Slashdot Mirror
Interactive Learning Fails Reading Test
motivator_bob writes to tell us the Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that the latest craze of interactive computer software is actually hurting the education level rather than helping it. From the article: "Parents have also bought into the enthusiasm for technology, spending millions on educational computer games for their young. However, research published in the journal Education 3 to 13 has found that pupils who use interactive programs cannot remember stories they have just read because they are distracted by cartoons and sound effects."
I tried this out when I was a OOH SHINY!
"MY APOCALYPTIC TENOR HAS NOT BEEN DISPELLED!" - T-Rex, qwantz.com
Put the things they need to remember into the songs and sound effects. My kids run around singing all the songs off those educational CD games.
And then made cartoons and sounds behind the couch. She was going to learn to read, but HEY, those clothes in the dryer want to play tag!
aka laziness.
Issues like this will be resolved over time as the human mind adapts to constant distractions - already, we do more with our minds on a daily basis than humans of only a half-century ago. In the future I'm sure our children will be able to learn calculus while playing video games, chatting on their mobile communicators, and picking out their wardrobe for the following week.
... me tarzan, you jane ...
Either that or the earth will drop to drastically lower free-floating oxygen levels and our brains will be so starved for precious O2 that we'll barely be able to string together four words
AR had you take a test at the beginning of the year to determine your "reading level", and it had a "reading level" for practically every book out there. Kids were intentionally doing poorly on the test so that they could read 2nd-grade level books. Because the kids were only graded on what they could take an AR test on, these kids were given high grades for reading books that did them absolutely no good (whereas only one other student and I were actually reading above the 7th grade level).
Sometimes, educational software (and software in the schools) can be useful, but the biggest problem is that it seems like we use computers for the sake of using computers, and not for the sake of learning. Despite the fact that AR was KILLING our reading classes, the administration demanded that we continue to use it simply so they could brag about their computer software.
Earn a % of cash back from Newegg, Tiger Direct, Walmart.com, and more: http://www.mrrebates.com?refid=458505
Education requires focus and concentration.
Entertainment amuses and distracts.
Education is not and cannot be entertainment.
It's a dangerous fad, I think ultimately brought on by the entertainment power of TV; children can be so involved in TV it's hard to get them to focus on education, so the idea arrives that if the TV can be used for education...
However, entertainment is fundamentally antagonistic to education.
Everything education is, entertainment is not.
Neil Postman wrote about this in "Amusing Ourselves to Death", a book which inspired Roger Waters epochial album, "Amused to Death"; a recommended read and a recommended listen.
And make sure that spell check and grammar check are on.
After all book learnin is over rated.
For the most part I believe the studies that were just published. I have tried many computer based classes and I did find myself distracted by the "media supplements" and "interactive" links, etc. On the other hand, I think that book learning also has its flaws.
;)
Classical education theory suggests that people can be categorized by visual, aural, touch, smell, etc learning capacities. I found that a careful combination of each of the senses works for me.
Irrespective, I think that interactive learning is better than no learning
And finally, "studies" are oftentimes slanted in favor of those who are funding the research. That is, if the sponsors don't like the result they simply choose not to publish. Matt Wong
No really, the big animated ad thingy under the summery whiped it from my oh so fragile short term memory.
I think that part of learning is creating the connections between synapses (of course) I believe that happens mostly when doing creative thinking. Like using your imagination. Imagination is like working out on a treadmill. When it is time to run, you are well equiped.
That's nothing like my first computer, where the only fun thing I could do on it was learn to program.
just like "evoting", this shouldn't shock. In theory, interactive learning with the aid of a computer should benefit the students who get to use it. In practice, this turns out to be just another give-away to cronies with schlock product - just google "bush brother educational software texas schools" to see what I'm talking about. One of the Bush bros was charging millions for totally useless software that was just worthless - really lame, mindless crapware aimed at the lowest common denominator. I'm all for having programming courses in schools, and giving the rest of the students basic computer literacy (preferably with open source tools), but this "interactive software" learning crap will always come in way over-priced, and add no value to the education of our youth here in the U.S. This is also why I am convinced that the U.S. is slowly (or maybe quickly) deteriorate intellectually and be supplanted by the nations that more rapidly are able to adopt FLOSS into their learning curriculums
Reading.
And lots of it.
Text only.
Pictures and animation and Battlefield 2 are not reading.
The other half used an interactive program which, in addition to telling the story, encourages pupils to click the computer mouse on page illustrations, triggering almost 300 animations and sound effects.
Only two-thirds of the pop-up cartoons were relevant to the storyline.
-----
Firstly and seriously, of course children will be distracted by animations and sound effects. Knowing this, and if they are irrelevent, why did the writers of the software put them there? Why not add some animations that explained part of the story? Fair enough no kid's book should read like a tech manual (and vice versa), but putting in distractions will distract the reader - child or otherwise.Secondly and less seriously... they're surprised 'only' two thirds of the popups are relevent? Put the kids on the net instead of using that software and we'll see how many 'relevent' popups they get.
Actually, that might not be such a good idea...
If all you have is a grenade, pretty soon every problem looks like a foxhole -- MightyYar
i think what they need to know is how to read.
my password really is 'stinkypants'
You misspelled Larnin'.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Computers are only any use if the kids can read and write, i didnt use computers in my school life till i was 12, now even nursery children have regular access. Equally the UK goverment (probably not alone) is putting alot of pressure onto teachers to use PC's without ensuring that the usage is relevent or properly planned. Coupled with the lack of training and technical assistance in smaller schools, the computer is seen as a burden by the staff and a game by the kids.
-AlexC
The human mind, while extremely adaptable, has some limitations that your rhetorical style overlooks. When you say that "the human mind" will adapt, what you are really saying is that human minds are able to deal with this level of distraction right now.
There is no time for evolution to help the human mind adapt, we're basically stuck at this point in evolution. There's a limit to what our hunter/gatherer/tinkerer primate brains can handle and still work efficiently, and that we can't pass our progress on to our children genetically to help them get past that limit.
I'd be inclined to argue that we, doing more at one time with our minds than people a century ago, are very likely functioning less efficiently in many ways, though the progress of technological tools to aid us has more than made up the difference, so far.
Although the moon is smaller than the earth, it is farther away.
These researchers can blame the bells and whistles all they want, but I doubt they tested the interactive books against a real control... If you give a 5 year old a copy of Curious George, be prepared to watch them struggle at the rate of 30 seconds per page, or 5 to 10 minutes for a whole book, reading and figuring out each word. By the end of the ordeal, they plot of the story and details wont matter to them. What matters is that they've read every word, and the monkey somehow managed to rescue his banana.
