Slashdot Mirror
Students Do Better Without Computers
Gogogoch writes "The Telegraph
is reporting a large study that shows that the less students use computers
at school and at home, the better they do in international tests of literacy
and math. The more access they had to computers at home, the lower they scored
in tests, partly because they diverted attention from homework. Students tended
to do worse in schools generously equipped with computers, apparently because
computerised instruction replaced more effective forms of teaching. " Worth noting that it took almost 20 years for PCs in the corporate environment to actually have a positive impact on productivity; might the same be true in education?
This is clearly a hormonal thing, and it's like making a case against human evolution. The computers are here and they aren't going anywhere. Learn how to use them to improve your test scores or find better porn - the choice is yours. I don't think you can make a case against students learning to use computers now, as opposed to waiting until they are over 40 and trying to find the Any Key.
Corporations still have a hell of a time keeping employees off of Solitaire and Minesweeper. I think this is not a computer problem, but a "bored at work" problem. I can remember my teachers in high school - most of them were the most boring people you would care to meet. A select few would enlighten and invoke interesting discussion and methods to achieve success on the course.
So this clearly is not a computer problem, but a teacher problem. Adding a distractive device that lets you leave a boring class is only a small price to pay to prevent the stagnation of our children's collective intellects.
Let's put more money into better programs and methods for teaching, and wash out the teachers who aren't interesting. Maybe add some profit incentives for teachers?
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
What matters is how well you do in life, not in school. Without a computer or computer skills, it's hard to get high end jobs in any industry. A student can get more As without a computer, but they'd be knee deep in shit when they see it everywhere.
Kids that use calculators most of the time are less likely to be able to do simple mathematics in their heads, or even with pen and paper. Kids that use spelling checkers to verify their work are less likely to know themselves how words should properly be spelt simply because they don't learn from their mistakes.
How the hell is any of this news to anyone?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
I still think parents should be involved in helping with homework. Distrations are TV, Computers, Playstation, etc. If parents spent some time with their kids to get their homework done (not do it for them), it's quality time for kids, and their homework gets done. Then they can do their computers and video games.
"I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection." -- Sigmund Freud
Often computers are just thrown into a classroom expected to do miracles on their own....
Add to that teachers that know less about them than the students and you get a nice mess....
Computers can do wonderfull things but you have to use them right, they should only be used to add something usefull like better representations.
They should be used to teach things USING computers not just to teach 'computer'.
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
God forbid kids without computers might actually pick up a book and read it for fun.
We've got a generation of adults who, once they're out of school, have lost the ability to read anything longer than a magazine article. It's not ADD - it's simple laziness on everyone's part.
But that's okay, ply them with Ritalin while continuing to fight the "war on drugs". So what's next in our irresponsible, don't accept blame society - people suing computer/os suppliers because their computer made them "stupid"?
Computers are a tool. Too many educators have and continue to view the computer as some sort of magic bullet. Some educators seem to think if they just get a bunch of computers the kids will learn better. I imagine this conception is because kids like using computers, but this doesn't necessarily mean they're paying any more attention to absorbing information from it than they were from the teacher. There are also lots of studies where computers have been shown to increase test scores. For example, at an elementary school where I worked, we employed a reading program that used computerized testing. Reading ability and comprehension improved markedly. Computers can making teaching more effective, but they can't make it just happen, that's what teachers are for.
then Here are a bunch of other things that have been tied to lower test scores
If anything, its a problem with education not competiting enough with other distractions.
I have several close family members who teach in middle and elementary school, and they've been saying this for years. Their main complaint about computers in the classroom is that educational software seems far more concerned with making learning fun than with making effective use of a student's limited time in the classroom. Of course, computer learning programs are great for the lazy teachers - they can just dump their students in from of the computers and enjoy their coffee while the students "learn".
...computers don't belong everywhere.
Education is one of the places where computers don't really belong. A computer cannot answer questions, tell memorable stories that make information stick in your head, or deal with the oddball questions that only a living flesh-and-blood teacher can field.
