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Teachers Union: Computers Can Negatively Impact Children's Ability To Learn
Rambo Tribble (1273454) writes "A teacher's union in Northern Ireland is asserting that children spending too much time on computers are impairing their ability to learn. The asserted excessive computer use is being blamed for an inability to concentrate or socialize. As one teacher puts it, '... these gadgets are really destroying their ability to learn.'" This has been a topic of debate for as long as kids have had computers.
And sitting in a boring classroom for hours on end enhances their ability to learn?
Schools do not know how to use computers for primary school students. They simply don't have the curriculum and they're unwilling to take general-purpose PCs and turn them into specific-purpose PCs that don't let one get off-task. They're also addicting and kids that aren't using PCs but see PCs in front of them are jonesing for their next fix.
I grew up in the tail-end of the era of the Apple II in schools, and the beginning of the Macintoshes, before wide-spread TCP/IP networks and before Internet connectivity. The Apple II was well-suited to educational use, as the student could only run the program that they were given the disk for. They couldn't distract themselves from the educational goal. They had one program and one program only, so they could either use that program or do nothing. PCs running DOS had a similar situation, though that was usually more because of DOS being hard enough to use that if one exited the game one generally didn't know how to go about distracting one's self.
Then the Macintosh and early Windows came around. Now they could do some other things in addition to the assigned program, but admittedly there weren't a whole lot of other things to do, so it was fairly easy to keep students on-task.
Then the local area computer networks came about, and if a campus had multiple tasks on their computers, then the students could often figure out how to do those other tasks not for the curriculum for the current class, and suddenly it became that much hard to keep on-task. It became possible to share things with other kids without the teachers catching on, or possible to mess with other kids. Proto cyberbullying if you will.
Then the Internet came along with the browser and general-purpose computers with hundreds of preloaded programs and at least tens of thousands available through the Internet, and now it's almost impossible to keep kids on-task. They can do anything, and with 9,999 wrong choices but only one right choice, that one right choice simply gets drowned out.
Primary school kids need to learn how to read, write, perform basic mathematics, and to learn how to find information the old-fashioned way. They need to learn what an index is, and how information can be sorted and archived, and how to sort the information that they want to present. Learning these skills manually will teach them how these skills work when they can do them electronically or with some other form of automation. Technology as classroom aids in elementary grades needs to be limited to special-purpose machines, like things that help present curriculum, or help in classroom discussion to let the teacher or the students aid their point, or if they're used for things like testing to make grading easier, they need to be locked down so that they only do the function that they're called upon to do at that time.
Once the kids get to secondary school, then start introducing the general-purpose machine. Let them learn how to use a productivity suite, or how to do research electronically, or how to use programs to aid in science education. At least at that point it's possible for the skill to actually still apply to the person's life once they reach adulthood where it might have to be applied.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
What is really important here is:
us /. nerds, being geeks who are almost always involved with computer technology of some sort, in capacities professional, hobbyist, or both, immediately become defensive and insulting toward anyone who talks about technological devices in a negative way.
Never mind the claim, immediately condescend and attack anyone suggesting that electronic devices may not be the optimal solution for every situation!
Bonus: the teacher's union angle! The few right-wing of us (which is me, actually) can immediately jump on that one too. These fucks don't care about kids! There's no way professional teachers know anything about teaching kids! Because they are a teacher's union, they must be speaking on behalf of the anti-ipad wing of the Kremlin!
There is no way that parking a kid in front of a screen for several hours a day can have any ill affects, you socialist pinko union teacher!
THL phish sticks
Bullshit.
The primary conduit for learning, especially in the younger grades, is being shown a skill, being shown the particulars of how that skill works, and then practicing that skill until it's mastered. You don't need computers to learn how to add or divide or to solve for a variable. You don't need computers to learn how to form sentences in language. You don't need computers to learn how to interact with the same people day in, day out in a fashion similar to how one will interact in the workplace once out of school. And you'll learn a lot more about the natural world by actually observing the natural world as opposed to just reading about it or conducting fake virtual experiments though a poorly written educational "simulator".
