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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?
Parents need to be comfortable with computers to be able to understand HOW to get kids to get full use out of a computer. Thus I would expect the current generation of kids to be one of the first to be able to improve their education through the PC.
Though of course, parents will also be using it as a surrogate TV.
are the problem. most of the time the kids know more about the computer than the teachers do. and the teachers don't have any idea how to use the computer to teach. perhaps now that so many programmers are out of work some of them will end up teaching and will make some decent educational software. (not holding my breath)
Computers are the biggest time-suck ever created. At least with the TV on you can do homework at the same time.
And let's not forget that when students do their homework on their computer, they're only copying and pasting stuff they found on the net. How is that learning?
Computers are tools. They CAN be used for improving learning. But they rarely are.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
First you have to convince me that PCs have improved the productivity of the American business/office. The evidence on that one is at best inconclusive. (in your analysis don't forget to factor in the hordes of PC support techs who did not exist as late as 1992 in most businesses).
sPh
Having been to a highschool that just got "computers in the classroom" kick while I was there, I've seen what it did to the teaching style.
The whole thing quickly turned into a babysitting device. "Do the math exercises the computer tells you to do while I grade your homework. When you're done, just sit quietly and keep yourself amused." Needless to say the plan lasted about a year before remarkably level-headed people sorted things out and things went back to normal (more-or-less).
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
The only reason I'm good at math is because I used software tutors. They are more patient than people, you can use them at any time, and if you get bored or tired, you just turn the computer off.
Although I didn't need it I imagine a reading course would be just as effective.
Taking computers away would increase teacher workload, and people (like me) who have chronicly bad handwriting would just get hit with rulers like in the days of old.
Agreeing with parent, students are going to find a way to dick around in class, especially if the class is boring. As such, I still have an extensive collection of TI-83 plus calculator games. Unfortunately, teachers are sometimes a despised entity in the community. I know lots of people who think teachers are OVERPAID. Their arguments are of course ridiculous and I think anyone who believes this should have to stand in front of 50 teenagers and try to make them learn ANYTHING, let alone try to teach them something inherently boring like stats, econ, calculus, etc...
...whether the prevailing attitude was computers as tools or computers as toys in the environment where they were used...
Makes a huge difference.
As as a teacher - I never used them as the instructor - that was ME!
They are an instruction tool - one among many. Very important distinction to be made there.
And great for use in completing some ASSIGNMENTS but not all.
Oh...and beleive me...whether or not one knows how to use one make a big difference in getting a job...
I find myself suspicious of the article...either they are quoting a poorly designed or biased study - or using a good study but spinning it.
=8-)
I guess they compared students using almost exclusively computers to students using books when both have the same budget or something like that. In that situation computers are bad. There are much less learning programs out there than books and you can't get good grammar by reading online-english. You won't get good results in math tests if students let their computer do the work for them. Computers are not meant as replacement for traditional forms of learning. They should be added as another alternative way to learn things where traditional learning has weak spots.
I use a computer a lot but I also read a lot and I am perfectly capable of calculating without an electronic (or mechanical) calculator when it comes to basic arithmetic calculations (add, subtract, multiply, divide,...). Sadly that isn't true for everyone using computers today and I blame parents and the education system for that. We even have students at our Computer Science course at the University unable to calculate simply things like 2 to the power of 3. I don't think this is the result of computer use but the result of a lack of other forms of learning in addition to computer use.
Linux is not Windows
This was no surprise to me. Back in the late 90's when I was in school there was that transition to the 'computer' in HS. The teachers really didn't know how to use them effectively and the students usually knew more then the students. So, what would happen was that the people that knew what was going on would just end up playing muds online in the upper row. Those days were so much fun.
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.
Now when I'm confronted with complicated Word document formatting, gigantic Excel spreadsheet roll ups, or problems with a Make file or a compiler flag I do things that people many years my senior don't: I hack around until I figure out what I'm doing. (I also make back ups, too!)
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.
As such, there is a tangible benefit to regular computer use.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
"Computers can making teaching more effective, but they can't make it just happen, that's what teachers are for."
Exactly! Wish I could mod you up. Sounds more like an issue of what those kids are actually doing with the computers and for how long.
