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Laptops In the Classroom Don't Increase Grades
blitzkrieg3 writes "Classrooms all around the country are being fitted with one to one laptop programs, networking hardware, digital projectors, and other technology in order to stay competitive in the 21st century. Kyrene school district spent $3 million modernizing their classrooms. The problem? The increase in spending doesn't lead to an increase in test scores. Policy makers calling for high tech classrooms, including former execs from HP, Apple, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, want to increase technology investment despite the results. Others are not so sure, or think it is an outright waste of money."
Are the tests testing for technological awareness and other abilities enhanced by using laptops?
That's the only thing that contributes to increase student grades. Technology is just a tool, not a means.
Exterior of a computer skills classes, which are obviously important in their own right, all this tech does is increase student distraction. I'm a bit surprised they aren't tracking a DECLINE in test scores in all other areas of learning, really.
Computers by themselves are not magic teachers. They wont replace quality teachers but they can with proper application assist in education. I think most of the problem with computers in school is that people have the wrong expectations. It's just a tool. Like any tool you have to know how to use it properly and what it can and can not do.
Who would have thought giving kids an even bigger distraction would not increase grades? Kids today can barely sit still and concentrate on one task at a time let alone sit in front of a laptop and be expected to only take notes. What kids really need now is someone to tell them to sit down, shut up, and listen. If a disruptive student doesn't want to be there then they should be able to leave. Forcing them to be there is not helping them or anyone else who is trying to learn.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
What sort of valid conclusions can one draw from tracking test scores over time? And why is the immediate reaction "blame the tool"?
I remember the same arguments about calculators, and how they were going to dramatically cause a significant increase in every student's test scores by simply giving them the right answers, and thereby prevent them from gaining the true understanding that they would need to succeed in the world.
The end result was that rather than having people solve very simplistic problems that they could actually pull off in a 4x4-inch section of paper, students were to solve far more complex problems that actually test their understanding of what they are attempting to do instead of their grasp over carrying a 1.
Bottom line is that as long as we have people who say "I'm computer illiterate" and then laugh, then there is still work to be done to enable people to be successful in the world.
Thirty four characters live here.
Schools should not be wasting time and money on tech until they can get reading writing and basic math right. Without those none of the rest matter.
And I have yet to be convinced that handing out Macs (and it is ALWAYS Apple who wins these school contracts) does one damned thing to improve education, other than twitter and facebook skills of course.... future employers are going to be hungering for that.... NOT.
I think it is possible to use tech to make a better education process, but that the American education system is wholly unsuited to making the fundamental change in mindset required. So quit wasting money until we are ready to blow it up and start over. In case nobody has noticed the country is broke.
Democrat delenda est
This is very important research because test scores are the only measure of a child's success! Experience with real life tools are irrelevant. Keeping students engaged isn't important.
Putting my tongue-in-cheek assessment aside, not every investment immediately yields an increase in test scores: nor should we only invest in things that do. Test scores are important, but they are not the only measure of a student's success. In 10 years no one will look back and say that adding laptops to schools was a bad idea any more than they will tell us that adding light bulbs or bathrooms was a bad idea. Technology moves forward, and schools should keep up or risk their test scores going down. It won't be too long before every 4-year-old has a portable computer of some kind.
...when you keep teaching the same boring crap in the most boring way. Yes, even with laptops, iPads, projectors and all the bells and whistles.
Actually, I do know what I am talking about: I teach/research functional programming and game development, and guess what? I use the latter when teaching the former, to make it more entertaining. More than one student, after one such lesson, approached me to tell me that he was quite surprised to find that functional programming could actually be "fun" (pun intended).
The problem is that students are surprised when something is shown in a fun and entertaining fashion, and they accept it when stale notions are pushed down their throats. I'd start by fixing this...
My book: Friendly F#, fun with game development and XNA; my game: Galaxy Wars by VSTeam; my gamedev language: Casanova.
I am currently taking senior level physics classes at one of the big universities, and I can say that at the undergraduate and graduate level, laptops are not a boon to learning. Walking into any of the higher level science lectures and the last thing you will see is a laptop. Its usually just pencil and paper and perhaps a sparse open book. Working quickly through the professor's QCD problems on the board is not easier with a computer, unless perhaps you are a master of putting in equations and such in digital format. Same applies for partial differential equations, set theory, number theory, analysis, and all those other symbolic math classes. As my professors say, computers are just useful idiots. They aren't going to teach you anything new, only the programmer can 'teach' the computer new methods of approximating problems.
