Slashdot Mirror
Too Many Computers Hurt Learning
An anonymous reader writes "The Christian Science Monitor is running a story on a recent University of Munich study of school children in 31 countries that found a correlation between frequent computer usage and poor academic performance. Having more than one computer in the home was found to be particularly bad news! For those Slashdotters with children, how do you deal with your kids' computer use?"
When I was eight, we had three computers... one in the family room, one in my sister's room, and one in my room. Of course, they were an Apple IIe clone, and Apple IIe, and an Apple II+, respectively. My sister was valedictorian. My grades sucked, but that's because I didn't do homework. :)
I don't think that multiple computers in a household are patently bad. I think that poor parental understanding and control of their children's using habits is to blame. The key is not too much computer usage, it's too much computer usage doing the wrong things. Half-Life 2 is not a learning experience. How Stuff Works can be.
Computer use in the school is still a fairly new tool. We aren't adept at producing good on-screen content for learning, yet. We still try to push everyone along at the same pace , where computer-based learning should preferably guarantee that a student meets the class requirements and has an opportunity to extend their knowledge beyond the "lowest common denominator" teachings.
Bottom line, computers are still too new to teachers and too unfamiliar to parents right now. Give it some time.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
The problem with kids with computers is that they are used both for entertainment and work at the same time. Writing a paper with IM on browsing the internet for sources and to keep tabs your favorite pop star. Sure kids with 24 access to computers they basically give themselves an information overload thus they split there educational learning. While children with more limited access to computers are more forced to get there work done and get off so Mom and Dad, brother and sister can use the computer so they just get the work done especially with a little brat ready to go to mom and Dad that you are using the computer for fun while she needs to use the computer to finish her homework also. It is worse then doing homework with the TV on because they are actively engaged in many activities. As a parent one should make sure the computer enhances ones life but doesn't replace it. When they have to do home work make sure they are doing homework and not on IM or doing an other things that the computer is good at.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Sigs cause cancer.
Computers make figuring out things too damn easy these days. Back in the day, you had to expend effort to learn things, now it's just googling 'thomas jefferson' or what not to do your reasearch paper.
I play about 4 hours of computer games a night (more on weekends of course), and I might very well be my high school's valedictorian next semester. I think those kids weren't playing enough computer games.
when i moved house and didn't have internet access for a couple of weeks i got a lot more done (no slashdot for one!)
sure the correlation isn't between those with internet access and those without?
Stolen from some comedian: "The same machine that teaches my kids the alphabet also brings me porn."
"Computer use" does not really describe the activity with any amount of precision.
Funny, I have not one, but 3 computers in my room, and some how I've managed to keep around a 3.5 in highschool for the last 2 years.
*ducks*
Let's be honest. How many of us sit down to "just check e-mail" and find that nearly an hour has passed without really doing anything productive?
If usage goes up but productive usage doesn't go up, then time is wasted.
Learning and multitasking have never mixed well.
Multitasking also doesnt mix well with research, creativity, or anything really worth doing well for that matter.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
I wonder how much of that "frequent computer use" is spent on entertainment instead of educational software?
For instance, I used computers a lot when I was younger, but it was playing around with Logo and Basic on an Apple 2. I turned out to be a pretty good student.
How exactly do you get from "found a correlation between frequent computer usage and poor academic performance" to "Too Many Computers Hurt Learning"?
--
grep "xercist"
It's like TV. If you let your kids watch TV all night rather than doing their homework or studying, they're going to do very poorly in school even if they've been watching PBS or The Learning Channel. More TVs makes it easier for them to go unmonitored and unchecked. In the same sense, if you don't monitor how much your kids use the net, you're going to have academic problems. And, much like having more than one TV, multiple computers means that kids can more easily spend all night surfing the web and talking to their friends (especially if they've got a box in their room). In both cases, parents who take an interest in their kids' activities will have less of a problem.