Also, computers - by taking the drudgery out of your homework - leave you with less of an education. An example is Calculus. I learned calc with a pencil and a piece of paper. I had a simple calculator of the $5 kind. As a result, I have a better idea of what is going on than if I just simply plugged stuff into Student Maple. To put it another way, when I see an integral, I know about Riemann and know what I'm looking at.
Bottom line - there is no shortcut to learning. If you take one, you're not learning.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Posting AC here in case "the boss" ever reads /.
/. at work, but then again I do enough work that runs through my breaks to even it out.
I work at schools here, and the plain fact of it is that most teachers don't know to use them as a resource and don't know how to manage kids on computers in general. A few might have enough brains to point the kids at google for searching and then make them actually do research, but 80% of the time when I see a class come into the lab the students will end up playing flash games or whatnot online within a short period of time.
Quite often the teachers will just let them go ahead and play, to the point where 28 of 30 students will be gaming during class time. Sorry, but if you have three classes in a row where your kids have enough free time to play games, maybe you should be assigning more work (or making them actually *do* the bloody assignments in class).
Of course, here I am writing to
This is just like most bills that get passed to "protect our children", when its not the children that needed protecting or changes in their lives, its the PARENTS.
To say that student is better off having NO computer is not only wrong, but incredibly stupid. Without good computer skills, college and real life is going to be an incredible struggle.
No, the problem isn't the computer, its the parents who don't control the situation and their environment. Granted, if a student with a computer has broadband with not restrictions, and addictive games like WoW, then yes, its going to be very detrimental to their education, but is it the computer's fault? No. Parents need to educate themselves and know/understand how to limit computer usage.
Its sad, but most children/teenagers see computers as nothing more than a toy, or a way to get "free music and movies". Don't blame computers or children, its obviously the parents.
If you can multitask efficiently and zone out your music, your productivity will increase. It takes me longer to write a paper on the computer since I seem to get distracted quite often, but also I am not as stressful about my homework. I bet if the study did a stress test after doing homework while using the computer and without using the computer, there will be big variation.
If you have that emphasis, using computers in the classroom has a positive impact. If you just use computers for the sake of using them (or they distract students away, as in the article), they have a negative impact.
The other place where computers fall down in the classroom is that quite a bit of learning is a social activity, and some of the best teaching moments come from students teaching each other. But, if you put one student at each computer, you've just lost that opportunity. If you put multiple students at a computer, they're all focusing on the computer (and one is probably hogging the keyboard), so you lose that interaction that is so valuable.
The best use so far has been in science curricula where a simulation can replace access to expensive equipment or let students do what would otherwise be a dangerous experiment. But, for basic skills such as reading and math, computers are simply a distraction.
Another factor is that alot of kids today don't care to learn. They never will because they have it "handed to them on a plate". All we hear is "college will get you a great job! Theres more jobs then ever!". Maybe these kids are taking it to heart and just not caring to learn?
I like muppets.
Parenting. Which do you think is more likely?
A. Computers automatically have some sort of drain on student grades because children are compelled to waste time on them no matter what.
B. Parents do not bother to properly monitor the time their children spend on the computer, even when it is at the expense of the childs educational responsibilities (homework, projects, etc).
Duh. I guarentee you this same report could have been released in 1990 with the advent of home game consoles, 1960 with the advent of television, or in 1930 with the advent of radio. If you're a good parent, you make sure your child does their homework before they get any TV/game/computer time, you're child continues to get good grades and test scores, despite the presence of those "evil" computers in your house.
You don't really need research to figure this one out. Have you seen some of the articles, blogs, etc. on the net recently? It's almost as if people care more about expressing phonetical when writing more than gramatical accuracy and correct spelling. That's one of the main reasons the SAT has been changed in the States. Kids graduate from High School and can't write for shit. If you want an easy part time job, I would suggest becoming a tutor for college remedial english classes.
While I was in college, my sister was (and still is) a high school ballet teacher. She would bring home students' papers to grade over thanksgiving breaks. I would, occasionally, glance at some of the papers and be shocked at the terrible grammar and spelling. I swear it looked like an IRC chat log at times. It seems as though alot of kids don't realize that there is a difference between the way you speak to people (dialogue) and the way you write papers.
