Slashdot Mirror
Report: Computers 'Do Not Improve' Pupil Results
An anonymous reader writes:
A report issued by the UK's Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has evaluated how technology in classrooms affects test results, and found that the availability of computers provides "no noticeable improvement" to students' test scores. According to the report, "Students who use computers very frequently at school get worse results." Also, "high achieving school systems such as South Korea and Shanghai in China have lower levels of computer use in school." The organization warns that classroom technology can be a distraction if implemented unwisely, and it also opens the door to easy ways of cheating.
wait, you are not talking about these pupils, right?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Computers enable procrastination always providing readily available diversionary escape. Learning is still hard work... no short cuts.
Its not computers, magnet schools, charter schools, teacher pay, higher taxes or any of those even when statistics sometimes hint at showing otherwise. The commonality is involved parents who help their kids when struggle, demand they toe the line when they get hardheaded, and have expectations for success. Its just not politically correct to say so because parent involvement lines up so closely with racial lines. Not exact, but close enough.
Digital is, by definition, imperfect. Analog is the way to go.
"The organization warns that classroom technology can be a distraction if implemented unwisely..."
I've been saying this for a decade. If the computer that the student uses is a general-purpose computer and can do 10,000 things, of which only one thing is that which the student should be doing, the student is going to be overwhelmingly tempted to do one of the rest of those 9,999 things instead, especially if that other thing is more fun.
Software for teaching computers needs to be developed. It needs to limit the available options to the lessons and only a few diversions, like how computers were before they were networked in schools.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
While I don't have an opinion on whether scholastic computer use is a net positive or a net negative, I think this may be a case of optimizing for the benchmark.
The question I have is who good are these tests at predicting success in the real world? There are a lot of life skills that aren't captured in an SAT score.
Computers are to the brain as a front end loader is to the construction worker. It replaces the manual labor.
But since results are measured without access to computers, then the students must rely on their poorly exercised brain.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
but I still think it was a dumb conclusion because it is simply treating correlation as causation. The raw data does not show anything about what the computers were used for or what teaching methods were employed. If they were just digital babysitters then naturally the effect would be nil. You could probably come up with the similar statistics for "books" or relative desk area or minutes spent in class.
Society tends to think that throwing money a problem will somehow improve things. Don't get me wrong up to a point it does, but after that there is very little return for dollar spent. And in most schools, in most first world countries that point has long since been reached especially ones that can afford computers for every student.
Currently computers are no replacement for the two way communication that happens when an actual person is teaching you.
How many of these parents work with their kids when at home? How many let the kids to go their room and play on the iPad or xbox and only see them at dinner? Or are too busy driving them to useless and expensive team sports events?
Education requires major input from the parents but many of them treat the schools like babysitters and get mad at the teachers when their kids can barely read.
Trolling is a art,
Computers rarely help. Ever.
Now watch as those whose salaries are paid by pushing more computers and testing post lies that aren't backed by peer reviewed scientific studies, to feather their nests.
"the More you Know"
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Many scholastic benchmarks are already computer-based.
Your argument is about as strong as saying kids do badly on tests because they don't use bubble-sheets for learning.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
We've moved away from very expensive smartboards and higher-end computers in favor of cheap projectors, whiteboards, and chromebooks.
The chromebooks are strictly for web-research, writing, spreadsheets, and presentations.
The projectors help a teacher share content with a class during a lesson.
We have some iPads, but we only use them to run some special-ed specific reading apps. They do help the kids read material that would otherwise be very difficult for some.
The past few years have been filled with schools blindly deploying smartboards, iPads, and high end windows/apple laptops. Unfortunately many of these districts didn't put in enough support systems or integrate the technology into the curriculum. We are only deploying tech where we see tangible benefits to classroom activities.
Is by firing most language teachers and making students do 1 hour Rosetta Stone. When I was growing up, I don't think I ever had a Spanish class that actually even attempted to teach Spanish at the level where you could converse fluently with a 4 year old. So based on my experience, there's probably not a damn thing technology could do to screw up those subjects at most public schools.
A computer is a tool. Without the education to properly use it, along with a curriculum based around how you utilize said tool, of course it won't raise scores across a broad category.
No not race, it has more to do with local culture. Pick your current stereotypical racial example and it can be destroyed by cultural examples. The recent immigrant who values their child's education far more than some locals. Other locals who have a more "old fashioned" valuation of a child's education. Look back 50 or 100 years and you may see vastly different attitudes and outcomes among the same local racial demographic.
Also economics is a factor. Better schools, better teachers, access to tutors, etc. Not strictly required but they sure do help.
Somehow, for many and irregardless of race, education has become unimportant. For many such individuals they delegate it to the school system. I literally know teachers who in parent-teacher conferences, when they tell a parent that their special little snowflake needs some extra time and help with reading or basic arithmetic, are told by a parent "that's your job not mine". We're not talking high school trigonometry either, we're talking about elementary school arithmetic.
