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Do Home Computers Help Or Hinder Education?
theodp writes "The NY Times reports on economists' efforts to measure a home computer's educational impact on schoolchildren in low-income households. Taking widely varying routes, they are arriving at similar conclusions: little or no educational benefit is found. Worse, computers seem to have further separated children in low-income households, whose test scores often decline after the machine arrives, from their more privileged counterparts. Abroad, researchers found that children in Romanian households who won a $300 voucher to help them buy computers received significantly lower school grades in math, English and Romanian. Stateside, students in a North Carolina study posted significantly lower math test scores after the first broadband provider showed up in their neighborhood, and significantly lower reading scores as well when the number of broadband providers increased. And a Texas study found that 'there was no evidence linking technology immersion with student self-directed learning or their general satisfaction with schoolwork.'"
What struck me is that kids gained nothing _but_ computer skills. This ought to challenge computer game designers: can you come up with a game that kids will want to play AND increases math and reading scores? I'm not talking about an "educational" game, per se, just a game whose side effect is better reasoning and comprehension. Even kids who read silly novels are learning something that is useful for school. Why not gamers?
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
Unsurprising, and for language skills too as children just spend more time doing stuff on the computer, than properly doing their homework.
What surpises me about todays school education (in the Netherlands) is that programmable graphing calculators are allowed everywhere. If I were a teacher I'd only allow those in perhaps 1 test per year. All else to be done on paper, manually.
When I see my niece who's quite intelligent, she's nowhere near as good at calculating stuff on paper or in her head as she should be. For what I consider te be trivial stuff that I do in my head, she picks up a calculator. And those skills of doing it yourself are important, e.g. to make estimates so you don't blindly trust what the calculator spews out. And those results can be wrong, if you say enter a wrong number somewhere...
In my schooldays, I liked to calculate stuff in my head even though I was a programmable calculator nut (remember the great Casio FX-602P? The excellent but slow HP-41CX?). I did the following trick for example: Someone gave me a calculation that I would then try to give a close estimate to. E.g. 14.6 ^ 2.7. Using various methods I usually got within a few percent. Useless? No, those skills are useful to check calculations. If the outcome is completely different from a manual estimate, somewhere there's a problem...
I remember estimating skills being taught in primary school. At that point they didn't make sense to me, because for me they were too easy, e.g. calculate 125*43. I would just calculate the exact answer, quicker than making an estimate. So estimating needs to be explained too which wasn't done properly then. Only many years later did I see the use of it...
Make of all that what you will, I see no suprises in any event, in the results of the article.
Blaming the computer for Internet distraction isn't correct.
I would be interested to see the effects of putting a computer with educational tools in the home, but WITHOUT INTERNET.
18 minutes TED talk video Clifford Stoll where he touches on computers in the classrooms (and many many many other things): http://www.ted.com/talks/clifford_stoll_on_everything.html
He's a fun watch.
People like to blame the parents. When I was a kid, I remember learning in school.
I do not get the impression from my child that the schools focus on anything that is not a social science. (The teacher flat out told us that no one teaches the multiplication table anymore nor phonetics.)
Kids can't read or do math, but they all know about global warning, the rape of the planet, BP and other evil corps, how this land was stolen from the natives, how we ALL used to have slaves... It is a disgrace. Then people wonder why people have no civic pride.
The guilt laid on our youth by our schools by focusing on only the bad in our history and current events is worse than any guilt I was taught by religion.
Computing as a field is rife with spectacularly good examples of where solutions keep on being developed without any consideration of how they're going to solve a problem - or indeed if there is a problem, or if the problem lends itself to being solved with a computer.
I can't help but feel this is similar. I'm sure I remember hearing about studies years ago when they first started putting computers in classrooms - if you just put the computer in the classroom it was a distraction, but if you invested in appropriate software and built structured lessons around it it was a very capable tool.
Please no. I'm not saying your point isn't valid - your first two sentences seem dead-on accurate, but I've been forced through a couple classes in 'how to learn' at new-thinking school[s], and for everyone involved the classes were a waste of time, except for one teacher who used the class as a sinecure. The good students who already knew how to learn were bored out of their skulls, the poor students who didn't care were bored out of their skulls, and the average kids were uninterested because the teacher had to cater to the lowest level of the class, as they were the ones who needed help.
On the other hand, many other classes accidentally taught students how to learn simply by being reasonably difficult. Exercises determining if students were auditory, visual, or kinesthetic learners did absolutely nothing for them, but being in a fast-paced Chem class actually forced them to figure out some way to learn or else. Some students figured out how to take effective notes, spread their studying wisely, etc, but from my observations they were not the ones making color-coded time-tracking schedules as recommended in the "how to learn" class. They were the ones who looked at their grades and and decided "I'm going to sit down, reread the assignments, rework the problems, and ask people to explain things to me until the number in front of the percent sign goes up."
With kids being expected to learn typing in elementary school these days, we did provide a computer (even in the bedroom!), but it was loaded with a locked down version of FreeBSD, and had no Internet/e-mail/etc access. Daily typing drills resulted in a fantastic improvement in typing (according to the technology teacher), and Tux Math, a math drill game, seems to be more attractive than flash cards or printed math sheets, especially since getting a high score involves having to do the work more quickly, and our insistence on home row means that it's effectively also typing drill for the numbers row.