Now in my labs, yes, computers come into play quite a bit, MatLab, Fortran, C++, etc. for modelling large systems, of course they make massive calculation sets easier, but for a fundamental understanding of Minkowski space-time, Hilbert Spaces, etc, just having a web-connected machine in front of you during the lecture is not going to make the class that much easier. Having an innate desire to understand the fundamentals is key. Naturally having many open doors available for obtaining the information is helpful, but for the classic situation in which you have a quality professor spewing content, its usually easier (for me at least, YMMV) to leave the laptop at the house.
Sounds like another 'lets throw enough money into the technology and hope the problem goes away'. As far as K12 education goes in the states, well, I have to speculate that 90% of the students would love a laptop in the classroom, just not for the learning part. One man's opinion.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
If all they do is decrease the insane cost of books then its a win.
But to use a calculator, you need the foundational skills and understanding that underlie the problems they help solve. Computers are essentially media devices now: just like you don't need to know how TVs work to watch TV, you need understand nothing about computers to use them. And they are very distracting.
I think they have a role in the classroom. But I think that role is overemphasized and a lot of "I'm a hammer-expert, and that's a nail" thinking from people in the tech sector is wasting a lot of resources in education that could be spent much better.
I learned how to use DOS at the same time I learned how to read. In fact, some of my earliest memories include a luggage-sized computer with a three-inch monochrome monitor. Today, I spend the vast majority of my free time at my computer desk. I can program in several computer languages. My desktop dual-boots 64-bit versions of Windows 7 and Ubuntu 10.4, and I am even typing this essay on an ergonomic keyboard that I brought from home. I am, to use a term coined a decade ago, a digital native. So, when I look at the state instructional technology today, I am both impressed at the technological progress over the course of my lifetime and utterly disgusted by the shortcomings of its implementation in our society.
Foremost among my concerns is the mind-boggling disparity in access to technology, particularly across socio-economic status. I can point to you on a map two schools within mere miles of each other where one has SMART boards in every classroom and the other did not even have a classroom set of calculators available to me as a math teacher. That is only just digital technology. On a far more fundamental level, I can point to a different set of two nearby schools where one has automatic-flush toilets and the other had such frequent plumbing problems to a point that drinking from the water fountain was risky business. I simply do not feel that I can ethically spend time researching Facebook or the iPad as instructional technologies when not every student in the public education system has access to comfortable and healthy analog technologies like air conditioning.
Another issue that gives me significant pause is Mooreâ(TM)s Law. Technology is advancing at a prodigiously exponential rate, to the point that futurists predict an upcoming event dubbed the Singularity at which technology will progress faster than society can cope with its evolution. I am particularly fond of a TED talk given by Ray Kurzweil on the topic of the integration of technology with the body, particularly the part on an already-possible synthetic red blood cell which would, to paraphrase Kurzweil, allow the average teenager to regularly outperform todayâ(TM)s Olympic athletes. Even the advent of internet-enabled phones has caused notable distress among teachers. I can not even imagine the discord when the technology is implantable and can not be turned off or confiscated. On the other hand, the standardized management paradigm behind the OGT and the SAT would finally collapse, so it would not be all bad. I digress.
Looking only at today, I question why the research on technology on Second Life as an educational venue is only in its infancy when that particular medium has begun to be replaced by other, newer alternatives like Free Realms. Similarly, Facebook is being replaced by Twitter and Diaspora just as Facebook replaced MySpace replaced Livejournal replaced Xanga replaced Geocities. Honestly, Facebook is so passé that even governmental agencies have investigated its use. I forget which one, but just a few months ago around ten red balloons were placed at random locations across the continental United States. All of them were found within about eight hours. My point is that research that focuses on a specific technology in response to a cultural fad is doomed to failure from the start. By the time anything practical made its way to teachers, students would already be offended by the outdatedness of it.
The third problem that I have with instructional technology is that there is far to much emphasis on innovation and far too little on revision. Take the TI-nspire. Look, it now includes a computer algebra system but has a terrible user interface, and just as math teachers were starting to get comfortable with the idea of allowing graphing calculators in the classroom, we have made the technology even more powerful â" re-emphasizing the original concerns about the calculators doing all the work. Similarly, take all these new educational iPad apps on top of the virtual man
The student needs to work to find out how he/she learns best for each subject and apply that/those technique(s).