The kid who spends his time reading "Monster Truck Mash-azine" does poorer than the kid who reads "Scientific American". Therefore, magazines are bad for all children.
But isn't that a good thing. AS we progress humans should have to memorize less things and use our tools to do more. That is the trend in history after all. I don't think that we should cripple ourselves just because that is how things used to be done. Kids nowadays need to learn how to evaluate sources and find information more than they need to memorize it.
Philosophy.
i note some objectivity here (if not much) as i was not one of the geeky computer guys (i am now).
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
Back the the Apple II/ IBM DOS area. When you used a computer you used 1 program at a time. You used a word processor you were usually in the word processor until you were done. If you were in Lotus 123 you were in Lotus 123 until you were done. Multitasking was near unheard of. So when you used you Word Perfect you were doing your work. Now with multitasking and windowing environment kids can now have there paper open while chatting with there friends. Playing some game in yahoo.com checking up there favorite pop star. Most kids don't naturally have a since of focus if they have the chance they will do other things that are more enjoyable then homework. They will do there work to avoid being yelled at by there parents/teachers but not for the point of learning the information, so with modern computers they can get the work done without learning the information because there mind is split on many tasks.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I am attending college right now, I can definately tell you that XBOX + HALO2 + INTERNET = FAIL. The same can be said for EverQuest or EverQuest2 (aka EverCrack) on a PC. Computers are really, really bad for people with addictive personalities. Sorry, I write a longer comment, but my Guild needs me in battle........ :)
It's too bad that computer games can't be more educational.
I have a feeling that in those households the computer was looked at much like the TV. A plugin babysitter that keeps junior quiet and out of the way. When used in that manner, yeah the computer can have some negative impacts on your kid. People seem to have forgotten that children need to be stimulated and challenged. TV and the internet can be great tools but can also be pretty mind numbing. My wife and I are about to have our first kid and have been talking about these type of things at length and we both feel very strongly that it is our job to make sure that our son is engaged in things that he finds entertaining but that have more value to them then simply "at least he's quiet". That means we have to actually spend time with our son, in fact, we have to take an interest in his daily life (gasp)! It always shocks me how many parents in our neighborhood either don't know where their kids are and what they are doing or prefer to just sit them down in front of some gizmo instead of getting involved in what they are doing. But hey, we haven't actually had our kid yet, so of course right now I have all the answers and know exactly how it's all gonna work out. Check back in around 10 years.
www.linux-skunkworks.com
I'm a code monkey and a moderately smart.
Things I used to know by heart I've purged from my mind (mostly unintentionally) over the years. Although, I did purge my computer architecture class - MUXes, flip-flops, etc. on purpose. ugh.
Partly because I don't use that knowledge as much and partly because it's WAY too easy to jump on *.google.com and look something up. Heck, in a lot of cases, just typing a query and pounding the enter key is enough. I can usually find that nugget of information or trivia fact I'm looking for in the short description that shows up on the results screen without ever having to follow any links. Google dumbs me down.
I've turned to reading more books to combat the problem. I try to read a variety of topics that interest me such as physics, math, biology, and economics and even fiction novels too. I find that the variety of information and learning new things helps keep me "fresh" and sharp in spite of google and kcalc.
I think it's way too easy to open up a calculator, spreadsheet, web browser, [insert app here] to do things one should be able to do, or at least know how to do, by hand.
If you do what you always did, you get what you always got.
The problem is not on computers, the problem is on the methods that are used in education. Today we have access to information that we did not have before, nevertheless the study methods continue being the same.
I didn't see mentioned anywhere in the article what types of software these kids were running. If they spend all their time playing "educational" software (by which I mean those counting programs/nick jr. type games which serve more to keep the kids out of parents hair than teach the kids anything useful)in place of learning from a teacher, of course grades will decline. All a computer can do is teach a kid basic functions related to specific areas of study. It can't answer questions or provide more insight into "why" rather than "how."