Perhaps the real problem here is that a computer is of limited usefulness, and that if it isn't thoughtfully and carefully deployed and monitored, then the benefits become more questionable. The tech teacher implied that we're very different than most families in that we've not provided Internet access or e-mail, but quite frankly that's going to be delayed for as long as possible precisely because we don't see a huge amount of value in Internet access for kids in elementary school, and "requirements" that homework be "e-mailed" in isn't going to change that.
There are significant negative aspects to uncontrolled access to computers and the Internet, ranging from benign time-wasting to dangerous predators. As a tech-aware parent, it's difficult to find suitable and relevant things to use the computer for, especially without Internet access, and so it comes as no shock to me that placing a computer into a random family's educational mix has limited effectiveness.
The artiicle is The Early Catastrophe
OLPC's are made for education and not mindless repetitive head full of zombie gaming. They self report glowing results. So it is highly frustrating that these studies neglected to look at OLPC and made a bunch of over generalizing sensational absolutist statements without specifying which computers were used. etc etc.
I grew up dirt poor. One of the places we lived in had a dirt floor and no insulation in Great Falls, Montana.
I got to eat meat year round because my father poached deer out of season.
I got to eat bread because my parents bought hogs feed at 5 cents/lb to grind to flour.
I got to eat vegetables because we would gleen the fields of industrial farms of low growing fruit/veggies after the harvester machines passed through.
My parents were to religiously conservative to teach me anything at home that didn't come from the bible.
When we got a computer, it opened up the world for me.
From that point on, I never learned anything in school until I started working on my second college degree.
This was because I had already learned it from exploring on my own by the time school had gotten around to teaching it.
My experience may be far from common, but it was invaluable for me that I had access to a computer.
At my daughter's (who is 10 years old) school they strongly recommend no Radio, TV or Computer until 12 years old, yes it's Waldorf. I am a technologist (Linux/Unix administrator), but I have found that my daughter's desire to draw or read or write rather than be on the computer or watching TV very gratifying. I hope they consider this kind of policy in public schools, IMHO t would help children have better relationships (friends, family...etc) and be happier.
"The Brady Bunch is back...working homicide"
One might as well say girls hinder education for boys. Or TV. Or radio. Or cars. Or outside. Or.... So a computer doesn't HELP their education, but there was no solid conclusive evidence that it hurt, either. Even Texas just stated that "there was no evidence linking technology immersion with student self-directed learning or their general satisfaction with schoolwork." A kid that isn't interested in school isn't going to raise his grades because he got a fancy new computer. Or TV. Or radio. Or girlfriend. Or car. Or.... Counter study: give a group of kids a fully updated set of the Encyclopedia Britannica and see how it effects their education. No need, the results are above.
Well, it would be that and even the quests could be at least a good reading exercise, if people actually read that stuff any more. But nowadays they just go wherever the little cube points them and then chances are they might not even know where they've been.
I still remember teaching someone to play WoW, and let's leave him unnamed for the moment for the sake of protecting the idi... err... innocent. It went well until he found Quest Helper. Ouch. Then came talks like:
Me: Ok, we'll get the egg first and then for the other quest we'll get the kobolds further south, they have much better drop rate.
Him: Wait, wait, the little cube says there's a kobold there that has it!
Me: Ah, screw those, the drop rate is homeopathic on those.
Him: No, you don't understand! The cube says it has it!
Me: How the heck would it know that? The drops aren't even generated until you kill them? It'll show you the nearest kobold in the area, regardless of drop rate.
Him: No, the little cube says that kobold has it!
Me: *sigh* Ok, let's prove it then.
*Skip a minute of whack-a-kobold, and obviously it didn't drop the quest item*
Me: Did that kobold drop it?
Him: No...
Me: Told ya. Let's go south, as I was saying. Those have better drop rates.
Him: Ok
*Walk 10 ft*
Him: Wait, wait, the little cube says there's another kobold over there and it has the item!
Me: Didn't we just go through this? The "little cube" as you call it, can't possibly know what it will drop.
Him: Well, it just knows. If I mouse over it, it says it's for that quest. You'll see.
Me: *sigh* Ok, go get him, tiger.
*More whack-a-kobold, no drop*
Me: Ok, NOW do you see that it doesn't know that?
Him: Must have been a glitch.
Me: Look, seriously, just follow me, we could have gotten it already from the group down south. Just trust me, ok?
Him: Ok.
*Move another 10 ft*
Him: Wait, wait, the cube says the first kobold just respawned and it has the item!
Me: Not again...
Him: You'll see! If it says kill that one, then that one has it!
Me: Jesus Haploid Christ... Ok, let's prove it again, shall we?
Repeat about a dozen times, after which it dawned upon me that no amount of reasoning or failed tests would shake his religious faith in "the little cube" knowing everything, and just let him lead wherever the cube may point him. Better to spend another hour chasing a 1% drop rate than spend another hour making an enemy.
But, either way, if you asked him afterwards where he's been for that quest or what road to follow there, he'd be as clueless as a baby. He just followed the little cube. Any names, landmarks, etc, didn't even register and really didn't need to register. There was no need to notice stuff like sub-zone name or notice even where the road is or anything. Those were not what told him where to go. The only thing that mattered, the alpha and omega, was just where the little cube was on the minimap.
And just so I don't pick on just WoW, the same thing has been done for EQ2 too, in the form of maps with all quest positions already marked. And if anyone did a game based on RL geography, well, the same would happen. You'd get people who _still_ don't know where Oregon is, even after following the trail to it and back for a quest, because they weren't even noticing where they are or where they're going. The were just following the little cube.
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