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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."
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I know first hand, that technology in this kind of setting can be a distraction to some students. They may want to mess around with the technology rather than learning about what the teachers want the technology to teach the students. But I think this is okay, because it's okay to mess around with technology, right?
So long as the students learn *something* I see this as valuable.
Why is it that kids today get every little tech toy that us kids of yesturday have been drooling over for years? I'm 18, and yeah.. i just bought my 1st car. But those damned PDA's are prolly more expensive then my freakin car (which i got for cheap...) But seriously, laptops, pda's, etc, etc... they get it all.. I'm only 18, and i already can talk to the kids like they're all whipper snappers.... "Back when i was a youngen, we had 8bit 2D graphics on our games, and we watched in awe! And back when i was a youngin... we watched the naked titty women on Duke3D for hours, like you will on Duke Nukem Forever when your 74! (btw, why is duke nukem forever on freshmeat?)
Anything your PC can do, my console can do better!
...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.
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.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
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.
>>to enable pairs of children to collaboratively discover and reflect upon new kinds of experiences in mixed reality spaces.
Didn't they use LSD for that in the 70s?