The flip side would be what they actually get to do on the computer. If the parents limit them to games and programs they set up for the kids, that's almost as bad as spoonfeeding an 8 year old. The technically oriented/geek parents (or, were I one, this is what I would do), make a ghost/dd/carbon copy/backup of your hard drive, and let the kid loose for a few hours to do whatever he wants. If you're a true geek, the kid would have his/her own dedicated computer to play with, to let him find his own way around. Show the kid how to use the mouse, and how to click. Teach them the basics of how to use the computer, and let them learn their own way. That's how I was brought up, and I'm more capable of using/building/working on/maintaining computers than 99.9999% of all the people I know. Plop me in front of a foreign interface I've never seen before and I'll figure out the basics of how to use it within a few minutes (or if in another language, hours).
Computers can be extremely powerful tools for learning, but only if used in proper context. Parents who use the computer as an electronic baby-sitter will find their kid's grades slumping, while a kid who figures out the basics of the bash shell by the age of 5 could probably graduate high school at the age of 10. Give kids the tools to foster deductive reasoning, and they'll blossom into students with an insatiable appetite to learn and figure stuff out.
There have been numerous reports released in Australia recently on how literacy and numeracy standards have been slipping in recent years. There was even an article yesterday commenting on how illeteracy is now being 'diagnosed' as ADHD, with children being taken to emergency rooms for treatment when what they really need is to be taught how to read.
The computer is simply a tool, it has no moral value, if the children are taught how to use it effectively as an educational aid, and are taught to value learning, the unfettered access to a computer will be beneficial. IF the children are taught to treat education as something to be endured and that computers are toys - then that is how they will treat them.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
Did they account that the teaching methods in schools as well as the curriculum they teach are still based on 19th century standards? Why do they still teach cursive writing? I was always told that it was necessary to learn for classes in high school and college, though not a single class even accepted anything less than typed work. I never once, not once used cursive. Schools are still based in curriculum that has little to nothing based upon the new educational topics that computers offer (computer science, typing, conversing skills, hand-eye coordination, hands-on hardware and software experience, etc....) I doubt this report takes into account the beneficial and educational leaps that computers offer, instead I bet it focuses on why children won't write in cursive....if you get my point
1. No computer games. Yup. None.
2. TV has to be PBS, Discovery or History Channel during the week, and no more than one hour.
3. the computer is used for schoolwork and research.
4. No TV in the bedroom.
5. No headphones indoors, no excessive volume indoors.
6. No TV during Dinner. conversation is encouraged. Dinner is served at the dining table 5 nights a week (Friday is swimming, so dinner is shortened, as we go out for a snack after swimming, and Saturday dinner is often out (and never at a fast food joint.)
7. One DVD may be rented a week.
8. books, magazines, and newspapers can be read at anytime except during meals.
9. Homework is done FIRST. Then play is permitted. Making things with paper, glue, wood, paint, ink, rubber stamps, etc. is encouraged. Puzzles, word games, and other intellectual riddles are encouraged.
10. Music is always permitted, but at reasonable volumes. Playing music and singing is especially encouraged, and preferred to listening.
That's the way the house is organised, and mommy and daddy (me) follow the same rules. No exceptions.
We have 7 computers in the house, but 2 of them (a win2k laptop and an XP laptop) are for my wife's office, three are in my studio (OSX laptop, OS9 tower, SuSe "project" machine), my daughter has a desktop (Apple OS9) and a laptop (OSX). She uses them, but not as much as she reads books. she also likes to make books - she has a good head for narrative.
She (Elizabeth Spoilsport) is 7, is bilingual in French and English, writes in cursive, and does her times tables. She can recognise 4/4, 3/4, and 5/4 time signatures. She's my little pride and joy, when she's not acting like a spoiled little snot (which only happens when she's tired or grumpy).