Sure, if they're planted in front of them like an interactive TV to "keep Bobby busy", you're likely to end up with a script-kiddie Spud who doesn't realize "HotBlonD69" is a 50-year old dude with a beer gut.
But pick the right programs appropriate for the circumstances and incorporate them properly into a comprehensive curriculum, suddenly you have a very useful learning tool. And of course parents, you still have to read to/with them yourself, etc.
This summer my oldest is going to start his first programming language plus work with a game editor (group project around here). Another is going to pursue a foreign language, and the computer is going to help (along with dinner table conversation in the target tongue).
Tools are what they are. You can build total crap with the best hammer. People who think computers are some magic bullet are sadly misinformed, with tragic consequences.
So they're bad a wrote memorization? Can we test them on understanding HOW to find things and HOW to categorize them? (Things that, presumably, they'd learn in a computer based environment.)
Students were once taught how to use a slide rule too, we don't seem to be lamenting the loss of that skill now.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
I must disagree. My computer was seized for 2 days for running a DC++ server on the campus network, and I did more homework for those 2 days than any other week in recent memory. I could have watched cable TV to make up for it, but the bulk of my wasted time was in surfing websites and playing video games. Watching TV while doing homework is mostly productive, but using a computer while doing homework (at least for Mechanical Engineering students) is extremely unproductive.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Even better - I have a 3-yr-old, and we already keep his computer time down. (It's scary how good he is a Need for Speed.) With another one on they way, I've started look ing for ideas on how to handle multiple kids on the computer, especially when they get older.
The best solution was my sister's (she has four kids): No one, including parents, get to use the computer, or watch the TV until everyone's homework is done. It's amazing to see her 14-yr-old helping her 12-yr-old with her math because the older one wants to get in some gaming.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
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.
I really have to disagree. Computers can bring a new dimension to teaching. As an example, while teaching about volcanoes a short clip of a volcano erupting could be a great addition. Sure you could always do this before with an old-style projector and ectera, but accessing the clip from a CD-ROM encyclopedia or a central server with teaching materials can be a lot easier. Students then really get to see what you're talking about, very important for visual learners. Computers are best used as an enhancement ot teaching, not a replacement for.
There are plenty of shortcuts within learning. For example, after purchasing a digital camera I am able to experiment with color and composition without ever setting foot in a darkroom. This increases my trial-and-error rate tenfold. Add some quality reading material and perhaps a mentor, and I'm three steps ahead of someone doing it the old fashioned way. But there is often a cost; I can't develop my way out of a paper bag.
The problem with introducing computers into the classroom is that they do too many things, and we have a hard time limiting their scope. Instead of learning about math, students are learning about the device sitting in front of them and all that it can do. (Even when it's turned off, it has pretty keys to peck on.)
This was all good an such, however there have been two things that have universally suffered: penmenship and spelling. I started typing reports and such at an early age and used it on everything but one report in the fifth grade which was mandated had to be hand written. Now my handwriting's been crap since day one, but I used to be able to spell worth a crap. Now I spell better in my second language (german) than I do in english primarily because I've been using spell check since MS Works 1.0 and anymore so long as I get close, office will automatically change the word.
I am sure that looking up information online has come in handy, but I can remember a couple years ago professors not allowing more than 1 internet resource per paper. And it was a good thing. Some went a step further and would allow no more than 2 electronic resources, which I found annoying because I often used Lexis-Nexis and EBSCOhost to find articles and frankly is there a difference if the New York Times article I found was on paper or electronic format if it says the same thing? Most of the students would grumble about having to actually go to the library and look up magazine articles or perodicals.
Frankly I think computers, and the Internet, has only fed the "I want it now" culture. If people now can't find the answer within the first page of Google, many are too lazy to dig deeper.
When it comes to computers in the classrooms, maybe we should hold off. Instead of having a shiny toy on every desk, anyone think we might should ensure that kids can actually read a book, spell, and do math without needing a machine to do it for them?
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
from my parent (previous) post: There is an amazing book on this topic -- it's a fairly dense (ironic) read, but hits on lots of these points, and offers research, and real life descriptions where computers were and were not effective. As one might guess after some thought, the positive "effect" of computers in the classroom has/had little to do with the fact that there were computers, and much more to do with well-rounded and caring staff dedicated to the education goals. I don't have the link or book name readily available, but if there are enough responses, or interest, I will reply to my post with the link....