So you'll give me a free vacation and all I have to do is sell my district on buying a shitload of your iPads?
I'm a believer!
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
The past few years have been filled with schools blindly deploying smartboards, iPads, and high end windows/apple laptops. Unfortunately many of these districts didn't put in enough support systems or integrate the technology into the curriculum.
This right here! A lot of districts are deploying technology based on sales presentations by iMarketing folk. My girlfriend is a teacher at a school where this has failed spectacularly. Next semester they start a 2 year program to phase out the iPads and replace them with something that doesn't make students cry and teachers put their firsts through the wall when doing such incredibly complicated feats such as adding a greek letter to a word document in a science assignment.
A lot of these places were oversold on the hardware capabilities and absolutely had no idea how if at all software would support student learning.
I would never have predicted that. I would have thought students would do much better. After all, computers are shiny.
you come off sounding like a racist asshole. the problem is socioeconomic, not racial.
and one might postulate that worrying about where your next meal is going to come from or working 3 part time jobs might make one less able to engage with their children.
When I was in elementary school, eons ago, the most advanced computers we had were Apple ][e machines. High school gave us Macintosh SEs and IBM PS/2 model 30s. I think the difference then vs now is that we had to learn to do something useful (i.e. programming) on them to make them fun. There was LOGO, Oregon Trail and AppleWorks, but they were pretty primitive. Especially today, computers can be "consumer-only" devices and just another screen to stare blankly into.
One thing that isn't different is that the best predictor of student success is good teachers, a good school and a decent home life with caring parents. Adding computers into the classroom without a clear purpose or reason is just a waste of money. Not because it's some kind of Luddite fantasy, but because students need to learn fundamentals before they are put in front of the computer.
Take me for example -- I'm reasonably successful but have a serious math handicap that I developed in elementary school. Exactly how would a computer, especially a locked down one-way device like an iPad have helped me? I struggled though math all the way to a degree in chemistry, probably for the simple reason that I had crappy early math teachers that couldn't pound the basics into my thick skull. Good instruction is the key to good performance, especially in a subject like math where everything is cumulative. I have no idea how people are taught math in a way that makes it all make sense, but it would be interesting to see what's being tried now. I guess I'll find out soon since I have 2 kids about to enter elementary school!
Could it be that *gasp* people (read: people, not just adults) are individuals and what works for little Johnny might not work for little Billy? Obviously people would reject the notion of personal responsibility when they can blame their bad scores on some esoteric organization of shadowy figures.
Adding technology without changing your process doesn't change anything except your overhead.
I've been saying this for a decade. If the computer that the student uses is a general-purpose computer and can do 10,000 things, of which only one thing is that which the student should be doing, the student is going to be overwhelmingly tempted to do one of the rest of those 9,999 things instead, especially if that other thing is more fun.
Even in professional School this is the case. If you look from the back of a large classroom in law school, you will see sports on a large number of guys' laptops and shopping on a large number of girls' laptops. Some profs ban laptops, but that's pretty rare and is a good way to get people not to take your class.
Of course, in law school your entire grade or 90% of your grade is also based on one final exam, so they have to learn material anyway. They just might not pay as much attention to the lecture.
BEGIN;
UPDATE grades SET finalexam=100;
COMMIT;
what the subject says
I had to take Apple ][ Logo in the seventh grade (circa 1984). That's when I found out I came from a "poor" family because we didn't have cable TV to get MTV and I got a $250 Commodore 64 instead of a $2,500 Apple ][ for Christmas. My childhood was forever ruined.
Without being snarky, I don't think we should write off computers yet. I think most of these programs just dump a bunch of money on laptops or ipads and are shocked when standardized test scores don't magically go up.
A computer is a tool, not a solution. It's all about the complete system used to educate. That's the hardware, software and processes working in concert to create an effective solution for learning.
What an incredibly MYOPIC article.
It purports to evaluate the benefits of using computers in school based on some undefined performance metrics. The ONLY specific metric applied is 'reading skill'.
What if computer use improved the student's MATH skills? (Khan Academy) What if it improved critical thinking, because the student has to identify what's nonsense and what's reliable on the net? What if we can use animated dissections to teach biology? What if we are still discovering the best use of computer in education?
Why not lament the bad penmanship of children today, since they are all typing instead of practicing freehand loops, etc. ? Trying to use last century's metrics to plan for the education of our future generation is naive at best, and reactionary at worst.
While not mentioned here, Singapore also gets very good results with their public education system. They achieve this by having several tiers, each with a dedicated set of teachers. These teachers focus on the students who are placed in the tier corresponding to their level. A student moves up a tier any time they are ready, the goal is obviously to have them as high as possible. A student is in any given tier for as long as they need.