Ironically the one place that computers would be perfect is in social studies. History doesn't really change, only interpretation of it does, and computers as a conduit to access databases of historical information are perfect and would allow for one to read about differing positions on the reasions for historical events.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
If computers actually impeded the ability to learn, I'd still be coding in BASIC.
I hear you, but sitting behind the computer and doing Facebook and Trackmania is not the same as peeking and poking your Apple II in BASIC.
Is that a roll of dimes in your pocket or are you happy to see me?
This sounds like round 36 of "kids today and their rock-and-roll music." Teachers indulging in future-shock is just plain trite.
I'd like to direct you to the following quote:
"That a century of the younger men wished to confer with their elders on the question to which persons they should, by their vote, entrust a high command, should seem to us scarcely credible. This is due to the cheapened and diminished authority even of parents over their children in our day." - Titus Livius (Livy), The History of Rome, Book 26
This was the earliest, but by far not the only example of "kids today and their rock-and-roll music", as you put it. Examples exist throughout the last century, especially around the turn of 1900, where long and boring essays were published on the subject. However, the above excert is from Livy's History of Rome, written around 25BC. So when you say it's trite, that's a bit of an understatement. 2000+ years we've been listening to this shit.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
If the kids have trouble paying attention to something that isn't exciting, then, for the love of all that is good, be more engaging. The only way to stop boring people is to stop being boring.
Just asked my 9 year old and he disagrees. Maths is boring. It just is, doesn't matter how it is taught. Maths is just boring.
And English is boring too. Terraria, on the other hand, is fun.
"I like Terraria, because it's the only thing I'm good at."
Science, by the was, is boring. In case you didn't know. Playing with a ball, walking or even going outside is boring too.
And when make him walk away from the PC or take the damn iPad off the kid, I'm boring too.
"You said no computer. The iPad isn't a computer ... What the heck am I supposed to do if I'm not even allowed to play on the iPad?!!! Wahhhh." ... reading is BORING!!!! Wahhhh."
"Why don't you read a book?"
"I HATE reading
If I can direct you to this reference http://www.usingenglish.com/re.... Are computers causing education problems, very bloody likely as computer geeks and nerds, a minority, are the only ones that really effectively thrive on that interaction and in that environment. For the rest, they very likely are not exploring that computer educational environment but doing the very same dopey social interactions over and over and over again, like wired up monkeys getting a jolt from a joy buzzer each time they get another like or make a 'friend' or what ever other socially manipulative interaction designed by some shit head doctorates in psychology, working for social network companies, to keep their victims seeing and clicking adds.
All the older geeks and nerds should fully appreciate by now that computers on their own are not the best educational environment for the majority and that their use needs to be limited and properly implemented and logically adjusted to suit the psychology and personality as well as of course existing measured outcomes of each student.
Stop thinking only about what works for you and demanding that everyone else aligns with you and start focusing about what works for each individual and how computers can be used to tailor the educational environment for each student and ensure human social interaction still remains dominant, we are humans after all not machines. Computers should augment the education of the majority not dominate. For us computer geeks and nerds, the story would be different, leave us in the computer lab with the other geeks and nerds and we'll be happy and thrive.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
The difference between all distractions before the Internet and the Internet-connected computer is that for the first time, one has absolutely limitless possibilities for getting distracted without end. The TV show ends and the credits roll. The comic book runs out of pages. The dancer gets tired and the dance hall closes.
The limitless possibilities are addicting. It's almost impossible to stop. Hell, I'm a grown man with a good job and here I am arguing on the Internet in the middle of the night, I've got the defenses to fight this to a greater extent and I even struggle with it.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
You're right about the "no" part, but it's to your bullshit response not his.
Your whole argument is flawed because you've made a single assumption, and that is that kids are bored because they're more advanced. They're not - kids can be bored for many reasons, so shut up and stop being a dick.
You're not this great big brain just because you assume you are.
Computers aren't the problem. The problem is buying a bunch of computers and thinking your job is done. Before computers we didn't just throw a bunch of kids in a room with text books and lab equipment and expect them to emerge 6 months later with a deep understanding of Biology. Why do we essentially do that with computers and expect any meaningful result?
Around 400BC Socrates quipped:
Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.
And I think we have found some cuneiform tablets from Sumer with exasperated teacher comments way older than that:)