I've been saying this for years. I saw this happening with my kids in the 90's and got them away from it.
And guess what? It's not just kids and "educational" programs,
the same thing applies to adults and movies/TV..
Think about it...
I'd also fault spelling and grammar checkers in the continuing decline of proper language skills/skill's. Too/to/two many people play loose/lose with their/there/they're word processor's/processors checking facilities. If the text passes the checker, then they're/there/their convinced it's/its fine.
I'm no speeling or grammar fiend but even I am horrified by the basic language errors that now appear in supposedly edited works (e.g., the New York Times and in books). Some people claim the trend is due to e-mail/IM, but I'd argue that a well trained person doesn't make such basic mistakes even on a fast first draft.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
you misspelled speech, learning, and overrated... are you one of those children in the study?
I have seen similar experiments like the reported one in Great Britain. In the US (university) students are pushed through labs where they are suppose to learn things like physics. Those labs come with special computer programs to train the students. Before the lab begins, the students have to complete an online test. Then they conduct a few simple experiments. In the final last step they are suppose to use the computer and compare their experimental results with theoretical calculations. For example, they take a little vehicle on a ramp and measure the distance as a function of time. Then they are suppose to fit the data. The computer programs offer various functions with generic variable names. The students try them all and sometimes find the right formula. So, they pass. But, most students give the wrong answer when asked which variable in the formula represents the acceleration. They learn nothing. They quit without any idea about physics, units, and never have to do an error calculation. At some universities things went really bad: TA's are told be the professor that the students by definition do not give a "wrong" answer. Instead, students should simply discuss their results and it does not matter what their results are. I have seen it. The students are becoming the lab rats of instructors who want to find the perfect teaching method. Somehow I am wondering how the students pass the test before the lab, and what they do later in their life. What I do know is that not every faculty member is happy with the situation. But, these are new "learning techniques", funded with a lot of money. Everybody better shut up, as long as the money flows.
In the future I'm sure our children will be able to learn calculus while playing video games, chatting on their mobile communicators, and picking out their wardrobe for the following week.
What will be so different about our children and ourselves? I mean, are we going to genetically engineer them to be geniuses from day one or something? Because as far as I can tell, children receive genes from their parents and are pretty similar in intelligence (there is a correlation, although not 100%). So, what you're saying is that we're going to make an evolutionary jump in the next generation that will allow our children to learn what less than 20% of the world learns today, but in even more difficult conditions (playing video games)?
I'm just wondering, because I can't seem to understand what will be so different from now and then that will allow what you say to come true.
My page.
When I was a kid, educational software like Zork really helped, typing and spelling especially. Plus I learned never to go into a dark room lest I be eaten by a grue.
This study confirms what we've all long suspected. MUDs are superior to graphical games, and stuff like World of Warcrack and Evercrack really are bad for you. All those bright pictures, colors, and songs just ruin your focus. If you want your children to grow up smart, park them in front of telnet, not teletubbies.
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
Only two-thirds of the pop-up cartoons were relevant to the storyline.
A day after the exercise, children were asked to recall the story and the characters in it. The findings showed that 90 per cent of the group that used the first program had good or excellent recall of the story.
This figure dropped to 30 per cent with the children who had used the interactive program.
Hmm, one program had 2/3 superfluous material and their story retention dropped by 2/3. What a coincidence.
From the article: "The children were more highly motivated to read a talking story than a conventional book."
Shouldn't she have said "listen to a talking story"? Apparently the teachers need some help. If nothing else, they should try reading stories to the kids.
Also: "the vast spending on information and communication technology has had little or no impact on standards."
That's true in the corporate world, too. I guess we truly are preparing the kiddies for real life!
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
That little gem has even appeared in The Washington Post. When even old time print media is coasting on the spell checker, maybe it's a lost cause.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Let's just all sit around all day imagining stuff. Like let's imagine that we know how to read and write and do arithmetic. That way, when we actually have to do it, we'll be ready!
We can just imagine up computer manuals. Or better yet, let's just pretend we are computer experts who know how to write software to fly airplanes! Then we can imagine that the software passes the FAA certification process. And we can imagine that that plane just didn't fall out of the sky, killing hundreds of the passengers on board because the pilots were imagining they were really pilots when that was the first time they stepped inside a cockpit!
Isn't imagination wonderful? We'll just imagine all of life's problems away because we can, and because, you know, Disney said it works!
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
OK, so their test programs implemented interactivity badly. Therefore, interactivity is bad.
Of course, given that people often judge video games, comics, genre fiction, etc. only by their worst examples, why should anyone be surprised by this conclusion?
And this is surprising why?
...that most Slashdot readers learned to write "interactively" growing up?
Proof is in the pudding.
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
That is most important. Teaching children at a young age to use technology will possibly help them later on in life.
www.IBuyMacs.com
Man, do I hate those studies. What the hell were they measuring? Two groups of six years old listening to a story while the text ist displayed on a computer screen.
Group A Will only have the posibility to listen to the story while the currently read line is highlightened on the screen. Group B Will additionaly be encouraged to click on illustrations, triggering almost 300 animations and sound effects. 100 of these have nothing to do with the story whatsoeverWhen asked about the story, 90% of group A will remember it correctly, but only 30% of group B. So what is the conclusion? Maybe that distractions, especially those that are not related to what you are currently doing will harm your concentration and therefore you will remember not as well as if you were left alone? No, the conclusion is:
Interactive learning fails reading test
WTF?
I don't claim that it is impossible that interactive learning is the wrong educational tool for six years old. I don't believe it, but I just can't prove it. But I'm annoyed by all these stupid studies making statements based on unprecise conditions, which will not allow to deduce verifyable conclusions, but will be picked up by the press (and slashdot) nonetheless.
They're just like those studies that claim over and over again that playing counterstrike will turn kids into brutal killers. Proven wrong again and again, but nobody cares.
Chriss
--
memomo.net - free online language training
memomo: free web based language trainer DE-EN-ES-FR-IT
you said: "Too/to/two many people play loose/lose with their/there/they're word processor's/processors checking facilities." you meant: their word processors' . . .
Although the moon is smaller than the earth, it is farther away.
TV attention spans! I'd say it's child abuse but since most everyone does it it's OK? In the words of a dear friend, "Humanity--You never cease to fail me!"
Life is a gift. And my Karma couldn't possibly be 'Positive'
If parents want their children raised and educated by robots, they shouldn't expect them to excel using normal organic brains. Perhaps parents should hold off on reproducing and wait until technology advances to the point where silcon-based children can come pre-assembled and pre-programmed, knowing whatever lucrative skills will make them a success (helping to supplement their parents' inevitably meagre social security safety net, which by then will have surely acquired rather massive tears).
