
Although, concider the human brain. It's got two parts. One logic side and one creative side. Computers mostly aid/develop the logic side. The creativitiy must be supported by fysical activity, working with hands, running, climbing etc.
Computers are great, but we need to make sure kids doenst ONLY use them. As always, something in the middle is the best way to go.
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
Aristotele
What it does do is change the quantity, quality, and content of the education. Quantity because they see more from around the world. Quality because of the diversity, although the quality of that diversity can be argued. And of course, the actual content is greatly expanded.
Now this is interesting because it tends to cut across the social agendas of the powers that be. Obvious examples include China, Iran, France, and the US. Different powers have different agendas, and tend to push their agendas by various means.
All want to maintain control of their bit of the monopoly on the public mind, and none have found a completely effective form of mind control. There is a whole other aspect to this as far as how the opponents of mind control are portrayed. It is a stretch, but some could argue you could see this in the debate of MS vs Linux and GPL. After All, MS has a large mindshare in the market.
Anything which pushes freedom of thought, of observation, of knowledge will tend to unsettle the folks who want to sell you on their product for their profit.
The ultimate irony is when people push freedom of thought, etc. get pursue and punished by fud as proponents of mind and culture crimes in the first place. Have you committed a thought crime today?
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
The computer is a mind amplifier, not a mind improver. Whatever natural abilities, proclivities, and personality you have will get bigger, more expansive, and more expressive with the computer.
Unfortunately, not everyone has something nice to amplify. Some people are anti-social. Some are neurotic. Some are insecure. Some have addictive personalities.
As always, it's not about the tool, it's about how you use it.
I feel like I'm a prime example of what this article says doesn't happen(strange sentence). For years, I didn't talk to anyone, but a recent change in my life(not using computers as much) has caused me to be more social. I feel more intelligent because of it. Computers made me uncreative. You posted that you've,"(never met any of these, no sir)". Well, hello, I am your first.
-tyfighter
I forgot to add:
I am currently taking Japanese as a foreign language, but the primary language I use is German. I have never taken a class on it, but I have been reading it so long "it just makes scense".
This reminds me of what a parent said at my high-school, when a teacher commited the crime of forcing students to read complex, interesting books.
In astonishingly lucid stupidity, she complained (quite angrily) that his kid (a previously lousy student) didn't go outside anymore, and spent all day reading. What was worse, he WANTED to stay reading at home.
For centuries books have been informally blamed for creating anti-social, non-interacting kids (bookworms, nerds, geeks). Now computers are being blamed, but since they do not carry the prestige of being a basic tenet of civilization for millenia, professional psychiatrists who should know better validate those criticisms.
Computers do not make people more antisocial than any other technology, such as printed media. It's people who do not like those technologies that much who isolate the kids, unless they adapt and become more "normal".
On the other hand, there are people who are just naturally anti-social, with or without "geeky interests". I cannot understand the psychiatric obsession with treating people who find typical superficial conversation boring as if the problem is on their side.
Freedom is the freedom to say 2+2=4, everything else follows...
I wonder how poor Tom feels about being passed through a computer. Quite the painful experience, I would imagine.
Sorry, couldn't resist
He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. - "Big Al" Einstein
I'm seeing a lot of responses which mention things like "computers are just a tool" and "educators are failing, not the computers." I have a different opinion than most, I believe. I am married, and have three small children. The oldest is Kindergarten age this year. My wife and I have had long discussions and done considerable research as to the role of computers in our children's educations. We're still not sure how we want to handle it. Of course the net is going to be a big part of thier life, and if we want to be responsible parents we can't simply ignore it or let them discover it completely on their own. It's not safe out there for a five-year old who just learned to read and write.
A lot of the arguement seems to parallel the "dumbing down" of textbooks arguement. Remember the textbooks which always used things like muffin pans to represent the number 12, or rows and rows of apples to represent apples? There was a large fuss among the mathematical community over those books. They argued that if you take a child who learned using that type of paradigm and moved them into the real world where they have to deal with numbers, that their reasoning skills wouldn't translate. They'd have to carry around a lot of little muffin pans to be able to do math. I think this arguement was mostly bunk, but I have noticed a tendancy in most of these "learning games" for the child to learn to win the game instead of learn what the game was supposed to teach.
Case in point. There is a game my five year old played for a while. It is part of a Sesame Street themed learning activity set. Kind of a parody on Alice in Wonderland, there is a group of cards with more or less hearts than the number on the card designates. You are supposed to remove the extra hearts, or add extra hearts to make the numbers and the number of hearts match. Once they match up, then the card says "Thank You" and steps aside to make room for the next card which requires modification. Well, my daughter didn't know that they wanted you to use subtraction to figure this out, so she just randomly plucked hearts off. If she ended up being right, the card would say "Thank You" and hop away. If she was wrong, she would just randomly put hearts on the card until she got it right. The entire goal of the game failed miserably because it was all about playing the game instead of understanding the game's mechanics(which is where the lesson really was).
I've seen a lot of games like that one targeted at children. All I can do is sit beside her and take a pencil and paper and show her how the math models the situation she is faced with and how doing the math gives her a faster correct answer than experimentation.
I guess I'm really just a rarity. I recently took the kids to the local science museum becuase they had an exhibit they called "Engineer It!" The exhibit had a lot of different components, from plugging together different pieces of boat hulls with different shapes to find the "fastest" boat design, to building bridges and buildings that can stand up to earthquakes. The major problem I had with that exhibit was the "tab A into slot B" mentality. There were full-color diagrams, or tutorials on how to solve each problem you were faced with. Even the pieces of the boats were color-coded to help you find the right pieces to make your boat. If you can match a red bow to a red stern, then you win. Computers aren't that bad, but in both instances the emphasis is on the results, not the process. In the final analysis, it's the analysis that's important, not the final results.
Steven
-- I have marked myself unwilling to moderate-- I don't have other accounts to artificially inflate the karma of
Any number of education theorists used to bemoan the stultifying effects of conventional classroom education. My own experience as a student confirmed those theorists and the fact that a good deal of education occurs in spite of the education system rather than because of it.
Certainly there is no substitute for a good teacher but there is a shortage of good teachers. A computer, whatever its defects as a teaching device, is usually a good alternative to a bad teacher and a good supplement to a mediocre one.
Here is my own conclusion based on 20 years sitting in classrooms versus hundreds of hours sitting in front of a microcomputer: the computer wins. I would suspect that anyone who tried to educate himself using a computer (usually supplemented by a book) would say that he learned more per hour than he learned listening to lectures and preparing for exams.
Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education.
--Bertrand Russell
This quote has partucular significance for me. I always found learning from a person following a predefined course plan to be extremely limiting and restrictive. While there is usually a case to be made for a structured learning environment, this style of teaching does not appeal to all students.
Unfortunately, it also has the (negative) side-effect of locking students into a fixed way of perceiving and reasoning through problems that are set before them. It has been expressed to me by professional teachers that the most valuable thing a teacher can impart to a student is not necessarily knowledge, but rather the ability to think and reason. What they fail to mention is that they are imparting their way of thinking and reasoning.