She also feeds the kitties, waters the kitchen herbs, (fresh basil is DIVINE), and when she gets all A's in her work, we give her a small allowance which she then divides up between a savings account, an investment account, a charity account, and a spending account.
And that's how it works in the Spoilsport household.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
You're question presupposes that us Slashdot nerds actually have enough of a life to:
1) Turn off the computer(s)
2) Date (or more accurately, find a girl desperate enough to go out with us)
3) Turn off the computer(s) and go out long enough to have a serious relationship
4) Marry (nowadays optional)
5) Turn off the computer(s)and actually make kids
6) Give up control of one or more of *your* computer(s) so that the aforementioned hypothetical kids can get on the computer(s) so that later, as you realize there is more to parenting than sitting them in front of a computer screen the entire day, you can kick them off
Sounds like a long shot to me.
...that are certain to get worse with my girlfriend and her four year old daughter. The only applications available to the little girl are a couple of Reader Rabbit games, but rather severe tantrums occur when she is denied playing the games or asked to stop for the night. I was reminded of my own behavior, though on a slightly different scale when I was fifteen or so and Warcraft II, Quake, and Grand Theft Auto were what dominated my non-schoolwork hours. I flat out had behavioral problems, wanting to do nothing beyond playing the games, and throwing teenager level tantrums when I was denied such.
Fortunately I was in marching band, jazz band, electric car club, and some other structured things for me to redirect myself to when my parents forced the issue and wouldn't let me use the family computer for games, but it definitely wasn't easy, and probably would have been even harder if I hadn't had other activities that I liked to turn to. Consequently I'm paying close attention to what happens in what I'm seeing now, because I know from experience what can happen if things get out of hand.
The moral of my own story: Have something else to do besides computers. Read. Play sports. Play a musical instrument. Work with your hands on something, like cars, or woodworking, or jewelery. Find a passion to compete with the one operating at 1024x768. It's definitely a lot more healthy that way.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I can read TONS of "but i always used the computer and am still the brightest guy around" posts.
Sit down, and THINK!
Back when most here present started their computer use, computers werent entertainment stuff that every grandma owned. Getting into computers needed real attention, technical interest, an open mind to find out how things work, ect.
Of course, when only nerds use computers, computerusers are smart. But maybe everyone would have been smarter if he didnt spend that much time with the computer.
I certainly would.
Nowadays, most "average" users use pcs as an entertainment system, with an added value that they can fool others that they are learning/doing something useful.
And that certainly doesnt help...
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Some possible causalities here:
I could keep coming up with reasons all day. The article seems to assume #1 is the explanation, but the study provides no evidence to suggest that #1 is any more plausible than the others.
can she get a score of 5 on /. ?
I don't know why but for some reason I just can't work any other way but under the gun; without urgency I tend to just lose intrest. With literature on subjects I really want to learn about just a click away it becomes even more difficult.
Ignorance kills, complacency kills, hatred kills, but usually not the ones guilty of them.
I'm a highschool teacher. I teach IT and I can absolutely say that, for the most part, the more CBT that is integrated into the class the lower the level of performance by the students as a whole. I'm not saying all of them suffer, but enough do that I try to limit the contact with the machines to that of the task to be done instead of the task to be learned.
I strongly suspect that the only thing that most people learn from machines is how to be lonely..... of couse I'm sitting at one... in a room... alone...scratching.....hmmmmmm.
At any rate, the more time I spend with the students in conversation over the hum of a projector the more the students seem likely to absorb things like IRQ tables and subnetting. The kids really do seem to be more inclined to actively particpate if there is a person leading them.
The studies are testing performance in educational areas that used to be considered important - reading, writing, arithmatic. So clearly if the kids spend a lot of time on the computer instead of studying math or reading literature, their performance in those areas will suffer.