The flag just makes more sense than the constitution. - Judas Gutenberg
Guys like Edward De Bono have made a career by claiming to have the inside track on creative learning. I've studied epistemology since my mid teens and in answer to the question 'what is learning?' I've acquired a vast ignorance. Ultimately, for me, learning is a nurtured drive with inherent requirements, that is nourished by the new, by information, difference that makes a difference (Bateson). The high of learning comes when one recognizes that nature has given rise to you, an individual with the potential to encompass the principles of life in the small shell that houses your brain.The truth is most people are driven by the more primitive drives and default to being entertained.
Gregory Bateson suggested we can learn to learn, possibly learn to learn to learn; but, first we must experience what it means to learn. I believe that learning is a unique multifaceted experience that, once experienced, can, depending on the individual, entice the practioner ever onward.
The day my older sister took me by the hand and walked me into the nearest library I was hooked. I knew how to, read, loved to read, but had no idea of the universes of knowledge available. Yet even into grade 1 I stubbornly refused to learn to write. I read, I had lots to read, other people were doing the writing, what need had I to write?
Whatever learning is, whether it be as simple as deriving new patterns, or, as profound as Archimedes' Eureka!, we first must introduce children to the joy of learning. Most of them can take it from there.
just my loose change.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
The current discussion around the educational value of games is not about how games teach "content" or basic skills. Games are educational in that players learn how to interact with complex systems, something they will need to do increasingly in science and engineering. As a primer, read James Gee, What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. ISBN 1403965382
I can attest to the validity of this study. I don't have kids, but when I was one, I had a plastic learning device called a "Speak & Spell." Some of you may have heard of it. The only thing I can remember about this device is that if you pushed the L button, it sounded a LOT like "hell." We would use this exceedingly amusing, at the time, coincidence(?) to get around actually using bad words through such techniques as saying "What the" and then pushing L. Surprisingly, this technique proved to be completely ineffective at avoiding a spanking.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
pupils who use interactive programs cannot remember stories they have just read because they are distracted by cartoons and sound effects
:).
Which is what most sites look like today. Instead of cartoons, we have banners. For instance, pr0n sites. Those animated banners are really distracting, can hardly remember the stories the next day
The abundance of information on the Internet is changing us into becoming information discarders, not information seekers. In the future we will be bombarded by much more information, which will attack our brains through all possible channels (audio, video, interactivity, real time communication). We must adapt to this abundance, by learning how to filter out unnecessary information and get only what we need (which is a separate topic in itself).
Teaching pupils how to focus on the required parts of information may be more important than actually implanting knowledge into their brains.
So I guess it is no wonder that interactive learning programs fail to achieve results; they should be used to teach kids how to ignore unnecessary distractions and focus on the important facts.
We need more of an encouragement to our kids to read. When I was younger (a.k.a. quite a long time ago) in first grade, they gave us all four books to choose to read from and I just happened to pick up the third grade book and just started reading because it was fun. So they put me in an advanced reading class (I went to the 2nd grade class for reading, and my class for everything else). But the reason that I was good at reading is because my parents taught me that reading was fun. Not because of any program.
All we really need is parental involvement and it won't matter what types of computer program or whatever that we're using. If we WANT to learn to read, we'll succeed. If we DON'T want to learn, we'll do what we can do read 2nd grade books when we're older, just like the kids in the parent post.
ArtificialNews.com will one day SAVE YOUR LIFE from evil AI!
with all the float-over windows with sound and graphics
That's what the History Channel is all about. I watch it as much as I can (which isn't much, b/c I don't have cable or anything at my house) just because I love learning new things.
But it's one of those things that depend on the activity and subject. If you teach something in videos or whatever, there are tons of history or language or geometry things that would go along with it. But reading isn't one of those automated-type activities. Reading is learned simply because you see the use for it and have the desire for it.
Kids don't learn to read because they want a good score. They learn to read because they want attention that only another person can give. I'm sure that there are teachers that can work with this program to help their kids, but without that teacher giving their own individual attention to the kids, no computer program can help a kid read.
ArtificialNews.com will one day SAVE YOUR LIFE from evil AI!
"Sometimes, educational software (and software in the schools) can be useful, but the biggest problem is that it seems like we use computers for the sake of using computers, and not for the sake of learning."
So how do you feel about typing programs?
Or even programs like this?
I don't know if the parent was a troll or not, but it does reach a very important point. At this stage of technology and instant gratification, many parents simply think it's easier to plop their kids down in front of a box (tv, computer, etc) and hope that it will give them the education that the kid needs. This way parents still have time for their own lives. The problem is that without true interaction there is a serious inability for children to learn. A computer can only answer questions which it has been programmed to answer, and children will inevitably ask that which a computer cannot answer. I'm no parent, so I open myself up willingly to the onslaught of "You don't have kids so you shouldn't speak", but I do know that a lot of my friends in the Nintendo generation (me) would be a lot better off had their parents sat down and taught them interactively rather than dosing them up with Ritalin and leaving the tv/computer/video game to the teaching.
Microsoft Sucks, F/OSS Rocks. I get mod points now right?
It's about time that people noticed this. Ever since the first "leapfrog" system came out, education has taken a backseat to marketing.
Parents are willing to spend an arm and a leg "for their child's education", but would be appalled at buying that child an equally-priced "toy".
It seems that all any company has to do anymore is design something that has more than a few words and numbers in it, call it a "learning device" or "educational system" and it sells like you wouldn't believe.
The newest leapfrog toy, "the fly", seems like a really useful invention again passed of as an educational device without any real educational content.
It can mimic a $5 pocket calculator, a $3 pocket dictionary, and a $0.50 pen all while taking up way too much space and being much to loud/obnoxious/distracting.
The potential of this technology is immensely great, but of course, what does that matter if it won't sell and make the company lots and lots of money? Best to strip it down, paint it bright colors, have it make noise, and say it helps kids learn.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
I have a 4 year old. I'm curious about what other parents of pre-schoolers are doing with their kids and computers. I don't do a whole lot other than to find some pictures of places we have been or as reference material for his questions. I'm reluctant to let me become a gamer at this age. He already has a lot of imaginative play with hard toys.
you act as a parent. Toss some CD's and a $3K alienware pc at a kid and expect them to be the next Einstein then you are in for a disappointment.
However, sit and play with your child using the interactive training available and I will tell you from experience it is AWESOME! My daughter was reading at the "3rd grade level" (whatever that means) entering kindergarten (at age 4 not 5).