As promised... here is the book and link: The Flickering Mind: The False Promise of Technology in the Classroom and How Learning Can Be Saved
Comment removed based on user account deletion
But the authorities are under pressure to as much computer equipment into as many schools and classrooms as possible, so most of the money is spent on procurement rather than deployment.
So the schools get no say in whether they want the money spent on computers or not: it is top-sliced from their budgets before it ever gets into the schools. Instead they get asked if they want the computers or
And the deployment is always half baked. A bunch of kit is delivered to the schools, and they get insufficient technician time to properly set it up, little or no training ("we must spend the money on getting the kit into as many schools a possible").
So you end up with a geek spending his weekend in his primary school teacher wife's classroom trying to set up an interactive whiteboard which isn't properly mounted with a projector on a wobbly stand (no budget for a ceiling mounting for the projector) with the teacher's planning and assignment laptop which has to be plugged in and removed several times a week, trying to work out how the smartboard software works, then show the teacher/wife, then work out what the class could usefully do with this stuff when the inspector comes round.
The correct way to do it:
Ask the schools if they want to surrender part of their budget for the computers. And if they don't, let them spend the money on books or extra staff.
Make sure the classroom ceiling doesn't leak before putting in more electrical equipment
Don't expect children in an overcrowded classroom never to knock a projector on a trolley in the middle of the room
Train the teachers. Properly. Not just half a day in another school watching another teacher, unable to ask questions.
The last scintilla of doubt just rode out of town
Not only that but now teachers are judged based on standardized test scores so they teach the kids to do well on the tests instead of actually understanding the material or going outside of the boundaries of the test material.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
I'm not going to say it's all the teacher's fault but I remember my teachers all being hired based on school board nepotism. Very few of them I actually enjoyed (I even remember some of the material they taught), some were emotionally unfit for the job or simply drones collecting their paycheck and not much more mature than the kids they were supposed to be teaching. Most of them though (especially science teachers) just took their teaching "kits" out at the start of the year and had us robotically follow the workbooks to the end with no attempt to make the material interesting or sophisticated.
If any of your kid's teachers are limiting their teaching of gravity to having their students time balls rolling down ramps then get them the hell out of that school.
I work in the IT dept of a medium sized school district(roughly 6000 students). The one thing that I have discovered is that the teachers have a hard time keeping up with technology. I can understand their point of view thats basically, hold me hand and give me the quick answer on how to do it, I don't have time to actually learn the program and figure it out for myself. For computers to be used effectively in the classroom teachers need to be able to show the kids how to use it. If they don't know the answers to questions the kids are having how can they teach? Don't get me wrong there are some teachers that are pretty savvy users and are good at showing kids how to use the programs the way they were designed to, but then there are teachers that refuse to even try and learn something new, which IMHO is not good teaching.
Insert funny smart-ass comment here.
I have no less than 10 teachers within my close family (2 brothers, mom, grandfather, 4 aunts, mom-in-law, sister-in-law), all at differnt stages of their respective careers.
The common thing I see as a problem, is not the teachers or technology. All of my reletives v iew the tech as another tool. In fact, my grandfather was responsible for setting up the first computer labs in schools in Oakland County, MI in the 1970s (remember we're the lucky ones with county wide muni-wifi coming soon!).
Anyway, the problem they all cite is lack of support, software and overall expertise on the equipment. They always seem to be getting new stuff, but almost never are they properly trained. Even when they are trained it is on simple operation procedure, NOT how to make the technology an effective teacher tool.
Too often teachers simply send the kids to the lab and say go at it. Providing little instruction. the kids mindlessly point and click and have a great time, but because the concepts for a partiucular game are not reinforced it is simply an hand eye exercise.
I witness this first hand myself after taking my 5 and 3 year old to the public library. Both wanted to play the computer because it had fun games, neither actually did any thing educational. Basically clicked around and whated outdated shockwave animations.
Heck they both get more education playing my 5 year old dreamcast, because he had to learn to read the menus, and count objects and whatnot in the games.