The internet, on the other hand, offers alternative points of view and unique perspectives. Sure, a lot of the content online is misguided, innaccurate, inappropriate and just plain wrong... but that is the way of the world. Exposure to different ways of thinking leads to innovation(tm) and creativity, as well as a more open mind. I know that's something I want for my kids.
---
He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how. -Frederick Nietzsche
It all depends on the individual. My parents had the forsight in 80's to buy one of the first PC's IBM's 8088 model 5051. Today I work in the feild and I am my own boss.
P.S. 16k of ram, no hard disk, 5.5 floppys, and an rf modulator so we can hook it up to the TV, total cost about $6K. The monitors at the time would sell for $3K (mono green or amber). It still runs. To bad I cant't install Linux on it, I have IBM DOS 1.1 for it.
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
"A Family PC (www.familypc.com) online poll of 615 families conducted by Digital Research, an independent research firm, found that 68 percent of the parents who responded believe that computer usage has helped their children to become smarter."
How many parents don't want admit they just bought what was really an expeensive toy to play games and chat with. Many parents seem to think because the child is more proficient with the computer than they are this equals intelligence.
This article seems to suggest that we have entered some new age in education. And you better have a computer or you will be left behind.
But hey if you want your child to have good software rather than a good teacher or mentor power to ya. So the next time I see a kid unable to figure sales tax for ten dollars on the cuff I'll tell then to get a faster computer so they will be smarter.
By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more. - Albert Camus
Today's youth in environments that can afford modern technology have actually seen more during the short period of their lives than ever before. People wonder why this inspires some to be "anti-social"? What would you think as an innocent taking a first look at the many facets of our society? They aren't legally allowed to work or even be out after 11pm in many areas of the US. Is it a surprise that they feel isolated and aren't interested in supporting a system that doesn't support them? The solution is not taking away information. The solution will only arrive if adults start thinking less about how they can increase their bank account and more about how they can provide adults of tomorrow more avenues for self expression. If children feel that they are useful in society, then they may start participating in a positive way. With more single parents with full time jobs and higher divorce rates, it is the communities responsibility to speak out for those who do not have rights to do so themselves. Support teen rights and say "no" to curfew laws which harm the innocent and are ineffective at reducing drug use and gang participation in urban areas. 1st ammendment rights to assembly and speech are not protected under these laws as curfewed teens are not allowed to assemble during certain times. Speak or be squelched!
Smart, anti-social people, deeply interested in working with technology. I wonder if they'll discover very social, less intelligent people, deeply interested in sports. If you don't get my gist, your as dense as the people that did this study. -- Usefull
I think the mistaken assumption that you make here is that learning is best undertaken as a solo process. To me this is just totally wrong. Sadly because of concerns about plagarism and "cheating" its a assumption that our education system tends to push fairly hard.
The reality is that in many many fields of study talking to people is by far the best way to learn. In some fields of study, such as music for instance, its not only the best way, its vital. A musician who can not play with other musicians is not really worth the title. Increasingly these days that same is true of computing. If people can not read, understand and modify your code its not worth much.
Phil
"My students can no longer tell the difference between reporting on something, and evaluating and interpreting it. That's critical thinking, and they're losing it.".... "Kids can spend hours clicking on icons and surfing the Web, but that doesn't mean they're learning anything;"
Well.... perhaps. But when tasked with a report about X in say, grade 8, how many of us were challenged to use critical judgement or develop conclusions then? At this time, the teacher would say "I want to see a 10 page report on X".... they didnt say "I want to see a 10 page report on X. Be sure to include a discussion on X's impact on the environment and an analysis of the political/socio-economic impact of increasing/decreasing X with reference to the collapse of the Soviet Union and why this might influence middle east peace negotiations."
Developing/using critical thinking skills is something that most of us don't get a chance to do until we hit post-secondary. Elementary and high-school curriculum does not ask much in the way of analytical problem solving or an individual's development of conclusions
So I would have to do a report on Belize (back to grade 8). I'd spend 30 seconds with the encyclopedia Brittanica. Hrmm. check index. "Belize"... [B] page 267. Wow, a 10 page report already made for me. Pictures too! I'd read it over, then flip through the volume looking for something cool to read about. How is doing a search in Google for X and compiling a report from that any better/worse then summarizing an encyclopedia?
My parents bought me a computer when I was 14. I would, for sure, say that I learned a lot from this computer. But what I learned was about computers, not necessarily anything useful (at the time). Sure I typed up book reports & such on it, but the reaserch was done at a library by hand (this was when the internet was in it's public infantcy, & when AOL & BBS' were the only way to get online where I live). Now I am a Network Administrator at a medium sized engineering firm, and if it wasn't for the Packard Bell Legend back in 1992, I would have never been able to get a foot in the door for this job. And I still have social skills, I just don't like most people.
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
Where's Matthew Smith http://www.jonlan.demon.co.uk/spectrum/matsmith/
In the 1990's Edutainment came along. One has to wonder whether a product that uses a word as horrible as "edutainment" can actually be educational, but nevertheless, some people bought it.
They found it was useless, because it rewarded people too easily.
Then the internet came along. A resourse contasining all the info kids might need. Shame so much iof it is wrong.
Hasn't it been proven that certain locations and parts of your brain get more developed as soon as you train them, like certain muscles get more developed if you use them more often than others ?
/. :-)
I think that was shown in children which have to learn two languages at once. Both centers in the brain for each of the languages learned are located in different places within the brain. Whatever language gets more exposure, reading and writing training (whereby each location for spoken language, reading and writing skills is separately developed), that part of the brain is more developed, whereas the location for the first language (the one less used) will "shrink", so to speak. What scientists could observe on the biochemical level of the nerve cells growths and functionality etc., can easily be observed in real life on multilingual children.
To me that explains clearly, why there is no way to "measure" intelligence. Because as soon as you are able to measure something, that something is also trainable and the quantity of what you measure goes up and down dependent on how it was trained. What you measure has nothing to do with your innate capabilities. It is questionable if men have static innate capabilities at all, other than the capability to change. If they don't (have static intelligence) then we would not have measurable intelligence, which would represent any meaning.
All that a computer does is challenging the brain to process information in a different manner than it was processed formerly through other tools. For example I am pretty sure that computer usage enhances the capabilities of kids to do two or three things simultaneously faster, at the same time it reduces the capability to do one thing focussed (unless the kid starts concentration to write code).
I think there is a connection between body movement and mental health. Hasn't it been shown that men have to move their bodies in order to stay mentally fit ? I would see a negative effect for children on their mental capabilities using a computer for prolonged time if it goes along with the lack of body movement.
I don't know what intelligence is supposed to be. To me the concept of intelligence is as fluid as my whole physiological and biochemical body system. Like saying I have a blood pressure of 130/70, I have an IQ of 135. I guess under certain conditions my IQ is down to 110 and my blood pressure up to 190/120, which is definitely not healthy.