She loved the time we spent together so much she would do anything as long as we were together. The games took the pressure off of me so we could just play together. I didn't have to worry what to teach, how to teach, etc. Just being there with her was all it took. We progressed just like any gamer would from version 1 -> 2 -> etc. What more can a dad ask for. You know teaching a elementary pupil it is real easy to look like a star! This all started 10 years ago and now she gets ranked with a "Nobel IQ" and placed in really cool classes at school.. Guess all those discount "Magic School Bus" disks paid off. Love Miss Frizzle!
On the contrary my next child was a bit slower. He didn't want to play the games. Well not exactly, once I sat with him and played together he took off like he had solid rocket boosters attached to his Buzz Lightyear electronic sneakers.
Moral of the story, play with your kids....but do it in a way you enjoy! Also realize how important you are to them. It just might save you a college tuition or 2!:)
Signed,
Daddy of Diaper Generation 0.
Gizmos Gagets For Ninjas
I think they overlook many of the positive benefits of edutainment software. The main benefit that I see is that it might encourage a child to -want- to learn, instead of being forced to learn. A lot of education seems to force feed you the information instead of having you DISCOVER the information. I think children should "Learn how to learn" as much or more than they should be spoon fed information.
/. programmers will agree: Not all programs are created equal.
Also... I think it would've been more accurate if they had studied more than one program. Other
Those "noisemaker" books, in bookstores--the electric books with the buttons on the side that make noise.
At every bookstore that sells them you see young children sitting, just pressing the buttons over and over and over again to hear the noises.
Most kids make no effort to even look at the pages.
As one who could read at a high level from an early age, I have ALWAYS felt that these things were among the worst gifts for a kid, just judging by the reactions they get in bookstores. ~
Here's your answer:
Nothing is more important to the development of intelligence in a child (Maslow having been taken care of), than for one human being to read to them. Nothing.
We read to our son all the time when he was a baby; from Goodnight Moon to Fox in Socks. Now nine, he is not afraid of long narratives without pictures and has read all the Harry Potter books; thousands of pages with only a few sketches. He plays Age of Empires and Runescape too, and we have to watch the clock on his computer time because he won't do it himself, but I truly believe the early personal exchanges of reading and explaining narratives was the keystone.
Read to your child.
Hello Microsoft Money!
I must say, the best computer learning game I ever used was Swamp Gas (and Swamp Gas Europe). I memorized random facts about the states (or the european countries) so that I could 'beat' the game. This would then unlock a few relatively fun arcade games. After I ran out of lives, it was back to the learning so I could get back into the arcade.
Oh ya, Oregon Trail was fun too. Stupid Buffalo.
There is no belief, however foolish, that will not gather its faithful adherents who will defend it to the death.-Asimov
Coincidentally, I've been reading a book by Marc Prensky called "Digital Game Base Learning." It's a fascinating read...although like any Slashdotter, I haven't RTFA, but it's definitely going in my bookmarks to be read later! Getting back to Marc, I recommend it to anyone interested in getting into educational game design as it provides a more commercial/industrial training insight/POV to it.
> Anna Karina
So would you say your recollection of Anna Kar-en-ina was at all affected by the reading program?
(And where's my -1 Pedant mod, hmmm? It's 2006 already, and still no Pedant mod...)
I really agree with this synthesis. Computers per se can't teach you the most critical skills - including reading, writing or mathematics. The interaction with a teacher is so much more richer than with any machine yet devised. Socrates is still right, the best school is a log with the student on one end and the teacher on the other.
A computer can alleviate some of the drudgery in education, but it cannot replace or even significantly augment the teacher. We are impovershing our children if we think otherwise.
Education is not and cannot be entertainment.
You need to be careful with your definition of "entertainment".
If "entertainment" includes all of the things we choose to do for the enjoyment of it, then I've got to disagree. Want to teach kids about ecosystems, animal habitats, plant biology, simple thermodynamics, simple geology, and a whole lot more? Go on a camping trip in the mountains (or backwoods... whatever's local) and insist that the GameBoy be left in the car. There are uncountable things to be learned around a campsite, and if they haven't had the thrill of learning burned out of them yet, you'll have a lot of questions to answer...
There exists a vision of education which states that "learning is work" or "learning should be work". In my experience, this is almost entirely bullshit. Most of the things I've really absorbed and retained for the long term were learned when I was interested in a subject and enjoying the process of learning. This is not to say that learning must be made entertaining, but that you will do better building on a natural interest than to try to force the memorization of facts that have no relevance to the learner.
Not that you were advocating that (I choose to believe that you were using "entertainment" as shorthand for "mindless entertainment" -- 90% of television, etc.).
Regards,
Ross
Over Christmas I learned and then taught my nephews about the flypen I got them. It was both fascinating and discouraging, and I think on topic too.
First, let me say that I was already familiar with the principle since I worked with Anoto a little (I ran a show in Toyko where we showed the Anoto pen), they make the underlying technology. This may have contributed to unfulfilled expectations.
In case you don't know what it is, the Flypen (very heavy flash site!)is a pen-shaped device based on Anoto's technology. It is a ballpoint pen with a scanner in the tip that can detect where it is writing on specially patterned paper, and includes some gesture recognition, a sound synthesizer and speaker, and application memory.
Anyway take a look at the heavy flash site (even the light side is heavy) in particular Fly Tunes. You start that app by drawing an FT in a circle. You must follow its directions absolutely but it leads you to draw a 10 or 12 key piano which you can then play, a timbre changer for the keyboard (draw a K in a square), circles for drums, etc.
Okay here's the thing. The idea is nice, and startling even for someone who already knows the technology! Kids want to try it. You can see differences in different learning approaches even between brothers, it is quite interesting.
BUT! Kids are constantly penalized for things that should earn rewards. They can have an ah-hah! moment and rush ahead to use it, but it will silently refuse to work unless they exercise dull patience and listen to the announcer's instructions and follow them exactly. You can't draw a longer keyboard to get more notes. Young kids draw big letters, sometimes redraw them in different stroke order or draw letters on top of each other, anyway a big problem for recognition. And so on. The show-off nephew liked recording his songs and the quiet younger one (well both) were hysterical with the ability to make the piano keys produce disgusting burps, chilling screams, laughter, etc. But it just seemed like a demo for some tech and not really something educational. It might have some interest for older kids, if it had some software, but it strikes me that nobody must ever have tested this with real live children, they weren't interested in teaching them anything, they didn't really care about what happens after Christmas day, and if anything it seemed to hurt creativity. The best moment (initiated by my own idea not the kids' unfortunately) was rolling the pen up and down the keyboard and drums geometrically to make some neat tunes.