Another big problem is the school board will push through bonds that can be used to purchase capital equipment, but NOT software. It has happened on more than one occassion that the idiots bought a bunch of new PCs but didn't have the funds to buy any software.
One time the state gavce $1500 to teachers to by a personal computer for home, but they did not give them $$ to buy the software they use at school. Since it was a "personal" machine they could not install software using any school liscenses.
My aunt and mother in-law both had nice ibooks laying around in a closet, until I rescued it and put linux on it and used it for a while. (I had to give it back when they retired, I never did hear how the new teahcer liked YellowDog).
So administration makes dumb decisions and there is never enough $$ ot support the equipment and train properly. It is sad, my local district has been spending bucku bucks lately on buildings, pools, athletic fields, theatre etc.
But in the same shortsighted way they spend all the money on tangible things, but cannot afford to properly staff the stuff. It costs $8 buck for a choir concert, that money used to be fund raiser for a trip, now almost all of it goes toward paying for the use of the theatre.
I am sure the admin people mean well, but it sure as hell seems silly that all the upper level jobs in our district are filled with $80K -$150k + jobs that have a doctorate in education requirement to "manage the pools and fitness centers" or be a athelic director. It really is ridiculous. Oh well I am ranting and getting away for the point.
The administration at all levels needs to GET A CLUE.
I disagree. I'm an old geek who had to use a typewriter for papers in college. Since you could not correct or change a thought in mid-page, like you can on a computer, writing consisted of multiple hand-written drafts. This was very time consuming and resulted in optimizing for the mechanics of producing an "acceptable" paper rather than polishing the content and thought process.
Add idiot professors who would not accept papers with corrections and the process of creating a paper in the good old days was often conterproductive, assuming you were trying to promote creativity and insight rather than mechanical skills.
It got to the point that I actively avoided classes requiring papers which worked OK with my computer/business degree but left a hole where my liberal arts education should have been. My failing but I feel it would have been different if I had the technology to ease the process.
Of course, I only had the pub, girls, etc. to distract me and avoided the hours of computer games that the same technology would have brought me.
Also, as the father of a college student, I think it's a copout to blame the technology for students failing to read, write and connect. Most kids have *always* avoiding studying but get them connected with a good teacher and relevant, interesting (to them) content and watch them go. Bad teachers, uninteresting content and even the good ones drift off. And there are always lots of students who don't care and never will. The best teachers seem to both dispair over these and accept that they're just going to be that way.
If investigated fully you will find that many parents don't have a respect for education, or atleast the education system. Many parents view the failure of their child to learn as a failure of the schools. These parents forget that they are ultimately responsible for their child's eduacation. Schools and teachers are only there to assist. This causes cynicism amounts teachers who are tired of having students dumped on them and being blamed for the child's poor learning. The children themselves quickly figure out that their parents only pay lip service to education. Why should a child be expected to respect their teachers, when the child's parent dosen't?
There are many faults with the school system. Parents have to realise that they are one of the problems.
Computers taught me math, which allowed me to succeed in College to learn about computers!
But I agree almost entirely with the article, because it didn't happen the way you would think it did.
What happened was that I was a terrible student in Math. But one day the teacher said: whoever writes a program that would allow you to factor a polynomial to its roots using synthetic division (the technique we were learning) gets an A.
So I toiled in Applesoft BASIC for a couple of weeks, writing and re-writing overly complex algorithms to try to get it done. But alas I failed. However, in the process I thought I needed to learn about logarithms (and did so).
The next topic in math class was: logarithms.. and I surprised everybody by knowing what they were. For the first time I knew something in math class.. then there was a Math contest.. I did well.. and the rest is history. I've been good at math ever since.
Computers taught me about self-study. That self study helped me learn math. Odd, but it worked.
However, I did all my math with old fashioned pen and paper. And I'm still pissed off at my Calculus III teacher in College for his over-emphasis on computers instead of teaching us the hard math we needed to learn! (In that case the computer impaired my math learning)
Actually, I think teachers stopped teaching anything interesting when NCLB was enacted. I've seen it with my kids' teachers. If it's not on the test, they won't waste their time with it.
My son's teacher spent a lot of time on interesting and creative pojects in science and culture. Two years later when my daughter was in her class all of that was gone. Virginia's Standards of Learning (SoL) regeme was in effect. All teaching was replaced by test preparations.