Suffice to say that my IQ always goes down and my blood pressure always goes up when reading too much
There's been a recent Government Survey in the UK which suggests that books(a good library) are far more important than any PCs in the school. Have a look here
As a parent I've recently been looking at schools in Central London and I've been amazed (and dismayed) that children as young as six are being taught how to use Excel and Word
If they were being taught Python or Latin Poetry at that age I could understand. The major problem with most programmers (and people!) I work with is a complete inability to think clearly. Can't see that Word skills will help fix this.
When I was young and had my first computer, a TI-99-4A, things were easy. There wasn't much about the computer to understand. From a young age I could learn to program the computer and started writing games and stuff in the Extended BASIC that I had with my TI.(The speech synthesizer module was cool).
These days however, things are different. The young kids don't get to program at such a young age because the systems are so complex now they can't understand it easily. BASIC was such an easy language to use and the interface so simple that an kid could have picked it up. Today, kids would have to study a lot of things before being able to program their PCs. Especially those running Windoze.
Also, these days the computer games are so exciting that kids easily get zapped into them for long periods. I can't remember the games on my TI being that great. Enough for a few hours amusement but then I had to resort to programming to amuse myself.
What I think we need to work on is, developing software that can enable kids to control their computer from a young age. However, it would have to target a higher level of excitement than in the old days. The best stuff out there is probably the Lego kits, but they are expensive for most people. Unfortuneatly there is very little stuff for kids under Linux. Hmmm, time to get coding.....
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10);'
Basic intelligence is not effected by education, or the tools used to acquire information.
Although I agree with you to an extent I do think that exercising the mind will over time improve intelligence. As in, if you spend your whole day solving problems you will become better at problem solving. Similarly, you can train your memory to become better. Consequently, because we usually measure intelligence as a combination of the ability to solve problems and the ability to remember things your intelligence improves.
It is therefore an indirect consequence of better education and better access to technology to have better intelligence. Only because the better education and the better technology will provide an environment that will more likely stimulate someone to improve their intelligence.
f course, someone with no access to education or technology can be stimulated by other reasons and also improve their intelligence.Others are just naturally intelligent.
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10);'
Computers may very well make children anti-social but how does that related to them not being bright and eager to learn. I can name countless people that are anti-social but extremely intelligent. Maybe they become anti-social because the majority of the population bores or aggravates them with their ignorance.
Good humor is derived from truth.
I think there is a valid concern that people raised on computers may not learn how to think critically about the information they are receiving from those computers. I am reminded of an old maxim called Gallois' Revelation: "If you put tomfoolery in a computer nothing comes out but tomfoolery. But this tomfoolery, having passed through a very expensive machine, is somehow enobled and none dare criticize it." If kids don't learn to question the tomfoolery which can come out of computers, then we are in trouble. That's where critical thinking is important.
Onorio Catenacci
--
"And that's the world in a nutshell -- an appropriate receptacle."
--
"And that's the world in a nutshell -- an appropriate receptacle."
-- Stan Dunn
Is Slashdot brilliant commentary, pointless drivel or ravings of lunatics?
The answer is, of course, all of the above. It depends upon who is doing the posting, what they are posting about and what they actually know about the matter at hand. So, saying simply "Slashdot is good" or "Slashdot is bad" is inadequate. You must also consider many other conditions.
Life is like that. It's pretty messy. And complex. A can cause B or not B. Depends upon what other conditions are operating. Jumping out of an airplane can be
Similar things can be said about the use of computers in education. They can be used to turn children into robots or invite them into a world richer than they would ordinarily experience. Books can do similar things. Even TV can. Providing, of course, that other conditions are met.
"Beer is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy." -- B. Franklin
for those of you who haven't read this, read it; it explains some of the things i said in my earlier post...
mentor's last words
by: +++the mentor+++
written january 8, 1986
Another one got caught today, it's all over the papers. "Teenager Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal," "Hacker Arrested after Bank Tampering"...
Damn kids. They're all alike.
But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950's technobrain, ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him?
I am a hacker, enter my world...
Mine is a world that begins with school... I'm smarter than most of the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me...
Damn underachiever. They're all alike.
I'm in junior high or high school. I've listened to teachers explain for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. quot;No, Ms. Smith, I didn't show my work. I did it in my head..."
Damn kid. Probably copied it. They're all alike.
I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it's because I screwed it up. Not because it doesn't like me... Or feels threatened by me.. Or thinks I'm a smart ass.. Or doesn't like teaching and think it shouldn't be here...
Damn kid. All he does is play games. They're all alike.
And then it happened... a door opened to a world... rushing through the phone line like heroin through an addict's veins, an electronic pulse is sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetence's is sought... a board is found. "This is it... this is where I belong..." I know everyone here... even if I've never met them, never talked to them, may never hear from them again... I know you all...
Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again. They're all alike...
You bet your ass we're all alike... we've been spoon-fed baby food at school when we hungered for steak... the bits of meat that you did let slip through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We've been dominated by sadists, or ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us willing pupils, but they are like drops of water in the desert.
This is our world now... the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore... and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge... and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals.
Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for.
I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual, but you can't stop us all... after all, we're all alike.
The Mentor
-EOF-
...is solely because computer "power users" tend to be outcasts. Outcasts, as not being in the popular crowd, have a lot more time alone, and spend it learning various things.
I wouldn't say it's as much computers than the social position of computer users.
Regarding antisocial behavior, well that stems from the same thing.
Also check: I doubt it's computers that make kids intelligent, but rather intelligent kids that have a need to learn how to fully use a computer.
Yeah, but how does one gain insight or judgement? By learning vast amounts of knowledge. After learning information, you can think about what you know and pass judgement and assess the information. How does not being on a computer help you develop those skills? I use the internet to gather information on something I'd like to learn more about. If the information is opinionated; I try to get both sides. After gathering it, I think about it and pass judgement on it. The internet is just replacing a library in this case.
Kris Felscher
Kris Felscher
We've got enough youth, how about a fountain of "smart"?
How anybody uses that tool is up to them. A pencil in the hand of a talented artist can create beautiful and wonderous things, just as a chisel in the hands of a sculptor can. Although I might own a pencil and a chisel, I certainly cannot draw well or sculpt.
Computers are the same way. They are used to create documents by writers, or design airplanes by engineers. They are used by programmers and multimedia artists to express themselves. They are also used as entertainment and for research.
For those who simply play games, or surf porn, or whatever, who cares. That's what they are using this flexible tool for. Just because I am not an artist doesn't mean I shouldn't own a pencil or a chisel. Likewise for people with computers.
That a computer makes kids smarter or dumber is a stupid argument either way you look at it. It's what the child chooses to do with the computer that helps them grow or not. It's just a tool.
Computers, like hammers before them are great productivity tools, but like a hammer can be used in not so productive, even destructive ways.
Computers can definately spark someone's interest in many different topics. It can also be used as a form of mindless entertainment. The key here is balance. Expose children to computers, let them learn and expand their interests. Also hustle them outside to play ball with the other children so they learn to work and play well with others.