In contrast I'd much rather recommend Electroplankton for the Nintendo DS (caveat, a friend made it). Which is not only very enjoyable but also you learn to be creative with music and it has (like many of Toshio Iwai's works) hidden music composition in it. I was at an event where the head of Nintendo said they made it at a spec based on music synthesis and interactive requirements of Cyberplankton. This dual screened system (if it could be connected to the net) would seem like a better platform for education.
Anyway it just seems to me that kids who spend hours and hours on a PC with Harry Potter and Spongebob have expectations about interaction, but also they have no immune system to tell them when to stop. They learn about a mythical world and build up their British accents but these games are made by entertainers not educators. You need to have a useability check and see if it educates. To me the flypen was a waste of money and next time I'd try to spend the same money on either books or some educational software. One interesting thing is that a book on dragons (fictional of course) was hugely popular, and it seemed like it might be a neat jumpoff point to software about any kinds of animals. Maybe software that gives children a picturebook style experience, with more info they have to read in a book is more what they need? Maybe the next Harry Potter game should make them jump to the book and read a passage for a clue? etc.
I am also in the educational software industry. I have found there is a disturbing tendency among some educators to abandon the kids in the lab with what amounts to little more than cartoons.
Good educational software has three important parts. First, the content, which should be clear, concise, grade/age appropriate and interesting, not entertaining. Second, a method of assessing the students progress in the lesson plan. Third and most important, a real live person attending to the students as they use this tool.
Educational software is a tool that leverages the educator, not replaces them.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Dr. Richard Mayer has done extensive research on the effect of offtopic multimedia thrown in to eLearning projects(cognitive overload).
He wrote a great introductory book (with Ruth Colvin ClarK) on how to use multimedia to improve student learning, rather than hinder it.
For a good look at an online course done pretty much right (at least based on current, peer reviewed research) see the WCLN's Flow course on water resource use & river management (click the login as guest button).
And see the adaptation notes for the discussion of the research backing the course design.
Multimedia can result in great improvements in student learning, or it can severly impair learning, depending on how it is used & thanks to folks like Dr. Mayer there is good solid research that can be used for effective instructional design.
Of course, educators can be stupid even without software. Back when my brother and I were in elementary school, they had this incentive thing going where if you read a certain number of books of a certain minimum length (125 pages, as I recall), you'd get a free personal pan pizza over at Pizza Hut.
At the time, I was devouring Encyclopedia Brown books. All of those books, though, weighed in at 100-115 pages. None of them counted. So, for me, it was a net demotivator. I wasn't going to put aside the books I *wanted* to read (and had read easily over a 1000 pages worth of), to read books I had no real interest in. Besides, in retrospect, the Encyclopedia Brown books were good for stimulating lateral thinking. Judging by how I approach problems at work, I think it did me some good.
In contrast, my brother discovered a way to cheat the system. He was younger than me, and so I had already progressed past the grades that offered this incentive program. He discovered that Twist-A-Plot and related books *did* qualify. Most were just over the page cutoff length, and you only had to read as far as getting the protagonist killed. He got a lot of pizzas with that shortcut.
--Joe
Program Intellivision!
Ah yes, The Pinball Song, featuring the Pointer Sisters! (Link goes to a remix version with a remixed video as well.) If that link doesn't work, I've put a copy on my DSL. Don't hit me too hard, or I'll remove it.
:-)
Oh, and it didn't come from Sesame Street, apparently. It came from The Electric Company.
Back when I was still in college, I'd walk around the EE lab and hum a bar or two under my breath as I walked by someone. The target would often then start humming the tune and have it stuck in their head the rest of the day. Mission accomplished.
--Joe
Program Intellivision!
1. Bedtime stories
2. Synthetic phonics
3. Visit the library, buy them their favourite books as presents
4. Upgrade to meta-reading using this.
At no point in the above does a computer feature as anything other than a source of readables.
I want to be genetically reengineered as soon as it becomes feasable.
That article was pretty good. But I think it just needs some sound effects and cartoons to go along with it. They could play when you clicked on some pictures or icons around the text.
Oh Shiney?!
In today's world, there isn't a place for interpreted BASIC programming
Then what the h*ck is VBScript? Or even JavaScript, which has assumed much the same role even though it isn't a descendant of BASIC?
let alone peek and poke assembly language.
You might be surprised at how many 8-bit microcontrollers are still out there.
Shit, just put a kid in front of a computer! The things they'll do will astonish you. I must have spent hours making banners on the old PDP-11 and the DECWriter in my dad's lab. With technology being generally pervasive nowadays, the possibilities are endless. My opinion is this: kids love computers; they just gravitate toward them. A good teacher can use that to her advantage.
There's plenty of software that both fails to captivate and fails to educate. But there's also lots of software that just so happens to educate along the way. Should we stop teaching english literature just because every teacher I ever had bored me to tears?
you meant: their word processors'
No, G4from128k meant "their word processor's", where the singular refers to the pervasiveness of a particular convicted monopolist's product. What word processor is seriously taught in U.S. K-12 schools other than Microsoft Word?
I can't speak for this study in particular, but when I'm unsure I tend to give the benefit of the doubt to the scientists concerned. Scientists simply get misrepresented and quoted out of context so frequently that it's not really funny any more. I've had first-hand experience several times of being quoted incorrectly and completely out of context by journalists, and I've seen it happen to other people frequently.
With a few radical exceptions, scientists who carry out this or any kind of research are usually very specific about what their studies mean, and careful not to overstate the relevance (at least when speaking to people who aren't familiar with typical research language), or understate the assumptions and limitations.
Keep in mind that this is one newspaper's edit (the SMH) of another newspaper's story (The Telegraph). Both newspapers target general readership, yet they're trying to summarise the results of a scientific publication. Even though this story appears to do a better job than most of stating what was actually in the study, it's no substitute for actually going to your nearest academic library, issuing the journal, and reading it for yourself. There's no evidence that the journalists of either newspaper made an effort to contact the study's author's directly -- the quotes that appear could easily have been lifted from the publication, and given out of context. Even if the authors were contacted, it wouldn't be unusual for authors to be mis-quoted (accidentally or deliberately); a lot of journalists are notorious for putting a spin on their work to justify a more interesting headline, even in what you might think are respectable and well managed publications.
Clifford Stoll came to many of the same conclusions regarding the use of computers in the classroom and their detrimental effects towards learning. Check out "Silicon Snake Oil" sometime.
You are only popular on the Internet.