Unfortunately, most middle-school students (the story uses an example of seventh-graders) aren't too good at resisting temptation or being sufficiently introspective. I think the real issue is that parents and teachers are trying to apply the (failed) "abandon children in front of television" parenting approach to education.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
I work for the local public school district as a tech responsible for setting up and maintaining computer labs and classroom and staff equipment, and every year we keep piling on more and more equipment -- for example, our classrooms now have two Macbooks for every teacher, one for their digital projector/whiteboard and one for their desk, document cameras, clickers, ipads/ipods and the like. The majority of the teachers, save some of the younger 30 crowd, tend to only use equipment that has some analogue to previous technology they grew up with (think using document cameras and digital projectors as replacements for the old projector overheads), and the vast majority goes unused or only infrequently used for the most rudimentary purposes. The amount of money being spent on technology for teachers that won't make use of it is staggering. Even the younger teachers only scratch the surface of what can be done to engage their students with the technology they've been provided. In my opinion, some (most?) districts have a fire and forget attitude towards technology: they provide the equipment, but very little in the way of instructional support and software to use, such as device specific applications and online courseware. And when you look at the ridiculously high prices for district wide purchases of licenses for these things, it's no wonder. Aside from Smartboard/Interwrite whiteboard lessons, there's little in the way of cheap or free and widely available instruction material developed for interactive classrooms, and until that changes, and the trailing generations of teachers retire, a lot of taxpayer money is being wasted.
Umm, have you ever actually interacted with teachers RE: technology?
I'm sure that there are exceptions who actually have the economic views you assert(and I've definitely met exceptions who simply know fuck-all about technology and really don't want to start now; but the latter group is, in the face of retirement and replacement by 20-somethings who've been using laptops for at least their entire undergrand, a self-solving problem); but my experience during the times I've worked in educational IT is that teachers are either very enthusiastic about technology, or simple technophobes without some sinister union plot motive.
There exists automated drilling and assessment software for, among other things, elementary mathematics instruction. The math department came to us asking for an implementation, and we can't keep up with the demand for in-classroom computers to support the stuff. The music department, for their part, has enthusiastically adopted a rather neat automated system that can analyze the deviations of a student playing an instrument from the desired waveforms for a piece. Art? We haven't been able to afford Wacoms for the lab; but they voluntarily branched out into digital raster-image editing...
There are some perverse elements of educational union politicking; but my work with the IT department never once ran into opposition on teacher-economic grounds.
The problem is, schools are looking for a "silver bullet" for their scores. Buy this thing, scores improve. Nothing like that actually exists in reality, though. Schools are full of expensive technology that doesn't get used because the teachers can't be bothered to use it, or because the IT department is behind and hasn't got it functioning yet, or because it is difficult/inconvenient to use because of limited access or overly restrictive security measures.
If you DO want to implement some fancy new program, here's what you need:
First and foremost, you have to have teachers on board. If the teachers are resisting the new technology, it isn't going to be worth your time to try to force it on them. Get rid of the teachers, abandon the technology, but don't foist a bunch of tech on teachers that don't want it. It will be a waste of everyone's time.
Also, you have to think through your actions. Get the students on your side, and get them to buy in to the program. The tech department that I was working at tried to lock down the computers to a pretty extreme level. Time restrictions, draconian internet filtering (even at home), and random screen watching during the day. The end result was that the students felt like the laptops were worthless, and simultaneously had a big incentive to work around the blocks in place. People act like you expect them to act, and we essentially told the students that we viewed them as semi-criminal, irresponsible delinquents. Plus, anybody who has used a Live CD knows that it takes about 30 seconds to bypass even the most bulletproof software restrictions, as long as you have physical access. You can imagine how that turned out.
Finally, you have to have something to DO with the laptops. You can't just drop them in classrooms and wait. You need to essentially build your entire curriculum around the laptops to make them appreciably better than the normal, boring computer lab. Have a research based, directed, cohesive plan for how and why the laptops are being used, and they might actually be worth your while.
It's kind of sad, because a well-funded technology plan could be an amazing tool. In properly implemented programs, they've shown that laptops CAN have a big, positive impact, especially for gifted and talented kids who can all of a sudden direct their own learning to a greater extent. However, throwing money at a problem almost never fixes it. You need good people, good strategy, and the resources to support them.