Like all things it is balance
As x approaches total apathy I couldn't care less.
Everything does. Making a blanket statement like, "computers make kids smarter" is foolish and absurd, especially when there are so many kinds and ways of using computers.
What is the computer used for? Is it just your standard Win98 box with AOL, Half-Life Counterstrike, Cable modem for pr0n, and mp3 players? In that case, no - it's just another TV set.
Is it instead used for programming, for research and learning, or for writing or composition? In that case, then yes - it helps children expand their minds.
The beauty of computers is that they can do both of these things - they can be an entertainment outlet, a link to the outside world, a research tool, and more. But you can't say PC's in the home make kids "smarter" (that is to say, more inquisitive and willing to learn), unless that is how they are *used*.
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
I've had a computer in my home since I was about 13 years old. (An Apple //e!) If grades and IQ tests are accurate measurements, I'm rather smart. I tended to use the computer (and the places it lead me to, BBS's and later the Internet) as much for knowledge gathering as for entertainment. In that way, computers made me smarter.
But I tend to believe that I used it to gather knowledge rather than entertain because I was smart. Dumb kids will use computers for dumb proposes. (e.g. games and pr0n) So computers make kids dumber or smarter depending on the kid.
Face it, some people are better than others. Some people are more intelligent; some are prettier; some can run faster.
Those that are more intelligent should have a better right to decide on aspects of how the world goes than other people. This doesn't mean they're plotting world domination - indeed, this would seem to be a fairly good indication that they're not particularly intelligent. All it means is that their decision, because they know more, are more likely to turn out for the better. Not definite - but more likely.
I'd rather be ruled by intelligent people than stupid people. This is, in your terms, elitist, but personally, I'd rather strive to be a member of an elite than settle to be a member of the common mass. And if there is no elite, people will never improve.
Remember, aristocracy meant rule by the best. If the best could be reliably defined, wouldn't you rather this than rule by the mob.
Elitism is good. Try and remember this.
... in Britain for kids age 11.
i d_ 1341000/1341942.stm
See the following from the BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/education/news
Boring Old Fart (40, married, 3 kids...er no...make that 49, married, 3 grown up kids...it's been a long time)
If you want your computer to make your kid smarter, track down an old Infocom game - no hack and slash, no brain dead point-and-grunt puzzle solving, no pictures, no sound, just text descriptions expecting free-form text responses. It's all up to the child's creativity (and spelling, and to some extent grammar) to get through the game. That's the way to foster creativity and rational thinking.
Planetfall is a great game for kids to start with, if you can get your hands on it. here is a good place to start looking...
Interesting article, but a couple of points really bugged me:
The point I really want to make is that computers don't make kids any more intelligent, just like D&D doesn't make kids any more suicide-prone and violent vids don't make kids any more aggressive. All of these things simply expand a particular view of the world as it is. That's all!
Computers and the Net have a special place in this discussion because their expansive properties are (almost) limitless in every dimension. We have access to anything and everything in the world - good, bad, insipid, bland, inspiring, whatever. This doesn't make them more intelligent, but provides awareness of the richness of human experience. In effect, it gives some amount of free rein to their intelligence.
The danger is in how kids perceive and process all of this information (and the capability to manipulate it). In my own experience (5 year-old boy and 8 year-old girl), the issue is teaching "focus". Too much data and the simplicity of flitting from idea to idea raises the spector of the Sesame Street Attention Span. These kids cannot focus a thought, cannot sit and enjoy a complete sunset - but must instead seek out the next new experience lest the current one become boring.
I've let my kids use computers with very few time restrictions since they were 3 years old. I've sat with them to teach them the basic skills and have injected the technology as a tool in their everyday lives (essentially a glorified Encyclopedia Britanica at times). I'm not saying they're typical, but I've found that on average we have no problems with the kids spending their days playing games or chatting. Will this change as they get older? Maybe. But my tack here is that I'll help my kids transition their experience from information acquisition and entertainment (i.e. surfing the Net, email, and playing games - some educational, some simply for fun) to information manipulation and discovery (programming, strategy-based games) - if they're so inclined. It's not a perfect plan, but parenting is not a science!!
So, computers (and the Net) for kids - absolutely! But not as a babysitter, not as a stand-in for television, and not as a special piece of furniture in the house - but as a tool for exploring the world of ideas with the guidance and support of their parents and teachers. Make the technology feel commonplace and part of the household fabric. It won't make kids any smarter, but they'll seem that way with a depth of world-awareness that previous generations did not enjoy.
CrazyLegs
"Pork!!" said the Fish, and we all laughed.
Virtual is just a nice way of saying "Fake."
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You sure got a purty mouth...
They became highly motivated cargo cultists. She didn't motivate those kids to do anything more than a modern version of "Copy the article out of the encyclopedia."
The problem isn't that book learnin' is boring, it's that kids don't think any kind of learnin' is important.
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You sure got a purty mouth...
when i was in school, this was all they'd let us have. i'm almost 20 now. the apples were good enough to learn on, but you really couldn't do much else with them. i remember sitting there, waiting my turn to play oregon trail. =) hell, my latin teacher was still makin us use the apple 2se computers in 1998 and 1999 to do some stupid latin word program. we had 1 real computer lab in high school by then, but it had windows 3.1. imho, we should still be sendin apple 2se computers to at least elementary schools. they might have sucked, but they were actually great learning tools.
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Tres_Status
stephen
I remember reading somehting about this somewhere that was bashing edutainment materials, and it said and made two very specific points about child development: That (1) intelligence is genetic and fixed, and that the intelligent ones will seek out information regardless of the circumstances, so therefore allowing them to play and be children was infinitely more important than cramming learning down their throat. And the other reason (2) was that interacting with other children let them go through the emotional stages of life faster than isolated (or self-isolating) individuals, and kept them emotionally well balanced. The study said that emotional well balance and the ability to handle stresses with others was the highest indicator of success as well. We-heeeeel then, it seems that all of this intelligence for intelligence sake is simply nerd crap, and that we often forget that we are truly in the antfarm. Smarts are already there; take the kid to soccer practice.
Basic intelligence is not effected by education, or the tools used to acquire information. A computer will allow someone to take advantage of a superior intellect, but it will not increase the intellect. Great post. Tog had a great chapter in his book Tog on Software Design were he explains some of the downfalls of our educational system. He pointed out that teachers didn't allow calculators in the classroom for years. I graduated in '93, yet I was still required to learn out to calculate square roots (a button that has been on every calculator in the US since I was born). Did that increase my intelligence? No. Did it improve my ability to understand the situations that I might need to apply square roots? No. Too many people (including our own schools) confuse knowledge with content. Rather than memorizing facts and dates, we should teach our children how to find those facts and dates, should they ever need them. We should then spend the remaining 7.5 hours in the school day to teach them the concepts - how those facts effect the world, and their lives. Computers are simply the next misunderstood technology. What people fail to realize about computers, is that they will never go away. Computers are here to stay. Those who are familiar with them will have the world's knowledge at their fingertips (a phrase that finally has meaning). As you pointed out, the children who are growing up with the internet will not end up any smarter than the rest of us... but their knowledge will be much more applicable in the future, than will be the content I was forced to memorize when I was young.
