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Digital Enhancements or Expensive Distractions?
markmcb writes "Berkeley and USC have teamed up to launch a $3.3 million study over 3 years that hopes to shed some light on how today's kids are interacting with technology and the effects that it is having on education. The study aims to determine if digital devices such as computers and cell phones are shaping the way that teenagers obtain and process information. But given the price tag and the goals of the project, how much can this project actually help education? Has anyone out there in the high school level education field seen digital systems improve the classroom to the point that students actually learn more, or do they just tend to be fascinating distractions that detract from the classroom?"
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--Mike Boos
A 10-key calculator? Is it binary, does it read your mind, or does it just not do any operations on the numbers you input?
I'm currently in my second year at university in England. Before this I attended senior school and a sixth form college.
As I was completing my last year at college I saw the introduction of equipment like digital projectors in classrooms, more computers and those crazy digital whiteboards.
I've never used a digital whiteboard myself but I understand that you can save "lessons" -- this is a truly brilliant feature but I doubt very much that my school/college would make these lessons available online. If this was done I can think of no better revision tool, especially if combined with an audio stream, which is in no way hard to do.
Digital projectors linked up to computers are also good for demonstrating things in certain types of lessons. ICT (I hate that acronym) seems to be the best application -- explaining things like macros in Word/Excel are best learned through demonstration and practice. However, I seriously have to question just how useful a PC and projector would be in, say, an English or Math class.
People might argue that some tailored math software is beneficial but I know very well that as a student a projector with some crazy software will be little more than a relaxing break, as opposed to learning the important things.
My college had a number of computer clusters. One of these was a general-purpose humanities cluster that teachers could book for their lesson. The idea being that they could let the kids search for details specific to their courses or currect projects. In theory this is a good idea but in practice we looked forward to these lessons because it meant we could kick about and do what we might do on the Internet at home (well... some of the things we might do).
We had another lab in the languages centre that were set up with headsets and microphones. Using these machines students could practice their [language] listening by playing pre-recorded scenes. Previously we had a lab where the teacher sat at the front and repeated certain sections when asked. That's not much good if you're a little slower than everybody else or have a specific problem with a given sentence. Using the lab these problems are overcome.
I think if I were to give advice to the teachers/those in charge it would be to lock the machines down. As much as I hate to say that I think it really is the only way to get people to work. Sure, trust is a nice thing but when you're dealing with kids between the ages of 12 and 18 it only takes one person to goof around before everybody joins in.
Well, those are my thoughts. Thinking about the article/question I don't know if it really all that relevant. I've not said yes or no but said yes, in moderation, which I think was fairly obvious from the outset.
It could be based on the cellphone keypad. It's amazing how fast people can type on those things
Does it matter? Having done my time, I walked away with the impression that after basic math and reading skills, a public education was largely about indoctrinating the masses to sit quietly in straight rows and do what they are told. All my TPS reports do come with the new cover sheet, but I'm still waiting for a client or boss to ask me about the significance of the Council of Trent.
Oh, it was indeed worse than that.
Not until college did I understand the quadratic equation. We were taught it very briefly one day in high school math. After that, the teacher's policy in class was this:
When you have a quadratic equation to solve, punch it into QuadKill (a calculator program someone had made to solve quadratic equations). Before the test, the teacher would erase all programs off the calcular except for QuadKill, because that was OK to use.
Granted, I didn't pay the most attention and had probably glossed into a coma the day they explained it, but not until I got into college did I know that an imaginary number was the square root of negative one, rather than "what you get when there's not a real answer for a quadratic formula. Like when quadkill tells you there's an imaginary result."
Oh, and most of the time my calculator was so full of games that even QuadKill got the boot to make room for Craps (with unrealistic can't-lose odds), Lunar Lander, Tetris, etc.
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."