What does the US have? One group of 30 with one teacher, on iPads. Also with a lot of whining from everyone about how high taxes are as it is.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Technology should be used to augment classroom instruction, not replace it. Sadly, too many administrators & politicians seem to fall into the "This Will Revolutionize Education" mentality. Even when I was studying computer science, none of my courses was in an actual computer room. We had 3 hours of lecture for theory and then a 2 hour lab for application, plus extra hours outside of class time for homework. I almost loathe having to teach in a computer classroom, because some students are busy screwing around with "social media" instead of paying attention.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Just gonna throw this out there.... My niece and nephew will almost certainly not learn cursive. They are learning no-look touch-typing instead.
What argument could be made that that is not a good trade-up?
I'm not baiting/challenging. I just can't think of a reason to oppose that idea...
I had a sucky sig.
In all other deployments I could see no educational purpose to the computers. As far as I could tell the computers were there to serve three non-educational purposes:
But as for actual use, the only thing that I could see them being really used for was as glorified typewriters for the kids to type reports and the teachers to print out tests and whatnot.
My guess is that proper use of a computer for learning is pretty much the antithesis of how today's educational system works. Computers are excellent at self-paced learning where the student has a plethora of options to chose from so that they can find a source that fits their educational desires. This sort of environment though completely fails the unmotivated incapable students while it would send the best students into the stratosphere and potentially causing them to skip grades at a rapid pace. It also starts to take the teacher way out of the loop for the best students and leaves them with the worst students to squabble with.
So where I see computers impacting education is not from within our educational system but from outside. I suspect that as it finally matures to the point where a "complete" education can be had and that the certificates earned are respected that it will provide competition to the existing system. In this I see two interesting developments. One is that I see the most motivated and capable students beginning to complete their grade school educations outside the system. Thus the bell curve of students will largely have the top portion cropped off leaving the lesser students in the system. This will then create a bit of a feedback loop where the remaining top students will also leave the public system. This will have the effect of a two tiered set of certificate where some higher educational institutions will prefer the non-public ones. Again this will pressure another few percentiles of students to leave the public system.
But once the students and their parents learn the benefits of a two tiered educational system it will potentially begin to impact the lesser universities. For which would many people rather have, a piece of paper earned in person at a clearly second rate university or a certificate earned online from a top tier university? I am actually not suggesting a clear answer here as there are so many factors. Many people argue that High School and University are social experiences as much as educational ones; except that universities don't give a diploma for having a social network, they give you the paper for completing the courses.
So I don't think that a computer education will eliminate the non-computer one, I suspect that it will provide much needed competition and cause a massive shakeup of our existing educational systems.
So people are finally figuring out that all the hype from Apple was just hype. I want my money back!
The failure lies with those who were tasked to nurture the development of the minds.
If you don't start your offspring's literacy training by the age of two years old you risk missing the period of maximum brain plasticity and therefore permanently limiting their potential.
Only a small handful of technologies help. Having a recorded lecture that you can replay helps A LOT. Posted pdf's are way better than paper handouts (much more difficult to lose). However, almost everything else is an inferior tool. Smartboards write terribly and illegibly. Powerpoint has removed instructor/student back-and-forth and becomes a one-way broadcast. The list goes on. Oddly enough, the useful technologies have been around for 20-30 years and still aren't being effectively used.
If a problem is so simple that cutting and pasting the answer can yield the solution, I doubt it does much to enhance critical thinking skills no matter what.
In fact, lets give them some code right off the bat that requires quite a bit of tweaking to provide the solution to the answer. That way you skip all the stuff that doesn't contribute to critical thinking skills, and they learn what to look for in code libraries so that they aren't constantly reinventing the wheel.
Relevant links:
http://www.qb64.net/forum/inde...
http://www.qb64sourcecode.com/...
I was never given that particular problem in school, and honestly, I'm not sure my formal education taught critical thinking particularly well. In fact, defining "critical thinking" can be particularly hard. Wikipedia's article on it has multiple issues. How does answering the question about MacBeth involve critical thinking? What does it teach you about problem solving?
I agree with the point.
Don't step on the baby.
In 2010 my local elementary deployed iPod Touch 2Gs. They bought a class set of around 50 and then bought one for every teacher and staff. The idea was supposedly the teachers could perform reading assessments using an app created by the test company, and students would use apps on them to learn. One assessment was carried out using them and the teachers complained so much they went back to paper. A lot of money was allocated for app purchases, but the IT group was lazy in handling it. They waited about a year and a half before finally trying to add apps to them. The technology had already moved by then and none of the apps they tried supported the 2G anymore. The class set was moved into a closet. I don't think there was any plan for the teacher iPods, and they remain unaccounted for and no one really wants them back.