I also remember, here in the states, when our teachers would groan everytime we begged them to use calculators on math tests. They said "you'll learn more without them". They were right. Doing simple to mid level arithmetic in your head keeps your mind sharp.
On another note, look at the expression on the little girl's face who is sitting in front of the computer. Is that not classic a classic goatse reaction or what?
In college we had a web-based program called Blackboard. Where teachers could put notes, the students could converse, etc. This made a great addition to class room learning. It's too bad only a few professors actually used it. And when I asked about it, most never even heard of it.
Can we at least teach these people how to use the technology before we begin to blame it?
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Lois, this isn't my Batman glass. - Peter
So it's even worse than the 20 years it took for computers to be productive in the office. Not nearly enough R&D has gone into addressing the problem technology is supposed to solve, which is getting kids to learn academic subjects. There is no reason to think that a PC evolved to help already educated adult office workers is appropriate for students learning math in the first place.
Sure, I learned typing in high school, and there's nothing wrong with learning computer basics while computers remain so difficult to figure out. But that doesn't count as an academic subject any more than driver's ed.
Graphing calculators, on the other hand, have evolved with the input of math teachers and have been geared to the math curriculum, and designed with students in mind from the start. Just as graphing calculators would be sort of out of place in an English class, why do we think a PC should be appropriate across the board?
I can't imagine writing as much as I write nowadays without a computer and word processors and Emacs. But I can't work backward from there and say that means that I would have learned to write any better if everything was done on a computer.
Seriously though, I question studies which show no benefits from computers.
Usually they simply state that companies aren't making any more money now than they used to be, and so productivity hasn't imporved. The two aren't directly connected, however.
What happened is that everybody automated, and so everybody's costs dropped, and so everybody lowered prices to compete. Everybody makes the same money, but a tax accountant today costs the same or less in 2005 dollars as they cost back in the 70's using 1970 dollars. That is a big drop in price.
How can anybody seriously say that IT has had no benefit on productivity? Would we really be more effective if we were sending mail instead of e-mail? Or leaving 15 minute voicemails? Would the department budget really be better managed using paper and pencil rather than spreadsheet?
I can make statistics say anything I want, but only if you're stupid enough not to ask how I arrived at them...
Probably the worst thing ever adopted by the education system, IMHO, is PowerPoint.
I don't know about you, but the moment a prof puts up a 'slideshow' and just reads it for the next hour, all education benefits go down the tubes.
I am more a fan of writing information out on the board. This forces the intstructor to explain themselves while they are writing. I think writing slows them down enough on a particular subject to allow their brains to think about all the extras they wanted to get across to the students.
One of the reasons I am the 'compu-whiz' I am today is due to early exposure to computers. I broke them. I deleted things and modified things you weren't supposed to touch. I learned the hard way.
Current Windows versions don't allow for this as much as DOS did and various other OSs do. I knew how to fix a "missing Operating System" error with a sys a: c: or how to give me more memory under 640k to run the latest Sierra game. You don't need that close of a relationship with your computer anymore. People just want it to work.
"My computer is slow. Fix it." They don't care why, how to stop it from happening again, etc. They just want to be able to have it work again.
Having grown up with the prevelant user interface concepts I can get beyond most mazes of menus and get down to using the applications. Older generations have a deeper fear of computers specifically with regard to breaking them.
It's going to repeat again with the next generation for the reason I stated above. Too many people using computers without caring how they work or how to fix them (just like any other piece of tech) and not enough people with the knowhow to fix them.
It's sad.
The vast majority of children who use computers today do not actually learn anything about them. They know how to use some apps like IM clients and word proccessors, but that's about it.
Contrast that with 20-30 years ago, when I was a child. Of those that used computers at all, the vast majority of children back then learned a lot about computers themselves. Those children are now posting on Slashdot today, talking about how much they learned about computers when they were a child, and so there must be something wrong with the study.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
Worth noting that it took almost 20 years for PCs in the corporate environment to actually have a positive impact on productivity; might the same be true in education?
Man, you really can't have been paying much attention. It might not look this way, but tons of productivity enhancements have happened. Entire classes of the workforce that used to do nothing but manage paper have been eliminated. It might not be a competitive advantage (I remember there was a controversial book on that), but you definately have to keep up with the Joneses.