I believe a lot of the same things unformed said and I also believe /.ers understand this better than most.
Or to put it in NRA speak:
Computers don't turn kids into social outcasts, but socially outcast kids will turn to computers.
Sure, kids might get wrapped up in games, yadda yadda yadda. But, well, it's the same argument against TV and it's not the technology that's at fault. "She spends too much time in her room readin' them poetry books", "He spends too much time in front of the TV", "they spend too much time on the computer". These are age old complaints and the objects are just replaced from time to time.
When all kids are immersed in computing, then the whole 'social misfit' thing will center around something else since computers will be (are) so common place. Then something else will come along. Perhaps "He spends to much time in VR, he never watches media with his siblings like he used to".
((shrug)) Life goes on.
- I am made of meat.
This is like arguing over whether a computer naturally is predisposed towards Linux or Windows. It ALL depends on the child, the software they use, and how they use it - you simply cannot make an accurate blanket statement. Saying that a computer makes kids smarter or that it makes them dumber is saying the same about a blank sheet of paper.
This is something that must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Overarching assumptions serve no purpose other than helping the sheep reach a consensus.
Reality is indistinguishable from any sufficiently advanced fantasy.
This is the classical view of school as a factory, turning out one-size-fits-all students with identical "teachings". The computer's contribution is not in this area.
What is important about having computers around is that it promotes a different kind of learning than the traditional "Three R's". It promotes curiosity and exploration, because each web page links to others ad infinitum. It promotes creativity, because it makes the grunt work easier so the student can focus on the problem being solved. (This is true even if no special educational programs are present, just basics like word processor and spreadsheet). And it promotes interaction, via e-mail, chat and "design your own web page" sites.
These are not traits that the traditional educational establishment was designed to promote. Rather than a docile, compliant student who would be perfect as a docile, compliant factory worker, these traits create troublemakers: people who think for themselves and are assertive in communicating those thoughts to others.
Funny how they could write that article without noticing that IQ scores in the USA have been rising steadily for about a century (ever since the first IQ test was written). It's pretty clear by now that this isn't a case of dumbing down the test, but whatever IQ tests measure really has been increasing on the average. Early explanations centered on physical factors like better food and control of diseases that may stunt the brain. But by the mid-50's there wasn't any significant room for improvement left in the physical factors, and IQ's kept on rising.
So it's got to be the more stimulating environment -- remember, at the beginning of the 20th century half of American kids grew up on farms and rarely traveled further than they could walk. Most entertainment was necessarily home made. When you got tired of listening to your sister singing the one song she knew, offkey, you could read -- most homes owned a bible and maybe one or two other books. Public libraries existed in most towns, but the 20 mile walk discouraged most rural kids. In the last 100 years, peoples', and especially childrens', horizons have widened immensely: automobiles, record players, movies, radio, airplanes, TV, etc. We are so prosperous that people can buy books for kids so young they are more likely to eat them than to look at them.
There are two observed facts that are cited against the hypothesis that the more stimulating the environment the higher the IQ. One is that many studies show a very large (over 50%) relation between IQ and genetics. Reconciling these two sets of statistics requires a very subtle relationship between IQ and genes. One theory: IQ depends mainly on stimulation. Genes determine how well you like stimulation. That is, if your genes gave you more curiousity or possibly just a little more natural ability, you will seek to learn more, and wind up considerably smarter than the average. (Remember all those stories of Abe Lincoln walking long distances to borrow a book or working hard to buy one.) TV, video games, and computers can raise the average -- but it's still the people who seek out the hardest challenges that learn the most.
The second objection to the environmental hypothesis is that for the last few decades the rise in IQ scores has not been followed by an improvement in school performance. That could mean that there is something wrong with the IQ tests, but IMO it's that the schools haven't been keeping up with the times. They still depend primarily on techniques that were developed centuries ago, and were adopted then out of necessity rather than any opinion that they were _good_. "The best school is a log with a pupil on one end and a teacher on the other", but when you have 20+ pupils, one teacher, and no technology you've just got to do the best you can. Socrates encouraged students to figure things out for themselves (circa 400BC). Teachers with larger classes had to lecture, trading a great reduction in quality for quantity. (It once also helped that the world outside school was so boring that a 70 year old man lecturing on medieval history could be stimulating by comparison.) Now computers (properly used) can free the students to go find out for themselves once again, but the education establishment is so set in it's ways that when a kid goes and learns something on his own, they resent and fear it. So the kids _are_ smarter (at least in some ways), but they're bored silly in school. Read the comments by teachers about computers in that light.
From what I've gathered from my younger brother, most of the computer experience at his school is knowing what to click on the desktop to make programs work. That's hardly knowing how computers work. I'm 26 years old, and back when they were teaching us about computers in 8th grade (Umm... 1987'ish, this was deeper than prior experience at the school's library), we were shown the internals. It was an Apple // computer. Not the same layout as my Commodore Vic-20's, 64's, and 128's, but useful nonetheless. Ground up education is long gone. They only show what's on the surface, and don't bother teaching the "Why"'s, only the "How"'s. You don't learn "Why" a computer works, but just "How" to make it work. Understanding the basics of the parts of any computer can really make things come together when you sit down to use one or, especially, code a program.
You can make the analogy with an auto mechanic. Even though the engines are computer controlled, and have self-diagnostics, you still have to know how an internal combustion engine operates to properly diagnose and work on the thing. If you don't understand that fuel and air enter the cylinder through the intake manifold, cylinder head, and blow up, then exit thru the cylinder head, exhaust manafold, etc... You're probably going to be lost when trying to figure out performance issues.
Well, I've rattled long enough here... Any other thoughts on this?
-- Liberalism is a mental disorder.
Far too many educators assume that if they buy a bunch of computers, set them up in a room, and give kids a couple of hours a week to play Magic Carpet (what I used to do on school computers) on them, their kids will magically gain intelligence. The Truth, however, is that computers are, in their raw form, nothing more than implements to assist in learning.
The first thing educators need to do when planning their computer policy is decide how they want the computers to benefit the kids. If they want their kids to learn about computers they might be able to expect that simply tossing the students into a room and letting them figure it out will work. That's probably quite similar to the process many slashdotters used to learn about computers.
If, on the other hand, they expect computers to help kids learn about deforestation, or sentence structure, or black and white photography, they can't just expect the kids to figure it out for themselves, along with the computers. Computers can help, but teachers are and always will be the primary means through which young kids get their information. Expecting a computer to solve all your teaching problems is naive and immature.
Finally, expecting that the prescence of computers in a classroom will automatically make kids score better on stardardized tests and so forth is just plain ludicrous. Unfortunately, this is the general concept harbored by most educators today. It's also one which Microsoft and Intel do their best to encourage. Young kids, given free range on the internet, will invariably gravitate to mtv.com, espn.com, or hotbritneyspearespics.over21only.com. I speak from experience. In order for computers to be useful educational tools, teachers must provide guidance and assistance one hundred percent of the way.