When virtual reality is possible, the student can learn history by "being there".
They can learn what an artist's version of history is. This can probably be done better than the standard textbooks, but it also makes rewriting history easier and more real than the truth written in some book.
You don't become a great artist by looking at great paintings. You get there by painting all the time. You don't become a mathematician by watching the instructor. You get there by doing the homework. You don't become a famous author by reading Jane Austin and Mark Twain. You get there by writing.
In every case, the thing you must do is create content. However, that's almost impossible on tablets (no keyboard), hard on laptops (small keyboard, no real mouse), and even slightly challenging on desktops (ever try typing out a complex mathematical equation in Latex?).
Today's latest and greatest systems (I'm looking at you, iPad) are really geared toward content consumption, not creation. We should focus more on making it easy for kids to express themselves and then give them the tools that do that.
Computers are essentially media devices now: just like you don't need to know how TVs work to watch TV, you need understand nothing about computers to use them. And they are very distracting.
Computers are not distracting. Computers are tools. If distracting software or content is allowed on the computers, then yes they are a distraction... school computers, during class, should probably not be connected to the internet (or at least not allow browsing).
Computers are a fantastic tool and there's no reason to think they cannot improve education if the right approach is taken. But just dumping a computer in a classroom without figuring out just what the approach should be makes no sense.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
A track at the school does not make fat kids skinny. It does, however, support runners at the school. A swimming pool at the city park does not teach children to swim, either. But access to a public pool levels the playing field between kids who get private lessons and those who cannot. Anyone who thinks expenditures on track and field make kids thin doesn't understand that the access is directed to the top of the class - the runners, swimmers, and computer illiterates. It's no different than paying the salary of a teacher when only 50% of the kids are listening or doing their homework. Laptops, and teachers, are provided so that the students who CAN and WILL pay attention and benefit from them have access to them, the other 50% of students can go to hell and take the schools GPA average with them.
Gently reply
When virtual reality is possible, the student can learn history by "being there"
I have family members who lived through *major* historical events. Being there didn't tell them why they were there nor why it was so important nor what was happening a few miles away and how that impacted them. They didn't really understand the big picture until I shared some of that old fashioned college book learning with them.
History is not merely a record of what happened, it also considers the various things that influenced what happened. The real work and study is often in the later.
The learning process is driven by the teachers
I'd argue the learning process is driven by interest in the subject. IMHO, giving each kid a laptop doesn't generate interest in any subject.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
That depends... Shipping and handling included in the online offer, and how much does it cost me to get to the mall? How about your ecological impact? Do you value being able to have the product in your hands before you buy, etc, etc, etc.... There is no 'right' answer to this question, one you really start to look at the big picture. A teen obviously won't do that, I'm just teasing you a bit.
I don't think fashion oriented questions like these would have motivated me when I was a kid ;-)
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Are the commenters forgetting that in low-income areas, many students don't have computers or internet at home, and their parents don't care enough to take them to the library. Therefore, they don't do homework. These tools are for use outside of class.
I have family members who lived through *major* historical events. Being there didn't tell them why they were there nor why it was so important nor what was happening a few miles away and how that impacted them.
+1 to your point but not sure how it invalidates the idea of "VR learning" as, personally, I think it would depend on the presentation. You're right, being able to put individual events in context is only possible by looking at the bigger picture, but "VR learning" could help put a human face on history. The post you're replying to is trying to make the general point that laptops alone are not enough, but that laptops + content = learning.
To second your "being there" comment though: During WW2, my grandmother worked as a switchboard operator at the cabinet war rooms and spoke with (and even met) VIPs of the time like Churchill. She freely admits that she often had to be told "who that was" after the event by her friends who knew. She has amazing, and often worrying, stories, like being "chased" around the garden by some italian airmen who being de-briefed at the same country house where she was having her R&R. Or jumping into a Kent hedgerow with a man to avoid a bomb dropped by a bomber on its return flight from London. One night, coming back from a dance, a man invited her and her friend to "see something really special", luckily, he only took them up to the roof of a nearby roof so they could watch London burning... Another night, she went out dancing and was asked to dance by a black GI, when a British officer came over and broke them up. Another time a Texan pilot tried to "woo" her with nylons and hand-towels ("you couldn't get nice ones during the war you know") but when she found out he was married she told him to give the ring he'd bought to his wife. There are some other really atypical experiences but her wartime experience is a weirdly convenient microcosm of a lot of stereotypical wartime experiences.
