Wi-Fi Woods

Mr]-[at writes "School kids in southern England have been given PDAs and pocket radios to track down and record plants and wildlife, as part of the Ambient Wood Project. The feedback has been overwhelming positive."

Comments

Anything to get the kids interested

[IdleLay]

I wonder how long they could have spent in the wood if it was a GBA or similar.

What about teachin them some math, physics and ...

[melted]

...and chemistry instead of wasting money on PDAs and WiFi? What about giving them some real knowledge and skills that may help them understand the world better and be more successful in their future lives? Isn't this the goal of education? How exactly being in the woods with a PDA supposed to improve their understanding of ecological concerns, their causes and possible remedies? How is it better than a good ol' book with a bunch of color pictures commented by a bunch of gray-haired scientists?

I can't freakin' believe some shcools are wasting money this midlessly.

hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

This is cool except for a couple things:

• I read no compelling reason why they could not have used more traditional inexpensive technologies, for example walkie-talkies and notepads.
• this was an experiment on children.

Re:hmm

[cyberwench]

Every study on teaching methods and how kids learn is an experiment on children. They kind of have to be, otherwise the information gained wouldn't be all that useful. That sort of thing goes on all the time.

One of the reasons for using the PDAs and wireless networks was that the kids were getting feedback - the identifications and extra information were uploaded to their PDAs. Walkie talkies and notepads would have worked as far as reporting their info, but would have been less useful for feedback.

Re:What about teachin them some math, physics and

[Inda]

Maybe they are teaching the children that life isn't just about boring book studying. They are probably teaching the children how to interact with each other and the world around them. I would hazard a guess that the children might actually enjoy a break from the classroom once in a while and it probably makes school a bit more interesting.

School doesn't have to be long training course for a job.

Re:What about teachin them some math, physics and

[metatruk]

I can't freakin' believe some shcools are wasting money this midlessly.

I dunno. Technology is cheap relative to the cost of paying teachers, administrators, etc. Like it or not, technology is becoming more and more a part of our world. Pervasive technologies such as 802.11 and PDAs will continue to grow. Giving kids technology like this at a young age will only make them more comfortable with it when they are older.

Just because that's the way school was for you when you were growing up does not mean it has to be that way for kids now. Just because things are different does not mean they are worse.

Re:What about teachin them some math, physics and

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, 'mucking about' with PDAs and wireless is likely to inculcate precisely he kind of "knowledge and skills that may help them understand the world better and be more successful in their future lives"

Moreover being able to record data, take it back to the lab, shove it into databases etc, is the starting point for some interesting ecological logging work.

Re:What about teachin them some math, physics and

[tiled_rainbows]

Yeah, when I was at school (we're talking early nineties) the problem with the way they taught computing was that they didn't integrate it into the rest of the curriculum, so you never actually got to use it in a real-life environment, meaning that it was impossible to learn.
So you'd have the "technology" teacher, probably with a background in woodwork, saying 'Yes, so this is a spreadsheet. Er, if you had a ny data to process, you'd see how useful it was...'
Meannwhile we're writing down all the results of our physics experimnts on a piece of soggy paper, with a biro.
The best way to teach people to use computers is surely to get them to use computers to help them with somthing they were going to do anyway, like people use computers in real life. Not only would that help persuade the more technophobic kids that computers were actually there to make their lives easier, it would help combat that "I wanna learn web design! Yeah! I want my own website! Cool! I've got my own website, now I need some content!" phenomenon.
Thanks for listening.

Re:What about teachin them some math, physics and

[ampathee]

Yes, but "teaching the children how to interact with each other and the world around them" is not a reason to give them PDAs! What's wrong with getting out into nature, *without* bringing along all the technotoys?