As a (the, actually) computer lab guy at a school in Southern California, I have anecdotal evidence in support of interactive software as an educational device. Granted, the computers are terrible, the computer literacy rate among students and teachers is practically zero, and the kids are sometimes frustrated with the computers-- still, there are students that are reached by an interactive computer program that have a very difficult time with normal classes. In that respect, it's a huge benefit for education. And these kids are working on PowerMac Green & White G3s (running OS 9, 'natch.) Interactive learning may not be a revolutionary new replacement for standard teaching methods, but it is a valuable tool in any teacher's arsenal, IMO.
I know that I went from being a terrible speller to being very good as a direct result of computers. I got my first spell checker in the 7th grade. Every teacher, as well as my parents were absolutely sure that spell checkers just make kids lazy. They were sure that I would never learn to spell if I used a spell checker. The fact was that the spell checker would immediately tell me when I misspelled a word, and would also give me the correct spelling. This was opposed to the "traditional" approach, consisting of the student turning in their writing, and a week later getting a paper back with red circles all over it. The typical student would then toss the paper in the trash, never seeing what their mistake actually was, and never finding out the correct spelling.
The funny thing is that prior to my first word processor, I don't believe I ever received a single grade higher than a C on any writing assignment. Immediately following my family getting a word processor, I started getting As. I still attribute some of that to lazy teachers who graded on how pretty your handwriting was, but a lot of it was that changing a single word in the middle of a paper didn't require an extra half of an hour to rewrite the paper.
Maybe I was the exception, but I'm not buying that immediate feedback and shifting effort to the actual task (as opposed to busywork) does not improve the learning process for kids. I also call BS on the "nothing beats a book" line. I can't count the number of times I've heard it. There is only one thing that reading a book gets you that watching TV doesn't. You learn to read better. Now, I am not saying that reading well is not a good thing, but that is all reading has on TV.
In '72 I was toggling bits/bytes in manually to crack the "evuhl empire" ... tracking subs and suchlike; after I gagged on tumbling Chile's democratically elected gov't I shifted to supporting SAC/NORAD by single-handedly maintaining the arctic tropo site. *shrug* So what ... withdrawing from all that to run MCR/CBC and repair kits at Heathkit was proper.
My point: snake oil, gentlemen and gentlewomen. Before TimBL (in a resource rich environment, note) invented WWW some of us had been toying with and using SGML/hyper-text for years ... in my case developing MILSPEC tech_docs for navaids in an R&D environement ... to land passenger planes in snow storms.
*shrug*
I've been on welfare since '92. I got grossed out. Uber-grossed. Snake-oil ... smoke and mirrors ... Gates, M$, Win95 ... not QuatroPro, or JWZ and NS1.02 (Mosaic 0.72a for that matter.)
It ain't just forward fire support that suffers ... or e-commerce ... or S&R ... right down to the roots, kidz ... check out http://thedailywtf.com/
Point? Saddam Hussein is a brave mofo ... massively hypocritical mofos (i.e. "plausible deniability") screw up the education system or rob old folk of their retirement funds.
*shrug*
To you, from failing hands, we throw the torch.
stay well
-- When you look to see how the system works, you usually find that it doesn't.
I never ever ever ever write run-on paragraphs like that. WTF do you think you are to ignore my having hit NL? I know precisely who you are: passive agressive geeks who very precisely hide your true nature. Want proof? Your interface has been pathetic since day.1 and remains so. lamerz W^B p.s. read the .sig asshole. I no longer include geek-code ... I /know/ you're way too ADD to consult. "FOAF" pfffffffffffffffffffffffft!
-- When you look to see how the system works, you usually find that it doesn't.
Dogs lick themselves cuz they can; the human equivalent program the interface to /.
bid: pfffffffffffft
-- When you look to see how the system works, you usually find that it doesn't.
If you're going to have totally unrelated BS animations interfeer the study to show that kids' education is hampered by computer based courses, all you're showing is your own bias, dishonesty and/or lack of education.
The equivalent book would have to be litered with lots of unrelated text. We're talking lines from an episode of Sesame street mixed in with lines from Hamlet and the lyrics from this week's no 1 pop song here.
Stupid story. Stupid study. Stupid conclusion. Stupid people.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Irony is afoot. Speech Recognition (not speach) is speech to text. Speech Synthesis is text to speech which is what I think you mean. The misspelling I can chalk up to irony, but the fact that you misused the term 'speech recognition' on /. of all places is too funny. And you did it in the subject; thanx 4 making my day...
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
I'd post, but I already forgot what the headline was about...
oh you mean like the picture next to the summary?
i answered 2+2=5 in my math test and failed.
thanks slashdot!
> literacy program that a computer reading a stories to children
> and providing exercises in phonics, vocabulary, and comprehension
> can help children's reading and writing skills immensely.
This is B.S. I have always been very intersted in computers and early education, and have tried hard to keep up with relevant research. I have read few studies that found any benefit to any software over traditional methods of teaching young children. Yet you claim your company's software helps immensely? Care to provide a link to some research that backs up that assertion?
Old Yeller was the highest on our list (500 or 50...whatever makes more sense. I can't remember). Being ridiculously thick, I ran through the book, skimming over most of the dialog and outlined it over the course of two evenings when I didn't have any homework. I then reread the outline a couple times, actually read critical sections of dialog in the book (took a couple more days, but was during down time in school), and then took the test.
9 out of 10. I couldn't figure out what the lesson was at the time, but I enjoyed meeting my "quota" because I could then read whatever I wanted to.
Imagination is nice, but you have to be grounded in reality in order to make any use of it. A good example are crackpots in the physics world. These guys don't even understand the most fundamental principles that are absolutely true. Yet they spout off like they know the secrets of the universe, even though their imagination contradicts observed facts.
In other words, before you start pondering the makeup of the universe, it's much better to figure out what we already know and then work from there.
The same goes for the basics. If you can't read, write, or do basic arithmetic, what good is your imagination? There's a reason why Einstein's imagination is so much more useful for the world than your toddler's imagination. When Einstein imagined, he was really pushing the boundaries of knowledge. Your toddler still thinks he is the center of the universe.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
In any discussion of whether a new medium of expression is a good thing, never pay any attention to the disparaging remarks of anyone who is old enough that the medium is new to them. It does not matter how they dress it up as a study, they are too old to be unprejudiced.
If you don't agree, read about the furors over dime store novels, talking movies, or, greatest horror of horrors, the dramas that Plato complained of.
I don't do instant messaging, but at least I have the wisdom to know that it is because I am old and not because I am wise.
Hmm. Ok, I will go login to gaim, out of shame at being so old, it just doesn't excite me though....
Hans
You are completely wrong on so many counts.