-- Nerds on toast in the new millenium
Today's kids are no smarter than those of the previous generation. If anything, they are less intelligent than their predecessors.
Sure, far more kids nowadays (born in the developed world) are fortunate enough to have access to a PC and the Internet but does knowing how to switch on a device and access information equate to intelligence?
Kid 2001 may be able to look up who fought who in World War II, the colours of the spectrum or the name of the first man in space, but Kid 1981 would most probably know the information of the top of his or her head.
Put simply, know-how has replaced knowledge. And, in this new information age, where almost anyone can access any information instantaneously, know-how isn't much of an advantage. Being able to understand, interpret and use that information in a proper and relevant manner, that's the real advantage. And because of the tap-tap-click method they use to find their information, today's kids have very little idea about it's value (let alone how to sort the wheat from the chaff).
Being able to program your VHS recorder doesn't make you smart. Using it to your advantage (whether to tape something off of The Discovery Channel or just The Simpsons) does.
P.S. Today's techno-savvy kids are far less literate, numerate, communicative and active than we were at their age. Want to know who to blame? Nintendo, Sega, Sony, Microsoft and IBM. Nuff said.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Not to be too obvious a troll, but really now. Half the comments on this discussion seem to be 'computers discourage children from thinking, and instead they're just regurgitating what they've read'.
Hmm... most of my schooling was done WITHOUT computers being around, and yet for the most part, that's all the first 12 years of it was. Read a book (or maybe the Cliff's notes if you're lazy), change some words, get a B+. Listen to the teacher talk for a few weeks, and write down what s/he said on your exam paper.
The vast majority of grade school is like this. Having or not having a computer really won't change a thing, however what it will do is prepare today's youths for the Real World (tm). How many (white-collar, anyway) jobs today don't use a computer in some fashion?
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Computers may be increasing intelligence, in whatever abstract measure they're using today, but I don't think it's improving people in an overall sense.
Intelligence is a tricky quantity, and the sort of things that are typically used to measure it may very well be increased through exposure to computing from an early age. But that doesn't mean kids are any smarter in reality or more able to deal with tricky situations.
In fact the anti-social behaviour which almost invariably comes with computer expertise is a far worse handicap than any gain in intelligence. Time and time again studies have shown that social skills are far more important in determining how successful people are in the real world than intelligence. Kids who spend all their time with computers are losing one of the most important aspects of their humanity. Serial killers weren't very social people either.
Kids who are allowed to just rot in front of a computer are being failed by their parents, who obviously don't care enough to have their kids turn out as well-rounded individuals who will be able to go through their lives without the kind of emotional inability we read about in places like this. Parents should encourage their kids to get out and actually interact with their peers.
Geeks here whine about being outcasts. Well is it any wonder if they do nothing other than sit in front of computers? Social bonds don't appear as if by magic after all, they take time and effort. Unsuprisingly, also things that computers tend to destroy. Think about it next time you wonder why nobody likes you.
All these points are fine.However, I still do not see that you have any reason to believe that the intelligence was not learnt pattern recognition.
In the case of the two adopted children example you have forgotten the extremely important element of the interaction between the two children (you know, the one which results in "middle child" or "younger child" syndrome) - I know that the children are supposed to be the same age but the effect of competition \interaction will still be there.I still assert that there is no _evidence_ to support your view as evidence for such an experiment would require that all the factors start, and remain, constant for the duration of the experiment.
Your view is what your experience suggests.My view is that the nurture argument is much, much stronger. By the time a child is old enough to take part in tests they have already recieved a _vast_ amount of input from their surroundings, their parents (computers?) etc.I think you will find that the view of the behavioural scientists which do such experiments skews towards the nurture side as well (but perhaps it would... depends how conspiritorially minded you are I guess).
Until a genetic component for 'intelligence' is found the nature argument remains speculation, however, the effect of education upon ability is well proven.
"If Stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?" - Will Rogers
According the dictionary intelligence is the capacity to acquire and apply knowledge. It does not mention the knowledge itself, and does not address wether a skill (knowledge) that augments the natural abilities is included in the term intelligence, but the absence of a statement to that effect suggests that that is not the definition. If it is your definition, then we are arguing semantics, not the subject of intelligence.
Agreed 100%. I believe that the capacity to acquire and apply knowledge is largely learnt.
In my high school biology class there were at the time (i believe) five or six genes thought to influence intelligence. Not being into genetics, I lack more current data.
Much as I dislike the habit of bringing up qualifications when discussing items like this I took my degree is in Biochemistry (yuk, sorry, got it over with - will shut up now). The link between genetics and intelligence is in a _very_ germinal stage and is more "stamp collecting" than a unified theory. I agree though (I don't think your argument is distasteful) that at least a portion of these abilities might be attributable to genetics. However, for those of us within a couple of standard deviations of the mean I believe that what is percieved as intelligence is mostly the result of early training.
I do agree with your main point broadly speaking (sorry about the diversion - pet hobby horse of mine - can you tell?:-) You are quite right that you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. Kids who are taught from a young age to value learning will learn from the instruments they have be they books computers etc. My issue is with the idea that people are born intelligent or otherwise. This is unsubstantiated and relieves the parents \ teachers of their responsibility to instill a lifelong love of learning into kids.
"If Stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?" - Will Rogers
Basic intelligence is not effected by education, or the tools used to acquire information.
I'm curious about what you define as Basic Intelligence. AFAIK the input you give a child, especially in the early years of life will have a very significant effect on all tests which measure "intelligence".Dammit, listening to classical music is supposed to increase kids' performance in IQ tests.Surely using computers would mould a child's way of thinking in some way. That way might give every appearance of making the child more intelligent.They would be better problem solvers, be able to bring a larger base of knowledge to solving problems, be more logical in their approach to things, read things more carefully (e.g. RTFM).All this stuff looks extremely like intelligence to the outside world.To say that education does not effect intelligence you would need to measure intelligence without tests which used any of the above skills as these can definately be learnt and honed.Basically what I asking the question - What is the difference between the intelligence you refer to and being able to learn, and do, things well and how do you propose to tell the difference?
"If Stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?" - Will Rogers
Intelligence is the ability to understand what is presented. A child with a high intelligence will be able to deduce (for example) the answer to a complex riddle or puzzle from observation. A child with a lesser intellect may have to have it explained to him/her multiple times before they are able to deduce the answer.
A child may be shown patterns that will assist with deducing answers. A child can develop problem solving skills and algorithms. A child can also be given positive reenforcement to prevent mental blocks due to low self esteem. A child can be given the opportunity to learn (by environment and by having better teachers). These have value. As much or more in many cases than basic intelligence. A child with a high intelligence has the potential to make more use of these, and without it intelligence is not as usefull. But they are not basic intelligence. They are education (be it by parents , schools, or environment).