But what about their performance in technology-related areas? What about their programming ability, their ability to think logically, their knowledge of and familiarity with computers? Those things will surely improve, unless they're just firing up Half-Life in which case their scores will plummet just as if they had a PlayStation or an XBox. Just because their performance suffers in the traditional areas doesn't mean computers are bad for them - they may in fact be better prepared for 21st century jobs than their schoolmates who get higher grades because their parents make them study the classics and ban them from using computers...
"To be absolutely certain about something, one must know everything or nothing about it." -- Olin Miller
Though my computer useage does decrease my productivity at homework, I would'nt know even half of what I know, not to mention the fact that my thinking skills probably would'nt be nearly as good. The thing is that it's computer gaming that tends to cause problems, not so much as other activities. I'm not a gamer myself, and am more of a geek, and my hobbies of linux system administration, programing, and electronics are far more enlightening per a given amount of time than school.
To summerize my opinion, whether it's a problem depends on how the computer is being used, and the real problem causers are Chat junkies, and (espescially)Gamers, and not geek activities
My daughter is 8-years-old. She has been using the computer (mostly for games) for several years. I used to sit with her and play the Jumpstart Toddler series with her when she was 2. Most of what she plays is educational, but I also let her play video games on the computer, including games on the GameCube, her GameBoy and our old N64.
So, the verdict? She's consistently ahead in school, reading and math skills are 1-2 grades ahead. She has no weak areas, no areas of concern and no behavior issues; she has a creative mind and is a whiz at problem solving and her verbal skills are remarkable at times. I couldn't ask for better. Her teachers are always happy to have conferences with my wife and me, and they have always spent the half-hour praising her and quizzing us on what we're doing at home.
I think it has less to do with the amount of time a child spends on the computer and more to do with what they're doing on it specifically. My daughter does educational stuff along with the occasional video games with no graphic violence. I also monitor what she does and help her get the most out of it. I just recently showed her the basics of how to create web pages and she's been coding her own pages by hand. No report anywhere will convince me that those kinds of activities are hurting her learning abilities.
It's just like TV. You can do it right or wrong. I don't think you can blame the computer itself.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
You totally had me on the casual nature of chat being part of chat. Abbreviations, flexibility, ... work for that medium.
But your generalization to "Language isn't meant to be a set of laws" is not supported by your earlier arguments.
The reason that language IS represented by a set of laws as if it weren't then there'd be no way to teach it in geographically disparate locations where folks may not be in contact with native speakers of that language. How can I learn Samoan if I live in SmallTown, KS? I need to refer to the laws of that language. No laws --> loss of structure --> lack of ability to communicate clearly and effectively. The laws are not there to be punitive; they are there to make the system work.
From blaming contraceptives for STDs and unplanned pregnancies, to straws for spitballs, to computers for distraction.
Computers are a very powerful tool in such a way that they can be used for almost whatever you might desire. Is this not a good thing?
If one desired distraction and could not find a computer, I'm sure said one would find a gaming console or a limping dog or a spot on the wall.
Computers are a tool to allow people to explore whatever it is they want to explore. Can't blame computers for allowing peoples' bad habits to show through.
Before computers, TV prevented me from doing my homework. Before TV, it was drawing and blankly staring out the window. Before windows, it was the faint light breaking through the ovum.
I know what I'm doing when I want to do it. I just don't like homework. >.
Now that I have slashdot... things are different.
Or not.
Back to homework now.
- shazow
I can agree with this, but if computers are their "thing", they should be allowed to tinker whenever their work is done, and all of the preceding priorities are met. If they get a learning experience from tinkering on the computer, then why not let them go at it?
What do you mean by language evolving exactly?
...
If you mean adding in new words (e.g. "blog"), then of course that's already built in and happens.
If you mean changing the way that basic grammar rules work, I'd think that'd be a mistake.
If you've read any Shakespeare (which I'm sure you have), you'd see that the English language has adapted since then (mostly in common word choice -- we see fewer of these: doth, 'tis, o'er, hath, etc.).
