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Do Tablets Help Children Learn?
hypnosec writes "With the wide array of electronic devices available in our everyday lives, it appears that children have formed an attachment to a different kind of toy. According to the latest survey, 77 per cent of polled US, UK parents believe that iPads and other tablets are good educational tools that boost kids' creativity. Meanwhile, researchers in this field explain that it is a matter of balance — and a child's access to tablets and other similar electronic devices should be monitored. Specialists warn that using tablets in excess could cause attention deficit disorder and even autism, particularly at a very young age."
Do they help us learn? Well, it depends on the software.
Are they part of the Star Trek future-utopia? Hell yes.
Cell phones...tablets...we're well on our way to holodecks, and I'll be damned if we stop now.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
The real question is, is our children learning?
Yes, and too much television will rot your brain, give you cancer, and ruin your eyes.
Tablets: They're new, they're (a little) different, they'll have lots of critics and fear mongers.
As for "causing ADD/Autism", I only see that happening if they're used as the ultimate babysitter (kinda like TV 30 years ago.) If a kid's whole day, every day, consists of 99% tablet interaction and 1% ducking criticism from parents and other adults, yeah, they're going to come out a little bent, at least compared to kids who didn't grow up that way.
Anybody still go to a school that forbids simple +-x/ calculators in advanced math and science courses? This, too, shall pass.
I wish people would stop making the assumption that there is only one way to learn something. It implies that there is one superior form of learning and a bunch of inferior ones. One problem of one-to-many teaching is that it must use a learning style which is effective to the broadest audience, which can (and usually does) mean that the learning style used is not the optimal one for some, if not most, of the audience. Another is that not all material is equal; You do not teach math the same way as you do phy ed; The goals are different, and in fact the areas of the brain targeted for development are different. Radically so.
So to ask a question "Do tablets help children learn?" is disengenuous at best. They will help in some situations. They will not help in all situations.
With that out of the way, I have some personal experience worth sharing. My sister is age 15 and has struggled with reading and math; Her verbal vocabulary vastly outstrips her written vocabulary. I purchased an iPad 2 for her this christmas (not cheap!) after several previous failed attempts to get her interested in reading. Since then, her reading comprehension has improved, and I believe access to a tablet device can be credited with that, because of it's interactive and hands-on nature. It is a more intuitive design for written material than a computer, and it is in a more accessible format. As well, because she can just swipe her finger over a word and get a definition and a spoken example of the word, it helps associate the written form of the word to the spoken one. I think tablets are very good for certain specific cases like this; and could be very beneficial for people with specific learning disorders.
But I do not suggest everyone buy a tablet for their child (or 'a' child, as the case may be!).
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
I personally work in education in a fairly large school district.. Whenever people discuss this topic, they tend to focus on the wrong things in my opinion. What we need to focus on: 1) Is this a matter of taking a technology that was developed for personal entertainment and trying to make it conform to "serious education". 2) If kids can't write/express succinctly on paper or read a book, what makes you think that some shiny $500 tablet will? 3) Total cost of the device, not just initial.. you look at your average tablet plus e-books, plus apps and you have a very expensive alternative to plain ole notebooks, pencils, and textbooks 4) Management.. Schools quickly learn that just giving these things away to students quickly amounts to a management nightmare they didn't foresee.. Everything from warranty repair, broken glass, application deployment/updates and acceptable content are only possible with a well thought out plan, and school-wide participation at all levels..
More generally - is there anything they aren't blaming autism on these days?
let's go further. is autism an indicator of our evolution? is autism a natural progression of our minds mixing with technology before we merge with it a la kurzweil-style? the borg seem pretty autistic.
insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT
As I've pointed out in other threads, I work in a school where we're slashing budgets but somehow can afford to buy ipads for all the classrooms. Sadly, the ipad isnt well integrated into the curriculum, there isnt an IT strategy or plan nor people to do something if there were one. Waste of money.
Creativity? Sure. We had etch-a-sketches for that sort of thing, and play doh and finger paints. Seems they're just electronic versions of the same.
The company that did the survey, KidsIndustries, offers their marketing service "to ensure your brand is front of mind with your consumer". So quick, run out and buy several iPads; everybody knows they make your kid smarter.
When I first got into teaching, I got in towards the late-end of a district's adoption into an all "leftist" exploratory K-12 math curriculum. I'm sure most of you are familiar with at least one series that falls into this category. We had "Math Investigations" in grades K-5, "CMP" 6-8, and Core-Plus 9-12. The core concept of this series was that teachers were not supposed to teach rote-learning of math facts. Calculators would supplant that "old-fashioned" method of learning. Kids grew up learning how to "explore" math, rather than memorize addition & multiplication tables, practice procedures repeatedly, and churn out page after page of "drill n' kill" problems.
I got these kids in high school. When we ended Core Plus and reverted back to a traditional textbook, they couldn't do 40% of what you would find in an Algebra I textbook, because they did not have these basic math facts. They couldn't divide, so they couldn't factor. They couldn't calculate powers, so they couldn't understand square roots. They could not see patterns in numbers, because they had never learned to calculate. When they let the calculator do all the calculations, their brain never stopped to watch the patterns that were emerging.
Now we want to give iPads to kindergartners. Has anyone stopped to think about what basic skill sets we'll be depriving these children of that we adults take for granted? The ones we take them for granted because we grew up w/o iPads to impede learning basic skills...skills like social interaction, self regulation, dialog and public speaking... Forgive me, it's been a while since I've studied child psychology, but there's a significant amount of neurological development that occurs in elementary school and continues on though middle and high school. Has anyone really stopped to examine and consider the long-term effects of significant exposure to this technology, especially at such young ages?
I may have grown up with a computer, as well as most slashdot readers out there. But it's mere empirical evidence to say, "Look at me, I turned out fine." (Besides, your concept of "fine" may include living in your parent's basement at the age of 35.) Are there any real studies (rather than some questionable poll) that have examined this subject?