A child with a high intelligence will be able to ascertain the parameters and achieve a solution to a problem that is dissimilar to other problems that they have previously encountered more quickly and easily than a child that is not as gifted.
Put two children (not twins, as some intelligence factors are thought to be genetic) in the same household. (say two adopted children at ~ the same age). They will receive the same education, and be raised in the same environment. But they may, and often do, have very different abilities to learn. Not because one of them is 'learning disabled' but because they have different aptitudes for learning. Note, that their sat scores will typically be closer in range to each other than the average for a child of a different social strata. But that has more to do with opportunity and encouragement to learn than with ability to learn.
And to bring it all back to main point. A computer is a tool. It provides an opportunity. nothing more. How it is used is entirely up to the person using it. Just as a bookstore is. You can buy porn in a bookstore. You can buy travel guides. You buy romance novels in it. You can buy college level text books in it. It all depends on how you use it. And an intelligent child will get more out it than one not as gifted. And the books in it will not make the child more intelligent. Only better educated.
-CrackElf
"Blake is an idealist, Jenna. He cannot afford to think." - Kerr Avon, Star One, Blakes 7
I should have elaborated . I think that what some people are calling intelligence, I am calling skill. I agree that a child will learn patterns and develop algorithms and shortcuts to help them to derive solutions to problems. But I consider these to be skills and not intelligence. I feel that a person who has a high intelligence (raw ability to comprehend and draw conclusions from information) has the potential to use and develop these skills more easily and to a greater degree.
A computer is a resource, one I liken it unto a library, where many similar things are available - such as porn, tabloids, religious ranting, books that can be used to make bombs, romance novels, science fiction novels, textbooks, cultural books, and a lot more. The difference with a computer is that the interface is interactive, faster, more comprehensive, and that there is an easier ability to manipulate the interface. But it is still a tool, and will not do to a child what was done to the lawnmower man (in the movie). That is science fiction.
-CrackElf
"Blake is an idealist, Jenna. He cannot afford to think." - Kerr Avon, Star One, Blakes 7
According the dictionary intelligence is the capacity to acquire and apply knowledge. It does not mention the knowledge itself, and does not address wether a skill (knowledge) that augments the natural abilities is included in the term intelligence, but the absence of a statement to that effect suggests that that is not the definition. If it is your definition, then we are arguing semantics, not the subject of intelligence.
Until a genetic component for 'intelligence' is found the nature argument remains speculation, however, the effect of education upon ability is well proven.
In my high school biology class there were at the time (i believe) five or six genes thought to influence intelligence. Not being into genetics, I lack more current data.
There is no way to prove that what we believe to be intelligence is (or is not) learnt pattern recognition, as there are too many variables to count. But, by the definition that I understand, if these factors influence what is commonly tested as 'intelligence' it is not, in fact, intelligence, as intelligence involves the application of knowledge, and not the knowledge itself.
And in the view of the, admittedly few, scientists studying genetics that I have talked to, intelligence is thought to have a genetic base.
I have one argument that is distasteful, since it is a topic that is insensitive to bring up. But, as it has a direct impact on the argument at hand, I will elaborate. Mental retardation causes a diminished capacity to acquire and apply knowledge. That proves a link between intelligence and genetics. How much pattern recognition is attributed to intelligence is debatable, but at least a portion of it is genetic.
And, again, to bring it back to my main point. A book or a computer will not make you more intelligent. It is only a tool. A person can use it to expand their knowledge. But, as i said in another post, it will not magically grant (as VR combined with drugs granted to the lawnmower man in the movie) intelligence. That is science fiction.
-CrackElf
"Blake is an idealist, Jenna. He cannot afford to think." - Kerr Avon, Star One, Blakes 7
Basic intelligence is not effected by education, or the tools used to acquire information. A computer will allow someone to take advantage of a superior intellect, but it will not increase the intellect. A quick intellect will allow a child to grasp the nuances of the computer easier, and use it to a greater advantage. A computer is a tool, not a magical box.
One thing that really bothered me in this was the assumption that a child would become a hacker (by which I assume cracker was meant) which is compleat technophobia. Just because a child reads a book does not mean that he or she is going to run off and become a librarian! I have known several ppl with a very strong background in proging who chose to pursue diff. careers in college.
-CrackElf
"Blake is an idealist, Jenna. He cannot afford to think." - Kerr Avon, Star One, Blakes 7
I was taught LOGO in elementary school, and like most of my friends, used it to draw pictures. But last year I read "Mindstorms," by Seymour Papert. The book is all about LOGO, and is also the namesame of LEGO's toy (which is based on LOGO).
It turns out that LOGO isn't about pictures, or even programming. It's about teaching kids procedural thinking and debugging, not so they can program, but so they can then apply those ideas to all aspects of learning--break problems down into pieces to isolate problems; change your perspective (imagine yourself AS the turtle) when you get bogged down.
The goal is to debug the process of how you learn--to learn about learning--so you're not afraid of learning anything new.
While that's a pretty neat idea, like many things in school, facts are taught over process, and kids are thus taught how to use a computer, instead of how to think about how to use a computer.
I think technology in education will pay off, but its effect is occuring slower than the pace often associated with computers. In the meantime, I highly recommend the book (though it's currently out of print).
J
This sea of information often fools kids into thinking they are participating in intellectual pursuits, when in fact they are not. "Information is the lowest level of thinking, as opposed to higher levels like judgment, interpretation, evaluation, or mastering great ideas," Roszak explained. "Take an idea like 'All men are created equal.' That's not information - it's a moral assertion about human equality. Information is what you get when you dial 411 to get a phone number: low-level factual data. My students can no longer tell the difference between reporting on something, and evaluating and interpreting it. That's critical thinking, and they're losing it." Roszak's greatest fear is that because most technology makes the work used in education easier and can even create the atmosphere of being fun, the idea of intellectual pursuit may become a thing of the past.
Here are some of the fantastic programs that exist in many high schools today. We need more of this, not less:
1. Cisco Local Networking Academies.
2. A+/Net+ Certifications
3. Advanced Placement Computer Science Programs.
Most math and science high school teachers generally understand this problem. However, most students agree that taking the time to plot a parabola on paper wastes valuable teaching time. A teacher can demonstrate 10 different relationships in the time it takes for a student to plot a nice x-y graph of the same thing.
My wife had a class of thirty students who had leanring disabilities. It was a nightmare to attempt to motivate students to learn freshman science topics. However, when we moved them into a computer lab, and had them "surf" the net for the same info, build powerpoint presentations and web pages with the info, they became highly motivated and had a much more positive outlook on science.
Generally, college professors have a slanted view of how to educate kids, and have NO clue about what high school teachers have to deal with on a day to day basis.
I tire of college professors with cushy jobs complaining about high school teachers do a poor job. I bet this idiot college professor at texas makes around $70,000, has some overworked grad student that actually teaches the class and grades the papers. This same professor forces his students to purchase his $100 book each semester.
High school teachers work twice as hard for half the pay.