The reason education hasn't really worked out the same way is that one of the things computers do best is divisioning and reducing work. The average employee isn't doing things that are that much more complex than before, but the company does. If you buy a burger at McDonalds, their numbers are updated all the way up in an instant. People used to spend lots of time gathering numbers and adding them up. It's primary school algebra, but it took time.
When it comes to learning, the only real measure is how much you've improved yourself. If I get asked to write a book report, I can find one online in no time, but what have I learned? You can only go that far by being an information chameleon, able to find and present the thoughts of others as your own. When you finally get asked to do things which hasn't been done before, you're SOL.
Everything you learn in class has been done before, probably by someone smarter than you. But if we all were doing that, there'd be no progress. Only rehashes of the same time and time again. And the same lack of logic and reason also makes you a sucker for biased information, wrong information, religious indoctrination, scam artists, groupthink, racism, overall a push-over for anyone with an agenda.
The world doesn't need people to be human text-to-speech translators. We've got computers to do that.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Get over it. The computer is not going to take a lazy kid and turn them into a genius. Only really attentive parents who actually spend time with their kids and teach them the correct way to use a computer deserve to have the kids with some chance of being a little smarter. The folks who want a "compuparent" or "videositter" deserve what they get.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Absolutely wrong.
Computers are certainly a valuable tool for instruction.
What they are not is a complete replacement.
There are certain kinds for learning for which a computer is very well optimized, and I'm not just talking about entertainment. A well written, computerized flash program could probably teach you vocab far quicker than a human instructor. The computer can keep track of your accuracy and even response time for each item, figuring out your weak points and concentrating on those. And it can do this equally well whether you have 5 classmates or 500. No teacher can match this feat.
The problem is that we are in the backlash of the education dotcom bubble. Just as with the business dotcom bubble, we're now looking at the ideas seriously and sorting out what works from what doesn't. It will take time as the correct tools and methods are identified. As with e-commerce, things will improve. Teachers won't be replaced, but their lives will be easier, and their students smarter.
Computer generally offer win-win, it's just a bumpy road.
...this is about USING computers for CRAP.
For every example you can give me of a kid who can't stay on task and get their standard work done because they are distracted by something other than real work, I can show you an example of students doing much better at some measure of success.
Put a bunch of kids within reach of a playground, freely able to access it, and a pile of work and guess what...?
This is why we organize what students do, in school (by teachers) and hopefully out of school (by parents).
Of course if we don't, unintended results take over, as they clearly have.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Now, obviously you need computers to teach stuff like programming, but other than that I believe they are a HUGE waste of money.
Cash-strapped schools blow hundred of thousands of dollars on computers, then have to hire multiple people to maintain them for hundreds of thousand more, then have to train the teachers probably also for hundreds of thousands more, all for what? So the time spent in creative writing class can be half writing and half finding a PC not infected with Michelangelo? And if the average school is anything like my HS was, you know ever single box has a DVD+/-RW, tape drive and optical ethernet that never get used but was sold to them by a now very happy salesman.
And meanwhile the $35,000 salary for the music teacher is cut, and the art teacher, and there is no money for a can of paint or block of clay or roll of film. My school went from a Flag of Excelence school to a school with no arts/humanities and you had to pay to play sports. But we had COMPUTERS! LOTS OF EM! Burning eletricity 24/7.
It is unbelievable how much my old school district spent on computers that were literally ONLY used to replace a pencil and paper in writing class, and maybe to teach a typing class. That and for games after hours, or during class. Programming was taught on a VAX system. Ok, I'm old. Maybe times have changed since then but I'd put money on it that it hasn't.
IHMO those contributing to this debate need to "put your children where your mouth is"
Consider what you will/have done with your own kids.
I remember being asked 20 years ago, by a thirty-something colleque (with 2 kids), as a young wet-behind-the-ears techie as to whether he should lash out on an IBM-PC with MS-Basic to 'teach my kids the new world' or some such tripe.
I remember distinctly what I told him:- by the time they grow up Basic will be nowhere. Unless you specifically want them to be programmers or IT professionals, forget it. Teach them to touch-type, and move on.