Let's take the invention of powered flight. For many thousands of years, people have dreamed of controlling the skies. Yet not until the Wright brothers did we have anybody capable of actually doing so. What was the difference?
It is simple. Everyone can imagine. Only the Wright brothers could put the machine together. See, the Wright brothers had a foundation of sure knowledge and understanding of engines and mechanics and gears and such. In fact, if you look carefully at their original design, they had some fairly unique insights into how to build something strong but light. Their expertise in these technologies allowed them to put 2 and 2 together and get 4.
You can look at any advancement in science, culture, society, government, and military, and see how it was people who had imagination but who were also well-versed in the current technology who really brought change.
So, I would say to young people full of imagination, get off your butt, read some serious books, and learn what we already know. Don't waste your time imagining until your find yourself at the edge of human knowledge, staring into the unknown where no one has started before. But you can't get there unless you take the journey that everyone who has gone before you have taken and build on their work.
It used to be that you went to school to learn and be told how stupid you were and what you had to do to get smart. Nowadays, it's all about puffing up people's pride and giving them hope where there is none. I was frustrated when I graduated high school only to find out I was one in a million very bright people who wanted to go to the top colleges. No one had told me that I wasn't unique, I wasn't special, and my talents weren't one-of-a-kind, until life hit me in the face like a ton of bricks. I despise my teachers who puffed me up with a false sense of self-worth. I wish they had told me that if I didn't hit the books and do better on my homework I couldn't expect to compete with other kids like me.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
What is failing is the Look-Say method , which, in substituting word-shape for sounding-out of letters, effectively reduces us back to heiroglyphics where there were thousands of symbols to learn instead of twenty-six or so.
Animating the pictures may increase distraction, but that's to be expected when the basic method is fundamentally hostile to human cognition.
Herked on Phernics rally werked fer me!
The difference between reading a story and seeing a story is that when reading, the person makes an image of what he/she is reading according to their own tastes, whereas seeing a story forces the person to consume the images invented by someone else. Since it is much easier to remember images based on one's own experience, rather than someone else's, it is not suprising that computer teaching programs have failed.
Although computers can do wonderful things, and they have opened a storytelling path that was not there before, reading a book is actually much better, because it allows the brain to work and make up its own images. And since a book contains much more detail than any movie or animation, imagination is put to test in a much better quantitative and qualitative way when reading a story than when seeing a story.
I experienced this when I read Lord Of The Rings after seeing the movies. Initially, I could not stand reading the books, because the story did not advance so quickly as the movie and it contained much more content than I could digest. But I kept going, I got rid of the images of the motion picture, and suddently the story flowed in mind in a much richer way than in the movie.
The brain works by thinking, either in words or in pictures. In fact, languages are nothing more than a 'preprocessor' that converts meanings to images. The brain works much faster with images, since the intermediate level of language translation is not there. Computer animated teaching denies of children the possibility of using their brains to do the work of imaging, since the imaging is already there.
I learned the what algebra was all about through effing around with an algebra drilling program while waiting for my mother in her classroom (she was a teacher back then).
I believe the problems come from thinking that having a computer with certain software in front of a kid will automatically cause learning to happen. For me, being bored out of my mind, it was the most fun thing to do at that moment. Figuring out that symbols can replace values in mathematics was just a (random) byproduct of that situation coming together precisely so.
Knowing myself: If somebody had put me in front of that computer and said "learn!", I would have rebelled. If I - despite the odds - had learned anything, I would have hid it from the teacher so as not to encourage such behaviour.
(I am not kidding on that last point.)
Software makers in North America (especially Apple) have never shown an interest or an understanding of "how people learn". As a result the "Usability" of the software, more often than not - simply sucks - sucks badly! By "Usability" - I am not referring to which fonts are being used (one being more readible than another and so on) - or whether someone with a seeing issue can use the software - I am referring to - was anyone who is a "proven scientific expert in how people learn" - an integral part of the design team from the getgo!
For examples, Apples FinalCut Pro comes with 8 manuals with several thousand pages - which suck as badly as the actual software when it comes to ease of use
From my perspective, edutainment began before the PC. The original Mr. Wizard shows are available http://www.mrwizardstudios.com/ and in my opinion still far superior as a teaching tool than the more kinetic (and Fun! Fun! Fun!) Big Blue Marble of the 70s and 80s.
Shut up now.
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
The reason I laugh is because if you read his responses, he wasn't doing either of those things. He was quite serious.
"If you knew how to read intelligently..."
Stones, glass houses etc.
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
They did a study a few years ago where they took two seperate kindergarten classes and gave one class a (I believe) playstation as well as playstation learning games. I believe the playstation class was required to use the playstation for 1/2 an hour each day during class, and something like 1/2-1 hour later at home.
They tested the children before and after for both classes. They found that after the year was over, the children in the kindergarten class had a 25% improvement in their verbal skills, while the control class only had a 4% improvement. The math skills weren't significantly different at all (both had a 4% improvement), but they suggested that this was perhaps due to children not being that interested in math for that age.
I've been trying to find the original paper, but I don't have it on hand right now. I think it was done around 2000.
"For example, how do you get them (in my discipline, history) to see cause and effect?"
That *should* be the strong point of an interactive medium! Playing a ("non-educational") strategy game, for example, is all about coming to grips with a complex system, and understanding the web of causes and effects that compose it.
Military history illustrates this well: if a book says "Napoleon was in situation X and did Y", it's easy to nod, keep reading, and forget it. If you play a game in which you assume Napoleon's role, you are forced to really understand X: you must think about each of the elements composing X, weigh them against each other, realize why Z wouldn't have worked as well as Y did, etc.
Unfortunately, there are few good-quality sims outisde the military realm, and this doesn't seem to be the direction educational software is pursuing.
Perhaps that would explain all the dupes on slashdot. The editors are too busy looking at the shiny icons and banner ads, so they can't remember the stories they have just read.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
When I was in school (BS Computer Engineering, Univeristy of Illinois) I noticed the same thing - this is an old story for me. the kids who took Calculus using the university's Mathematica based classes couldn't remember how to do simple derivatives when it was all over.
Essentially, the instructors believed that the software was going to relieve them of having to actually teach, where really it should have just been an additional tool.
There is no substitute for the interactive learning between a student and a teacher. Relying on "interactive software" is akin to giving students the textbook and telling them to teach themselves. Unfortunatly, I see "distance learning" and things of that nature growing in importance - widening the gap between student and mentor.
People are still people. Once we learn that computer technology isn't going to change the way that we think and learn, we'll all be better off.
You'll never hear someone say "I became an engineer because MathBlaster 3.0 taught me to have a passion for physics and the scientific process". There is more to learning than getting the facts right.