But that leads us to one of the reasons that it's important that we don't change the structure too much: all of the English written works developed for the past 800 years or so are more or less accessible to those who know proper English. If we changed dramatically the structure, either newbies would have to learn BOTH structures OR those works would be less accessible to them than they are to people trained in standard English.
It's no different than one router deciding that it wanted to do TCP a little bit differently; he can't do that. Not really anyway. Not if he's connected to all X other routers who understand the standard implementation of BGP, TCP, IP,
It seems very likely that at age 7 when children are still looking to their parents for nearly everything that such rules work I highly doubt that as she grows older and more aware of the world around her that your methodology will be as effective.
More than likely she might rebel against your admittedly stern authority as she grows older. Also as she grows older and is exposed to more things she will realize that the lifestyle that she has been exposed to is radical different than others. At the very least she might begin to question why you chose to raise her in that fashion or more likely use it as a further excuse to rebel.
I'm going to stop here with my little dime store analysis of what I see you doing but I hope you take some time to realize that your raising a human being, not something for you to try and pour into what you see as the perfect mold.
As a freshman computer science major in a required writing class, I wrote an essay suggesting that premature introduction of computer technology could lead to severe developmental progress. One of my primary arguments was that the development of fine motor skills and handwriting was stumped when children are allowed to type and use the mouse rather than write, paint, etc.
Further, (and granted, this was prior to the widespread advent of the WWW) the 'curiosity driven' learning experience is interrupted by the immediacy of technology provided information. Case in point, Online Encyclopedia vs. Book Encyclopedia. With one, I type in my topic and immediately receive a specific article. With the other, I have to learn how to look the topic up, and in that process am inevitably exposed to other topics which may catch my attention and allow me to learn a bit more.
My suggestion at that time, and one I would probably stand by today, is that computer technology in the classroom should be delayed until the Junior High (7th or 8th grade) level. In America at least, we see quite an opposite trend, where children are exposed to technology at younger and younger ages.
Now there's a thought. My favorite quote from the article:
consensus holds that more research is needed to know exactly where computers make the most difference in an educational process. "There's this sort of bizarre belief that computers cast a spell over students and teachers and schools," says Christopher Dede, professor of learning technologies at the Harvard School of Education. "Can you imagine what would happen if you had the same in business, asking if computers were interfering with performance? It would be a big joke."
But it is a big joke. The spell has been cast by salesmen and silly adverts, such as M$'s "we see your potential" series. The same thing has happened in the business world. The result is that general purpose junk has been sold without clear and careful thought about use. Most schools are on the fourth generation of general purpose boxes run by people who have no clue about what real use can be made from them.
I didn't see mentioned anywhere in the article what types of software these kids were running.
They did mention that, but I would have liked to see more:
Academic performance rose among those who routinely engaged in writing e-mail or running educational software.
This comes as no surprise. People who write, learn how to write. Well written educational programs draw people in so that they spend their time learning. People who spend their time playing games would probably not be doing their homework if they did not have a computer, so the results are self selecting.
I'd have liked to have seen an OS breakdown. Debian has a wealth of scientific applications for the older kids who don't get the good computer useage the Openhimer group called for. Gperiodic, kstars and the like are excellent for anyone but especially useful for 12 and above. It's fantastic collection of mathematical routines, data manipulation tools, editors and publication aids are great for university level students. Even the Debian junior toys are good for younger students, though I've seen dedicated leaning feedback computers like magic pads that play games that are better for toddlers. My two year old liked playing tuberling, but most often plays with real world toys.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
some people don't have to study to get good grades...I couldn't be bothered to spend that much time doing shit I already knew.
In my classroom I would call you a black hole. Not only do you take the teacher's time and suck it down that deep gravity well of arrogance but you end up sucking the energy from others who don't have that level of knowledge and really need some of it from whatever source they can get.