It really all depends on the kid who is using the computer. I'm a junior in high school right now, and i first got my PC when i was a freshman. If I wasn't so into computers, i might have only used computers for games (i.e. starcraft!). But, I guess you could say that I'm lucky that I'm into computers enough to want to actually learn something about computers. I know i'm kinda learning how to program late (since i hear that kids start to learn how to program since like kindgergarten or something), but oh well. As long as my computer benefitted me, right???
...well it's not making grown-ups any smarter -- i mean look at AOL!
There are 01 types of people in this world. Those that understand binary, and me.
What kind of misinformed view do u have, multiplayer games dont teach you team work, thats what preschool is for, so what if in counter-strike u have one guy flush the people out with a grenade and the other guy pick 'em off. Sure by definition thats teamwork, but that doesnt help you in real life.
I'm a firm believer in the philosophy of a ruling class. Especially since I rule. -Randal, Clerks
I am in Middle school and I have been using a computer for 8 years! Out of that, I have been using Linux for 2 years. I am be a outcast, but I bet I am the only person in my school that can run a true web server!
yeah sorry... i blame the net
what happened in my case is that the internet gave me a fifteen second attention span. i mean at least tv made me sit there now i cant even focus on tv for that long. because here im only a single click away from another interesting distracting bit of information, halfway through an article.
We already know that kids are smarter than their parents and most of the people in the US Senate. The problem is that age encourages stupidity.
FAST ALECS
BY GNOVOS
In the past, the only way to get from Ogg's cave to Z'nak's cave was by walking. Children had to be stong in order to avoid both the sabor-tooth tiger and the Calkraf cannabals along teh way. Today however, we have the wheel, which allows us to travel at speeds of up to 4 miles per hour, far outpacing even the fastest Calkraf hunters. But is it a good thing? Our children have been neglecting thier feet, and as such, now are becoming slow, and thier feet are withering away. Famous Child Psychologist Kog, has this to say, "Ug, ug, grraaaaah, ug, nrrrrrrruaaaaaaa!"
Well said, Kog, well said...
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Computers are like TV. They both can be tools to teach you great things, if used properly. But the attractive part of TV is turning it on and turning your brain off. Same thing with computers and some of the crapy educational software out there. Just flip it on and try clicking on things until you get some nice eye candy. Stupid! We need to educational software tools, that challenge the kids thinking, not just give them some sweat rewards for clicking on the right thing.
While(awake) { Check Slashdot,Register etc; if(at school) skip class; else steal stuff from local convenience store; } While(sleeping) { Download pron; } and the cycle continues...
State of Love and Trust
Speaking as someone with actual experience in the field (one of my many jobs is to teach 5 middle-school computer classes) I'd say the question is a silly one, especially the way it's phrased.
Computers don't make anyone smarter. They're tools, that's all - tools that can be used to search for information, write papers, or play games. In this fashion they're no different than calculators, toasters, or cars - a means to an end, for most people.
In terms of education the computer is useful because it teaches salable skills, the kind that kids will need once they leave the educational system. This has little to do with content; the paper that a child writes might be of little practical value in and of itself, but the skills required to write that paper are the same skills needed to write a business report or a memorandum or a meeting summary. Same goes for spreadsheets, presentations, web pages, and yes - even games. The skills required to find a demo on the internet, download it, install it, configure it, figure out a fix if it doesn't work properly on the machine, etc., are the very same skills needed to install a commercial software package. The game is a waste of time; the skills needed to install and play that game are not.
Asking if a computer makes anyone smarter is silly. Better to ask if how that computer is used teaches something that can be of practical value in the job market. The Boomers might be able to get away with being relatively clueless when it comes to the machines, but their children won't have the same luxury; so anything which increases the computer skills of their child is a good thing, regardless of how these skills are actually used before they leave the secondary education system.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
computers are cool as long as we know how to use them and why to use them...they open new ways of learning (internet) and help develop certain skills, such as logic and all that...but, video games addicts are rather pathetic...admit that... --
I myself am a professional programmer, so I make long hours behind the computer. Programming requires a large amount of creativity and I think few would deny it to be an intellectual progress as well. I do find that after I've been programming for a long time, I get disconnected from the real world, to the point were I'm unable to tie my shoelaces, because I can't remember how. And that's if I'm lucky enough to actually recognize my shoes from all those other things that look a lot like shoes, but don't fit on my feet. It usually takes me one or two hours to get back to myself again. Point being, is that this kind of detachment from things down to earth is bad. It'll make your anti-social, unable to take care of yourself and generally unmotivated to do anything else than crawl behind the computer again. I imagine this goes for anybody who (over-)uses a computer now and again. It even goes for anybody I think that does long periods of very abstract thinking, like academians and such. It's this kind of behaviour, when people are detached from the world around them, that freaks out people, and makes them condemn computing all together. And they're right, if somewhat blunt. I think we should teach our children, and remember our friends, that a computer is a tool to get things done, and not a world in itself, not somewhere to retreat when the real world scares you, which it so often does when your a teen.
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Living is a way of life
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"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
In the US, any bit of information I wanted was a few clicks away. I could use the internet as an extension of my memory. In the UK, each click now takes between seconds and minutes to download, so something that was once a few seconds away, is now several minutes away, especially when I dont remember the exact series of links to follow and have to back track. One might think that it would make the internet just a slower part of my memory. However, the delay is such that it no longer plays any part in my memory - it is too slow to participate in my short-term thinking process. I am having to learn old methods of memory retention, and use "Favourites" a lot more!
This is pure theory, of course, but it is the only explanation I have. If I, an adult, am having this problem, what effect will it have on a child?
The problem with computers in the classroom is that the majority of teachers do not have the training to use them properly. Computers in the classroom force teachers into sysadmin roles. How can they concentrate on the subject at hand when there time is occupied providing support services better handled by trained technical staff?
we are all different people and things effect us in different ways. If you take the "average" child a computer will benefit them and it will do them harm. Peope aren't affected in the same way 100% of the time. Sometimes the computer furstrates you and sometimes it enthralls you and as an overall experience it is usually beneficial if you like it and harmfull if you don't.They should provide a curriculum that isn't dependent on computers or teachers for learning. It should be able to teach a child in both ways.
Two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and i am not quite sure about the universe. -albert einstein
Speaking as another one who started early (wrote my first program at age 4) I don't understand what all the fuss is about. Computers are a tool, and sometimes a toy, but they don't change who the person using them is.
Interleaving the Question of Intelligence on one side many youngsters lose sleep coding and hacking and a new worship sequence for hackers and rebels on the internet has become a fad design. .. the Computer age is producing a whole bunch of couch potatotes and addicts. Leave them without food they survive but without Cola and the Computer they start to fret.
:-)
:Marc_Aurs
Childen emulate such ideas and admist the hassels of learining to code and script they forget that there is much more to life.
From the health aspect of it
Kids should be having more fun building tents and camping and having tons of fun playing basketball rather than spend 23hours on the Computer and generating handles like KILL_PROF_6565
Regs