As someone who's spent many years working with kids in educational settings, my own experience tells me that these kinds of interctive learning software are junk. Any program that claims to "make learning fun" will immediately be seen for what they are by the average seven-year-old. Those who are slow learners will quickly be frustrated by having the progress of the "game" be blocked by a sudden spelling or math problem that's difficult to figure out, while more adept students will have to wonder what the monster's motivation is for handing out schoolwork. Instead of trying to disguise learning as a game, I think one should use the opposite approach of taking something that's intrinsically fun, then figuring out what one can learn from it; this is the approach that the best science educators have taken for years.
I guess history teachers aren't required to take many English classes, eh?
The instant feedback is a definite plus. Knowing that you've made a mistake can be as important as knowing how to fix the mistake. On the other hand, I wonder how well it's actually teaching the spelling. Does the student actually note their spelling error and remember to spell the word correctly the next time? Or do they just learn to right-click the red-underlined word and select the first option? How well will they deal with words that are close in spelling, perhaps not even in the standard dictionary? *shrug* Maybe I was an unusual kid because if I got a paper with red marks and they weren't clear proofreading marks to indicate what the mistake was, I would go to the teacher and bug them for clarification. And if I had a word misspelled and I didn't immediately recognize my error, I would look it up in the dictionary so that I not only knew the correct spelling, but also knew the full meaning of the word. *wry grin* But that latter bit is more in my rant on how the built-in thesaurus in word processors has degraded student writing skills...
I still attribute some of that to lazy teachers who graded on how pretty your handwriting was, but a lot of it was that changing a single word in the middle of a paper didn't require an extra half of an hour to rewrite the paper.
I'm fully with you on that one. I had atrocious handwriting. In 5th grade, I was in the remedial class, along with the kids with motor skill problems and the dyslexic kid. And I remember not correcting essays because I knew I'd have to rewrite the paper to insert lines.
Maybe I was the exception, but I'm not buying that immediate feedback and shifting effort to the actual task (as opposed to busywork) does not improve the learning process for kids. I also call BS on the "nothing beats a book" line. I can't count the number of times I've heard it. There is only one thing that reading a book gets you that watching TV doesn't. You learn to read better. Now, I am not saying that reading well is not a good thing, but that is all reading has on TV.
What immediate feedback? In cases where the system does provide intelligent feedback (typing programs that analyze where your trouble spots are and adjust your curriculum to force you to address them, for instance) or even dumb feedback (I have a friend from college who's tone deaf, but can sing along to Karaoke Revolution because it gives him a visual cue as to how far he is from the note), it can indeed be useful. Problem is, most software doesn't really give meaningful feedback. The word processor can only tell you that the word you used isn't in its dictionary and that this list of words are spelled in a mathematically similar way. The math quizzing program can only tell you that 33+47 is not 81, that it's 80. They don't teach you why and they don't show you where you went wrong. The programs in the article don't even give dumb feedback. As for your comment about TV and books being equivalent... I'd have to disagree there if for no other reason than that a book forces you to actually parse material. Watching TV is more or less a passive thing. They build the images and you watch them. With a book, you have to mentally construct meaning from the words even for the surface material of it. It's mental ex
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
I would argue that today's current generation of instant-messaging web users ("LOl, wyt R U diong?? ;)") is somewhat less literate than yesterday's generation of forum-posting netizens.
Procrastination Man strikes again!
I am very disturbed to hear about the interactive learning article. My 2 year old has about 5 of the systems. One of which she uses all of the time. She does quite well with them. I will say however that I have not noticed her learning anything new, but she does impliment what she does know. I have totally bought into the technology. I don't however hope to replace teachers. These tools should be used for free time play, not classrooms. Lori W http://www.anythingseenontv.com/
My Barbie doll does my accounts. You have me worried now !
How many beans make five, anyhow ?
It's funny... I want to say that I lack your faith in people, but on the other hand, it would seem like I'm giving them too much credit. *shrug* My experience in years of working with computer support is that most people, when confronted with a dialog from the computer saying something, will do the bare minimum to dismiss the dialog. Virus warnings? They'll click ignore. Update posts for their software? Hit ESC and they'll be gone before they do more than flicker up. Similarly, I wonder how much spelling suggestions will stick in their mind. It's there, but a quick right-click and that red underlining is gone, just a mere flicker on the screen. Did it register deeply enough in their mind that there was a misspelling and that this is the correct spelling now? Heh... but me being me, it seems utterly unfathomable that people wouldn't look up words they don't get either. But then again, I'm one of those people who gets annoyed when people "run the full gambit of possibilities."
Regarding my analogy, it wasn't as apt as I'd like it be. I was pressed for time and posted what I could. Let's take the analogy of cooking bread from scratch or from a mix. Reading forces you to have to construct more from the symbools involved than TV does. TV, you have visual and audio provided for you. You don't have to strain your head wondering what Gandalf looked like or sounded like because Peter Jackson would be glad to tell you. Similarly, if I make a cake from scratch, I'm following rules and recipes, but I'm forced to actually implement things from a lower level. With a bread mix, it's dumping a pouch in and putting it in the oven for X mintues at 350 degrees. While you'll get bread in both cases, and you'll understand something about the bread-baking process, I suspect you'll learn more cooking from scratch than when the ingredients are provided for you and you just need to mix them and bake them. I still prefer the exercise analogy, though, as really it is the mental exercise that I feel is the benefit of reading. {cocks head off to one side} Although, I could see TV as encouraging a different skill set. Maybe inductive versus deductive reasoning? In reading, you're given details and you have to create a whole. In TV, you're given a whole, and you have to pick out details. For instance, Lost is popular among viewers because if you watch closely, you can pick up all kinds of background hints and forbodings. This would be more difficult to do in a literature format because the nature of the beast is that you must give the reader all of the details although one can, of course, do so very sneakily. There's a place for both, I think, and there are good and bad examples of both. Lost is a fairly intelligent TV program IMO; Guiding Light isn't. Asimov is intelligent fiction; some of the pulp fiction isn't. There are TV shows where all there is is the surface and there are books where everything is described so minutely that there's no reason to have to dream.
As for the reading, I won't disagree that a basic literacy level is standard these days. What I find truly bizarre is how few people display a level of literacy past that. I have met people who, when reading off of a page, can't recall what they read when asked right after. They're basically just sounding out the words. *shrug* And I won't even get into some of the travesties of grammary and spelling I regularly run into at work, sometimes from people who are otherwise intelligent. On one hand, since I know they're intelligent people, it shouldn't bother me, but every time ou
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.