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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.
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.
Or are too busy driving them to useless and expensive team sports events?
Was with you right up until this point. Team sports and sports in general are neither useless nor expensive. Maybe a small minority of them are disproportionately so but people learn a lot from team sports and fitness improves cognitive ability to boot.
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 work in schools.
I work IT in schools.
I work exclusively in schools.
I've only ever worked in schools.
I've worked in private and state, primary, secondary, further education, and after-school tuition centres.
Computers are a tool. Like a pen, a textbook, a folder, a table, a desk, or anything else.
Use them properly and they can help make things more efficient. That includes teaching. Use them improperly, buy them "for show", or think they'll work some magic on their own and you'll be disappointed.
In the same way that signing in 30 kids every morning and again in the afternoon takes ten minutes with pen and paper and lots of shuffling paper and people involved, but electronic registers take seconds and everyone who needs to can see the results instantly. It's a tool. Use it properly and it works.
What it does NOT do is teach kids. That's what teachers do (or at least are supposed to do). A teacher with an electronic timetable, who knows how to use it, is more productive and gets more time to teach than those who are shuffling bits of paper around multiple room. A teacher who can share his document with the kids and get a collaborative result, even as part of homework without themselves being present, can work wonders.
But what makes it work is the teacher. Not the tool. Give a carpenter or wood craftsman a cheap chisel and he can still produce a work of art. Give him the right tools and they'll be more refined and better quality and take less time. But give a chisel to a monkey and you won't get a mahogany table out of it. Computers are no different - a tool for professionals.
The misconception is that somehow computers on their own magically transform the most mediocre of teachers into teaching geniuses with wonderfully attentive students. It's not true.
I work in IT in schools, it's all I know and all I've ever done. Remove the IT and good teachers will still thrive and bad teachers still fail. Remove the teachers and the IT is next to fucking useless. Bear in mind that I spend vast portions of my working life at opposition to these people, that many schools have a large "teacher/non-teacher" divide that rarely gets crossed, socially or otherwise. That these people are the bane of my life.
But still, it's the teachers that make the difference, and the way they teach. And if we can get all the crap and paperwork and tracking and other shit out of their way as much as possible, they will have more time to teach kids. It's literally an admin task. Bringing tech into the classroom "just because" is dangerous and stupid.
The right teacher with the right tool can work wonders. But it's not the tool that's doing it. It's not the chisel that's so wonderful that it's making works of art. It's the way it's put to use.
In the UK, schools have been expected to get in computers to meet official ratios (X computers per Y pupils). That's fucking ludicrous. They have been expected to make use of things "just because" they are there. They have been expected to fully kit out every classroom no matter the subject or how little used. We have parents who are able to use their kids school iPads as a status symbol amongst over parents in other schools. We have teachers performing death-by-powerpoint thinking it improves their teaching. It does not.
But computers still have a place. They are merely an automation tool. A machine. That removes the repetitive burden of filling out a thousand school reports in twenty subjects. That allows the kids to manipulate 3D objects that I couldn't even get my computer to DRAW on the screen when I was a kid.
The problem is that people think that every app on the appstores, every website they are sold, every resource available must be used for every god-damn thing. Teachers BUY lesson plans, in big books, on what apps to use and what services to sign up to, and what looks cool to senior management. And so some of them have actually stopped teaching.
I've been fortunate enough