20 years on (I'm still in touch with him) both of his kids are fine young professionals with great careers and neither of them can even touch type.
Computers have had not the slightest relevence to their succcess (law and accounting respectively)
So even my advice was wrong. Touch typing is not important in the modern world.
To my main point.
My own kids have access to Mac, Windows and Linux machines. But I don't encourage their use.
They also have access to video, a playstation, but throughout their lives *very* restricted access to TV (this is accidental, and a very long story which I won't go into, but it involves moving to different countries every 2 years or so - try putting your kids into a different school every year, then try shifting countries every 2 years)
Result?
My daughter (after several years of low grades with all the parent/teacher pain that involves) now reads 3 (!) years beyond her level and 2 years
beyond her level in maths. My son (a few years younger) has gone through the same path. Several years of frantic worry on his parents part that he isn't measuring up, followed by consolidation, and then suddenly "he's at the top of his class", followed by "he's one year ahead". He's smarter than his older sister, so I fully expect to hear "he's two years ahead" very soon.
Now let me tell you how both of my kids interact with computers.
They don't.
They spend less that 1 hour a month on their (multitude of networked) PC's and Macs.
Sure, they're reviled at school because the systems they have at home aren't the lastest Bill Gates issue, but they basically don't give a s**t
And now they're outperforming their peers.
I am an IT professsional of over 20 years experience. I have made sure they have every IT resource possible available to them, but only as they needed it, and only if they asked for it.
They ask for some things, games they've seen and want to play. They get it. But after a few hours they don't care.
But not once have I forced something on them. Or required them to learn something. The fact is, most of this stuff doesn't matter.
I put my own children on the block and kept them away from the complete techno nonsense spouted by the industry (particularly Apple) over the last two decades.
I focussed them instead on *reading* and *thinking* - pure and simple.
And it's paying off.
To all of these muppets selling tech solutions to parents I have only one thing to say:
Will you put your own children through this? Or will you send them Ivy League?
Do I need to hear an answer? Or is silence all I need to know?
You are missing the point of calculus. We learn how to USE calculus to solve problems, not the calculus itself, unless you want to be a mathmetician.
"Worth noting that it took almost 20 years for PCs in the corporate environment to actually have a positive impact on productivity; might the same be true in education?"
The "productivity" gains in business are due to increased facility with less competence. This type of efficiency is a benefit for business, but I dare say it is not for education in general.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I notice that a lot of the discussion going on here is about whether or not computers help students learn. That's not really the point of the debate. Even the referenced article says (in passing) that having computers at home is a distraction. That puts it in exactly the same league as TV, radio or friends--it's just a matter of play time versus homework time.
It's obvious that computers can be used to help students learn if used properly. That's also true of TV and pencils. Even the harshest critics of computers in education concede that one.
The real questions is whether the advantages of putting computers in schools justify their cost. A previous study (funded by a bunch of hardware and software companies--no bias there) said that yes, it was. The study TFA talks about counters that by saying, basically, that the study fails to take into account the fact that schools with computers can usually also afford more books, teachers and special programs and it's those things that are making the students better.
This whole computerization push is really good for politicians because it makes them look like they're doing something and it's really good for the hardware and software vendors because they can pocket a big chunk of the education budget. What it's bad for is the education system, because it diverts money that could be spent on useful things, and that's bad for all of us.
So in conclusion: computers are good for education but only if they're free.
The topic of depth of information and the internet has been thought of before. When you interact with people, you get more than just information; you also get facial expressions, nuances, tone of voice, and actually quite a bit more information on the particular topic you're interested in. Additionally, learning when interacting with people imposes structure on the presentation of knowledge. When dealing with the web, it's random, poorly structured, and completely lacks any of the human element.
The internet is a useful source of information, but those who use it as their exclusive resource don't get a rich experience that's good for learning efficiently or being creative.
(I know about this stuff, because my wife just did a paper on it.)
I've never found grades any great indicator of how good someone is at their job. Why all this push for straight A students? The smartest people I ever met in University and work life did well (B's and such) but were never the elite, especially in fields they weren't interested in (English was usually C's).