So, she has a "rich" (by which I mean, lurid) and interesting personal history to tell, but she couldn't tell you (and probably couldn't even have told you at the time) about tank movements, air drops, strategy, tactics, intelligence gathering, counter-espionage, etc. (Just as, I imagine, most soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan couldn't tell you about those higher-level details.) So, like you, I don't see VR ever replacing traditional history education but it would be a great complementary experience. After all, that's part of the reason why history teachers take children on school trips to the cabinet war rooms, the Somme or medieval castles.(Or civil war re-enactments for U.S-ians.)
I was using the family computer (windows XP) for a while. I knew some things about how to use it, but not much. When I found an old (1990s-ish) laptop, and set it up with windows 98, I learned many more things about how the hardware and software of a computer work. When I got my own laptop, then a year later switched to Linux, I learned quite a bit more. Since then, I have become much better with computers, as I tried new things and had to fix everything I broke. Working with the terminal and C made me a much better typer than any software program. Having to set up each thing with very little outside support really taught me a lot. If the kids just get the computers with everything set up, and someone to fix it when it breaks, it will not help them a lot.
That their test scores for computer literacy are higher in classrooms where they're actually using computers, rather than cardboard boxes with keyboards drawn on them.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
It may be irrelevant, but when I was teaching "Intro to Computers" (COBOL) as a sub... the class got weirded out when I had them move to the boards in the classroom and start writing programs OFF the computer...
The whole class got to discuss four students work at the same time... and it only took a couple of class sessions till they remembered to leave the computers off till the lesson and it's review on the boards was done...
I was just a sub, and unfortunately had no written guidance so I took it slow and easy, making sure that the students "got it" before moving on...
It seemed slow paced to me anyway, but I made sure they knew the current stuff before we added things... Really it's the only way I know to teach...
Before the end of my time there some of the students just kept up and some were using ASCII art, colors, and sounds...(BEL)
Some didn't get it at all (and I wondered WHY they picked a computer class) some needed both the lectures, examples, and cross feed of other students helping them improve their code (which wasn't gonna happen on a PC) and some would have had to be chased from the classroom with a stick to KEEP them from learning so I concentrated on the middle group... When the regular teacher got back to work they kept me on for another week to get her up to speed on where I'd taken her classes (this one and Systems Analysis 4XX)
Her only gripe was that I'd covered the whole semester's in a little over a month...
Which leads me to believe that we might be doing better for the next generation just TEACHING a subject well than throwing all the expensive toys in the world at it...
Hard to hand code OO projects in high level languages when they depend on a GUI to put it all together... but understanding the BASICS first has gotta help!!!
More importantly the grading process is driven by grades. If everyone gets a A+ your grading way to easy. So ideally you should grade to a sliding scale, so that some get A+ and some fail. This is normal and to be expected just like 100 IQ being the average should also gain an average grade, those below needing to do more work to pass and those above tending to cruise or work harder and achieve higher grades.
Latops in classrooms should ideally replace textbooks and allow more to be taught in the area of socio-economics, law and political understanding. Simulations can also be used to provide greater understanding of complex interactions.
The never ending problem I have found with computers is the majority treat them like a magic box and just like a magic box it will do the work for them, learn for them and understand for them. Beware the magic box will not make learning anything else easier, it fact it will make it harder because you also have to learn how to use the magic box. Computer make information more accessible they do not make it easier to learn (a higher IQ does that).
Computers can of course be used to more effectively tailor the learning experience to the IQ of the children, providing challenges for those with higher IQ and providing more help for those with problems. They could be used to accelerate the smartest through the education process, allowing them to graduate early and move on.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Children growing up today have something that we didn't: all of the worlds information at their fingertips in a matter of seconds. The most important thing we can teach them is how to find and utilize this information. Such skills can be taught with excellent English, computer literacy and advanced searching; how to piece together knowledge from multiple sources, how to find a good tutorial and apply it to what you're doing. Then teachers can get on with their real job: inspire students to take up a challenge then watch them excel.
The use of simulations and games to teach complex models is excellent, but it's real stretch from that to a laptop-on-every-desk all-the-time. Part of learning is learning the management of one's attention.