I remember the grant total was over $100,000 for this, but I think it included the purchase of some Macbooks for the teachers, a cart to hold all the iPods, accessories for the iPod 2G, and money for app purchases.
Critical thinking is the ability not only to pose question, but also to accept answers. Critical thinking is the ability to pose interesting questions and to evaluate answers and compare them and give the answers different weight. And yes, critical thinking requires you to question everything and to doubt anything, but it requires you to even question your questions and doubt your doubts. And it requires you to work through and get to conclusions, and if everything is doubtful, then it requires you to at least enumerate your doubts and accept the less doubtful answers as a working hypothesis. Critical thinking requires your ability to accept any hypothesis per se as true for a moment to evaluate it in the what-if-manner: What if there really was an intelligent designer? What if there really were alien visitors on Earth? What if 9/11 really was a CIA-Mossad conspiracy? And then you have to find new questions that implicate the truth of the hypotheses and see where they lead to: How do you hide 500 metric tons of TNT in a building, as TNT has only 1/10 of the energy content of kerosene? How do you start the explosion exactly the moment a real airplane hits the building? Did the aliens land only once, or have they visited several times? Were they the same aliens for each visit, or can you tell which aliens were visiting which sites? Can we tell if the alien technology progressed from visit to visit?
I like how you assume that dumping a bunch of computers into a classroom with no though, cirriculum or teacher training will magically improve those things.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
If a problem is so simple that cutting and pasting the answer can yield the solution, I doubt it does much to enhance critical thinking skills no matter what.
When you're learning something new, you generally have to start with simple problems. (Most people aren't genius-level polymaths like everyone on slahsdot seems to be.).
Twelve year old kids doing history homework by cutting and pasting from wikipedia is not the same as a PhD history researcher doing the same thing.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
the meaning of "critic", which has a negative connotation in English
No, it doesn't. A film or art critic doesn't just say negative things about movies or paintings.
The verb "criticise" in everyday speech is negative, but that's a different use case.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Or a more complex problem that can be reduced to a series of simple problems that can be solved in any order.
If it can be done that way then perhaps it's bad homework. I've had too much homework that consisted of merely copying the textbook.
Smart, but formally uneducated, and poor parents works too.
And stupid, abusive, dirt poor, alcoholic parents can also produce child geniuses. They're just the exception rather than the rule.
I don't think anyone would seriously contend that other things being equal having rich parents isn't an advantage. Otherwise, you might as well introduce 100% inheritance taxes and just share the money out equally.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I would have given you a B, but your grade will be C- because of that character font!
I like how you assume that dumping a bunch of assumptions on someone with no basis, logic, or suggestions will magically improve those things.
On an iPad? Just add the Greek keyboard, is there anything missing? There's also a ton of custom keyboards that can be installed. There's 2 keyboards specifically for doing scientific and math symbols. Even without those, students could copy and paste the needed symbols from an existing Word doc.
But you're right, it's not the ability of the device or software to do what you need, it's the training involved to make sure people know how to use it.
Apple often doesn't include any manuals at all with their stuff. It's true 1 year old babies can use an iPad, but not everyone has time to learn by exploration and "self discovery", sometimes a nice little index with commons tasks is needed.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
Seriously, this is perhaps the most ridiculous "study" ever from OECD. It is nothing less than blaming the use of pens instead of pencils for bad exam grades.
Someone should eventually get in the media and apologize for this as a hoax. And do it fast.
"Abashed the Devil stood, and felt how awful goodness is..."
Yes there's heaps missing. Software that understands the concept of different letters. Software that understands the concepts of formulas. Interaction between software. Better methods of copying and saving work, transferring work to different file formats, dare I say being able to print. A full web browser compatible with complicated "thin client" interfaces such as Blackboard.
The Apple ecosystem is one that is closed and highly special purpose. Apps are designed for a task. Each device is designed for a task. This is fundamentally incompatible with the notion of a device that is flexible to do anything required in a school. As you say someone really knowledgeable could probably get that to work, but that's definitely not what is needed in a device used in a school. e.g. there simply does not exist a productivity suite on an iPad that makes cranking out long wordy assignments easy. Heck people complain enough about MS Word, it stands to reason that something worse won't cut it in the academic world.
The iPad isn't a bad device. It's just a bad general purpose academic device. By extension Chromebooks are no better. iPads are sold as a turn-key solution and are anything but.
It's almost like you hopped on the thread to say "TFA is wrong because REASONS", except you missed out the reasons. All you did was hop on, declare it's wrong, then bugger off only to come back and get annoyed when people (e.g. me) think you were being silly.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Amazing how fast topic went off the rails - personal anecdotes aside, this study was not about particular topics in certain grades, it considered the effectiveness of the collected education system across entire nations...
Nations with less emphasis on putting 'computers in the classroom' typically achieve better test scores than nations that emphasize putting 'computers in the classroom.'
Ken