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
Every time I hear a baby boomer talk about the problems of failing students, they always ask questions like "Did they start associating with the wrong crowd?" or "Did the teachers not help them out enough?" Its like the idea that students create their own problems is completely alien. When you look at the actions that have been undertaken as a consequence, the end result is a school system where everybody passes no matter what, people coast through 12 years of school like it was nothing. The real injustice is that the same people get their high school diplomas, spend a year or two flipping burgers and finally it dawns on them that they fucked up. Too late, no good college will accept them.
Here is what I believe needs to be done:
- Lower the dropout age to fourteen, so that if you want to screw around, you can leave. Its better that they realize how much menial labor sucks at the age of fifteen, when they can still redeem their lives, then at nineteen when they are stuck.
- Lower the minimum work age to fourteen, so that the above mentioned people when leave, can try their hands at flipping burgers and see what that lifestyle is like.
- Raise the passing grade to a 75%, to start filtering out all of these people that coast by getting D's in everything.
- Remove conditions on funding based on attendance. The problem with funding based on attendance is because it encourages administrators to keep kids in class, but doesn't encourage them to learn. IMHO it is better for a student to be playing hookey at a video arcade than it is to be in class, misbehaving and ruining things for the other students.
- Remove conditions on funding based on performance. These restrictions unfairly punish city schools; it isn't the schools fault that all of the constituents come from the inner city, and thus have uncaring parents that do not push their students the way a parent in say, Fairfax Virginia might. The people that are really cheated under such systems like 'No Child Left Behind' are inner city kids that do want to learn, and have the misfortune of being around people that do not.
- Removing administration's focus on keeping kids in classes, and make sure that disruptive students are escorted their way out. This way, classes will be occupied by people that want to learn, or are at least not disruptive. City schools should be refuges from inner city life, not a focus for it.
- Change high schools from being 'yearly based' to being 'semester based', like a college. If someone flunks out, flips burgers for a month or two and realizes that they want to go back, they should not have to wait until the following September to come back.
Enough said. Whenever I say this sort of thing to people, I always hear "But those kids who would be kicked out under such system are the ones that need it the most." Fair enough, but invariably the people that say things like that are not the ones who have experienced that sort of people first hand.The same thing goes on with textbooks. You don't need the 200th edition of the traditional subjects whose material hasn't changed at this level for 500 years. They load each textbook with distracting diversity crap about how some idiot halfway across the country uses math to distribute produce from their growing coop. Especially in the case of math texts. I use old school texts by the masters such as Gelfand, Spivak, Courant, etc. that are 30-100 years old and teach circles around today's math ed texts.
The whole thing is a plundering of resources that began at the administrative level. (Who deserves a several hundred thousand dollar salary for being a school district superintendant?)
Granted, there are problems with teachers and parents as well. Each of these groups of people need to get the kids to concentrate on learning and minimizing distractions. In addition, there needs to be increased discipline to get rid of people that don't want to be there and serve to be a distraction.
Anyone who isn't confused really doesn't understand the situation.
The more we substitute machines in for what we used top practice and do on our own, the duller our sense will become.
In certain circumstances, computers can help, but overall, its not training the mind to do anything, just taking the workload off the mind so it atrophies.
When I was young (early 80s), I was poor enough that my single working mom couldn't afford to buy me a computer or video game console (Atari and Coleco were what the trendy kids had). I still had an interest and went to the libraries to read books on BASIC programming. My favorite book was some insider's guide to the Commodore 64 where they taught you Peeks and Pokes and interrupts. I could figure out all the things I could do with that computer other than just stick a cartridge in it to play a game. I had other friends with C64s, and used their computers at their house to try things, from moving graphics to playing with the sound chips. Their amazement was my geek pride. I once borrowed a Timex Sinclair from someone and entered some games from a library book. When I got to high school, they had original IBM PCs in a lab, and the back room had the "IBM Technical Reference Manual". Talk about open source! I could read the assembly code and comments for the IBM BIOS! I learned assembly without having an assembler to play with. After a summer working at a gift shop for $3.50 an hour, I earned $1500 and could buy my very own IBM PC. I upgraded the RAM to 640K for an additional $250, and bought Borland Turbo Pascal/C. I was elite! I could write anything! I made a simple CAD program for a high school project.