And you know what's great? Not only do I fight black holes like you, but I also fight another black hole, Yahoo Games. There are not a lot of people like you and me who are smart enough to absorb information like a sponge and retain it despite our inept study habbits, particularly referring to the electronic form. In the mean time, we end up sending the message to everybody else that drowning your mind in a melting pot of Flash entertainment will not harm our cognative development.
And the poor kids who have an attention span of a misquito end up losing.
Your post sounds like a boast of "Education failed me, but hell, I'm a success, and I'll be damned before I stop saying that nobody should give a rat's ass about public education." Thanks. Truth be told, you kinda remind me of roadkill. You think you're so bold when you dash across the highway, but your eyes are so close to the ground, you'll never get a chance to see the car coming before it runs you over.
I think it's way too easy to open up a calculator, spreadsheet, web browser, [insert app here] to do things one should be able to do, or at least know how to do, by hand.
The flaw in your logic is that you still must be able to apply SOME knowledge in order to get the answer that you are looking for. Even if you don't know how the calculations work, you would still need to know why the calculations are important and what they can be applied to.
Sure, you can use a calculator or whatever to perform calculations on some numbers. But, are these just arbitrary calculations you are making? No, they are likely part of some larger problem. And you must know how these calculations fit into the problem, or what calculations to use in the first place. You still need to know the principles behind what you are doing. If you don't, a calculator (or other tool) will be useless to you, except in doing simple arbitrary tasks.
In this way, the tools we have available to us save us a lot of time, energy, and sometimes needless frustration.
I remember some of the more advanced math classes I took in college. A single problem could, at times, take more than 10 minutes of work to solve. And in that time, it was easy to make a small mistake somewhere, even if you were being careful, and ruin the entire thing. Or, you could insert the problem into a computer math program and have the answer in less than a second. Guaranteed correct, if you did not make a typo entering it. As far as I'm concerned, doing such a problem by hand is entirely counter-productive. And you know what? I'm not even sure I want to know HOW it's done. I just want to know why it's useful. I want to know how to apply it to something productive.
Speaking as a non-native speaker of english , my language would order verbs in EXACTLY the way yoda does. In fact, English's order of verbs sounds (sounded) alien to me when I was learning to speak. But after nearly 20 years of constant usage, it's my natural language to write with.
All that said, I did learn to write English first and my mother tongue later - which had more to do with the curves and the 100 odd glyphs involved in my language.
Ironically, English has become the lingua franca of the modern world . And it's evolving on its own.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
I suspect the real issue here is e.g. putting PCs with Internet access into kids' rooms, as distinct from PCs without Internet access.
This is an issue I'm struggling with now. With 8 computers in the house (including one Linux firewall), do I put a PC in each of the 3 kids' bedrooms? At this moment, I'm inclined to install e.g. Mepis and restrict Internet access to e.g. 7pm-8pm each day on bedroom PCs; that should remove the possibility of endless hours of pointless IM and downloading WM* files, while still letting them get homework done and talk to their friends for a bit each night. If there's some exceptional circumstance, then Mum or I can invoke the "Internet access extension" clause in our contracts...
Still struggling to work out if this is a good approach or not, amidst the other obvious (e.g. no access, or unrestricted access) and not-so-obvious options. I'd be interested in any other suggestions.
Please do not mix them up. They studies found a correlation between them. By using a title such as ``Too Much Computers Hurts Learning'', it implies that too much computers cause a decrease in learning abilities. What they found was a correlation, not a causation. It is dangerous to misinterpret statistics.
We're not learning "less" we're learning differently. By the reasons given we might as well go back to abacuses because even slide-rules are evil technology blah blah blah.
Yes, you could blame the computers, but realistically I think a lot has to be said about the deterioration of the teaching system. I would know, I work in schools and see daily how bad they've gotten. Kids have no respect... yes they didn't have respect when I was in school (and hey, I'm 23), but now they're much more open about doing everything short of (and sometimes beyond) telling their profs to f*** off.
br As for the profs, well, it's rather discouraging trying to teach kids that don't want to learn, somewhat like watching the coding project you babied for the last year get tanked by management in the final stages.