This is in the best school distrect in the state! There was never any doubt that the school would be accredited.
When we're looking at resumes of prospective employees, we'll take a B student that worked his way through college over a straight A student that lived a sheltered life. Grades don't tell how great an employee is... we want to know their pain threshold. :)
I love computers, went back to school to get a Masters of Software Engineering, program computers for a living, program them in my spare time for my hobbies. However, in this case they are not a useful tool.
My Mom is a 2nd Grade Teacher and regardless of what is suppose to be happening, this is what is actually happening. The State is spending large amounts of money on these crap software programs (and I am not sure stellar programs would be better) and more or less, they are being used to baby sit the kids.
No wonder scores would be lower where there is heavy computer usage. I have severe learning disabilities and I would not have done well at all without the one on one interaction with high quality Teachers and Tutors.
In my opinion, all the money that is spent on these software packages and books should be paid to get the best Teachers and not the education book corps.
It all depends on the school board, administrators, and teachers. For example, they are great in libraries. But in the normal classroom environment, they are often jsut a distraction. Take my high school experience for example (1993-1997):
My school had the highest student-computer ratio in our state, and made a big deal of that. They spent a ton of money puting together computer labs. But aside from typing reports, no one ever used them. So then they started MAKING teachers use them. For example, all foreign language classes were required to spend one day per week in the lab. What did we do? We played Tres en Raya. A damn Spanish grammar game. I learned nothing, NOTHING from that. But I managed to waste away 20% of my learning time. Other classes had similar rules. Computers are great tools when needed, but most of the time in schools, they're not needed. The problem comes when those who signed the purchase orders for the computers try to cram them down the faculty's throat in an attempt to justify their purchase. There simply aren't a lot of places that they come in handy in schools. A few of the places that they do are:
1. Typing papers (for any class)
2. Internet research (school-related, not porn)
3. Advanced math classes (trig, calc, etc where you do a lot of complex graphing)
4. Computer classes (obviously)
5. Some science classes (interactive disection, etc)
So, if properly used, and if only used when needed, computers can be beneficial. But when used improperly, they can definitely harm and education. I won't even get into the whole "let the students run the network" issue.
If you mod me down, I shall become less powerful than you could possibly imagine.
... and it finally looks like my anecdotal knowledge has been confirmed. After teaching programming for 5 years to college freshmen, I have always believed that good programmers could solve the problem on paper first. Students should work through the problem first. Then the student should realize that a program would have a much easier time of this repetitive solution. I always taught that you never write a program for something that you plan on only doing once. I also agree with other posters that the computer lessens the abilities of the writer. To this day, I still have difficulty proofreading the computer screen. I do much better when I can print out and read a document. Computers are a tool.
*Ding* we have a winner. You are right on. At least for primary (1-6) schools. When my daughter started her education in preschool, she went to a private school. She stayed there for 2 years until first grade. We left b/c the school was spending money on computers like a drunken sailor and then expected the PTA to pick up the slack for books and other "luxury" items. What a crock.
In the public schools, we've been pretty happy with the level of access to computers - there's two in every classroom and a bunch in the library. The "kid-accesible" one in the classroom is used for interactive stuff. The other one is for the teacher and it has been an incredible bonus. My kid has a tough time with a math exercise? I get an email. We work on it and she does better.
I cringe when I see educators on tv bemoaning their lack of access to computers in the classroom and using it as an excuse for the students poor performance. They should use the money they spend on computers and get better teachers. Then they should fire the useless fuckers they currently have.
Early access to a computer simply isn't requisite in order to gain proficiency with the thing. It isn't like reading to a toddler or reading with a 6 year old. I didn't use a computer until I was 15 and even then it was to play games on. I now make a living at it.
They are. People really need to realize that comparing Japans standardized test scores to ours is like comparing apples and oranges. In America a lot of people who would have already dropped out in Japan are still in school, horsing around and ruining it for the kids who want to learn. It's a pretty big dilemma: do we let anyone who doesn't like school drop out and in turn have a society full of idiots (oh wait, nm) -OR- do we force the guys who don't care about school to stay in and in turn lower the quality of education that every who does care gets.
Kris Ennay - http://www.nigmanet.net/