Fast forward to college - they taught us an imaginary turing-complete Pascal-like language that no one practically used and made us do proofs and other tasks, mostly without the help of a computer. It wasn't fun, but it taught us to check our code. We'd read Knuth books, where most of the exercises were pseudo-code. We didn't just get on PCs and start coding.
Not having a computer in front of me made me THINK more about what I was going to do and how I was going to do it. As I later started programming tasks, I found that aside from typos caught by the compiler, my code normally worked the first time.
Moral: You don't need a computer to learn to be a coder.
PS: For those older than me... yes, I've heard the horror stories about having to rerun punch card decks. I don't envy having to punch all of my cards before I had a chance to run my code.
I worked at a high school in Kansas for 2 years for a school with a ton of cash to spend, but very little guidance on what to do with it. The school put a PC in every teacher's room as well as several computer labs, but didn't train the teachers at all on how to use them. I remember having teachers call me for help on the simplests tasks like copying files to a disk drive.
They also didn't have anywhere near enough tech support to deal with them all. Many of the computers were down and no one seemed to be formally assigned to desktop administration. I was a lab monitor, but I helped out where I could.
My point is, if computers aren't helping in the class room, it's probably because the school system doesn't have a plan for effectively using them. It's a big PR sell for the super intendent to say that he's got X computers per pupil in his district, to hell with what they're doing with them.
Just before I left, I'd heard that they had budgeted to buy every high school student a laptop, but still didn't have an adequate technology plan .
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Don't confuse them. Don't even mention difference between sample and population it will only confuse. Dont mention difference between N or N-1 more confusion.
What have the kids learnt. That standard deviation gives a measure of spread of data. High sd big spread, low sd small spread.
It does not sould like much, but it will equip them some vague idea of the terms should them come across it in the future.
There are four sorts of people in the world: fools, lunatics, idiots and morons. - Umberto Eco, Foucaut's pendulum.
No message sent until the spelling is correct.
That might just work to keep the half-witted perverts out of the kids' channels by making message reception subject to correct spelling.
Who's going to get that out first? Slashdot? :-)
who's going to do better - a kid using a calculator
to give him the answer, or the kid doing sums with
a pencil and paper? the point being, you don't need
a computer to invent a computer. the more you do things
manually, the more you are forced to develop your thinking.
once you've learned it the hard way, then the benefits
of automation become all the more apparent than the
person that has never had to do the work under the hood.
the same thing applies to programming - someone
who knows how to compile their own kernal
will have better insight into knowing things
are behaving the way they are.
there are many skills in the world,
one of them is computer fluency,
and because of the saturation in our environment
of them, you can almost pick them up along the way
for many things without ever having to explicitly
take a 'computer' course in school, just like you
can become taxi driver without ever having to
become a mechinic.
you want to live in the world before modelling it.
before i see formal database entries for different kinds
of fish and plants, i would think its better to experience
these things first hand (if possible - are there frogs
and milkweeds out in the creek beside the school -
why should i use a CD-ROM about them first? --first
i see the frogs, then i become curious, and i may even later
do a web search about these things to find out their history
and what other people have said. but simulation
never replaces first-hand real-world experience.
it amazes me last time i went to the museum
that they had an actual dinosaur skeleton RIGHT THERE --
first hand data from which everything is derived. and there
was nobody actually LOOKING at it - they were all too busy
watching a screen with a computer model of the artifact
in question --i.e. information ABOUT the artifact,
instead of studiously contemplating the actual thing itself.
this seems very typical of learning these days.
kids should run around, climb trees and play in the mud.
its all very good for them. then later on when they're
tired in the evening, settle donw and play a videogame,
and when they're curious enough, then maybe they'll
decide to go further, and try and learn how to programme
one themselves. but running and playing is more
important for kids then pointing and clicking.
they're already going to have loads of computers
in their life, but they're never going to have
time to play and run and climb trees again
like they do when they're young - let them.
the secret to staying young
in to never stop climbing trees.
regards,
j.