But as to the kids that do want to learn, and make use of computers as a tool... they're going to do more than the previous generation did with a set of fancy calculators. Realistic simulations, architectural tools... computers expand in other areas.
Of course, I suppose I could look at myself. Grandiose projects planned, but after a day of work I'm often sacked and just end up playing games to relax. If I had to sit through some of the classes that students do today, I'd probably do the same...
Decades ago, the TV was hailed as the next greatest thing in education. Teachers would soon be able to record their own lectures and presentations for a much more efficient, effective educational experience!!!
Hopefully the computer hype will die down soon enough.
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
Having two kids myself, both using their computers a lot, my main concern is not academic performance (in fact they are both top of their class despite playing counter-strike and other games for hours each day). I am a lot more worried about them not getting enough exercise, which in the long term will have fatal consequences. The discussion on parental control or kids self-control is uninteresting. What is interesting is making them interested in and getting an understanding of what is good for them. That takes a lot more than just telling them "You cant play any more today".
If 2 many 'puter iz bad fer yuz, tha'd mean peplez like ize which haz a lod uv 'puterz wudz be reawy reawy dum
The actual study says they've found a correlation, the braindead /. editor writes (or accepts, whatever) a title which would indicate causation.
Say it again boys and girls, real loud, maybe even the editors will hear it; Correlation is not causation.
Instead of just letting your kids play counter-strike, make them have to jump through hoops, crack firewall passwords, decrypt .shadow password files, make it a challenge. That way when they are done they've learned a valuable skill. And the aiming and shooting skills the aquire at CS will helpt them deal withe consequences of thier new skill as well.
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Correctly applied, computers can aid learning. I have absolutely no skill at all at operating a pen. It has the worst user interface ever designed. My grades in English were consistently Cs, with the occasional B. Once we were allowed to use computers to type essays, they shot to A or A* and stayed there (until I dropped English aged 16)
Ah... I had a similar experience but, given my age, the change came not from computers but typewriters. Typing let me write quickly enough to be coherent. Using a keyboard can be a real boon, and is increasingly understood to be necessary for some students. For example, I had no trouble convincing my department to allow me to type my doctoral comprehensive exams although it is not standard practice.
As for computers being bad for learning -- I would agree with many posters and argue that it is only bad if it distracts the student from reading (as in novels, not IM). Having taught university in the states the increasing illiteracy of students seems to be the number one problem I saw. They have trouble with reading. Books are "too long," or "too hard." Vocabularies are apalling. It's a sad state of affairs.
A revolution in teaching will be required before students begin to be taught what they really need to know. Virtually none of the teaching methods used outside of maths and hard sciences in the last century are applicable to the age of the Internet.
Looking at this survey, the academic training done in the schools that the examined students attended is largely irrelevant to today's learners. The most relevant type of leaning revolves around learning to use the tools available to locate the information you need in the shortest period of time. In the past this naturally involved committing to memory large amounts of information since the human memory was the most reliable and quickest storage medium available.
In the age of the Internet, the amount of information you can recall in a few seconds is not as important as how quickly you can recover information online. Memorizing the paths to information is more important than knowing the information itself. So the human memory is best used as an index not a repository.
Until academia catches up with this idea, those who are most literate in the use of technology may display lower test scores when isolated from their online reference library. But when allowed to use the tools they have mastered to accomplish the same tasks, they will have higher test scores than those who rely only on memory for recall.
This does not excuse us in the specific disciplines of math and the scientific method. Every student must learn math the hard way or be forever isolated from the most advanced fields of human knowledge. And most important of all is learning to reason properly.
Every student must be able to form hypotheses, test, and discard unproven or unprovable ideas in favor of those that can be demonstrated to not be false.