Actually, the whole article is a clusterf*ck. The study cited has nothing to do about computers in schools, but rather the negative impact on grades of introducing computers in the home. The rest of the article is just speculation (Yes, I downloaded the study in pdf format)..
Look at the last half of the article:
Technology does have a role in education. But as Randy Yerrick, a professor of education at the University at Buffalo, told me, it is worth the investment only when it’s perfectly suited to the task, in science simulations, for example, or to teach students with learning disabilities.
And, of course, technology can work only when it is deployed as a tool by a terrific, highly trained teacher. As extensive research shows, just one year with a gifted teacher in middle school makes it far less likely that a student will get pregnant in high school, and much more likely that she will go to college, earn a decent salary, live in a good neighborhood and save for retirement. To the extent that such a teacher can benefit from classroom technology, he or she should get it. But only when such teachers are effectively trained to apply a specific application to teaching a particular topic to a particular set of students — only then does classroom technology really work.
Even then, we still have no proof that the newly acquired, tech-centric skills that students learn in the classroom transfer to novel problems that they need to solve in other areas. While we’re waiting to find out, the public money spent on wiring up classrooms should be matched by training and mentorship programs for teachers, so that a free and open Internet, reached through constantly evolving, beautifully packaged and compelling electronic tools, helps — not hampers — the progress of children who need help the most.
None of these statements about computers in schools is supported by a study that looked uniquely at the impact of introducing a computer in the home. It's just speculation because it looks like the author just skimmed a few paragraphs in the study, then wrote to make a deadline.
The kids who are interested will already know more than an intro class can teach them. It's the same as thinking of giving an course on how to win at FPS games - those who are interested already know how, and for the rest it's just a waste of time.
I tried to get my two daughters interested in programming, and now I'm happy they didn't bite. Competition is going up, salaries and benefits are going down, and the "up or out" attitude would leave them with no job when they hit 40.
Better that they learn to use computers just as a tool, to write, to do spreadsheets, and to play games and surf the web. Programming is fast becoming a dead-end job, same as web design already is.
I wrote : "
Every serious (read "non-vendor-sponsored") study for the last 20 years has shown that computers in school hinder education."
You replied "Except that this one doesn't, smarty-pants. The author of the fucking article herself says as much:
And then she goes on to say that computers in the home interfere with grades. How is that inconsistent with what I wrote?
Also, if you really want to call me a smarty-pants, chew on this: this study has nothing to do with computers in schools. If you downloaded the actual study (it's in pdf format), here's what it says:
Using within-student variation in home computer access, and across ZIP code variation in the timing of the introduction of highspeed internet service, the authors demonstrate that the introduction of home computer technology is associated with modest but statistically significant and persistent negative impacts on student math and reading test scores. Further evidence suggests that providing universal access to home computers and highspeed internet access would broaden, rather than narrow, math and reading achievement gaps.
The article talks about a study of HOME computer use, not school use. So this study says nothing about computer use in schools, and the article author conflated the two.
I had to try several usb creators before I found one that actually worked. A couple of them can't handle usb drive boot partitions bigger than 8 gig. They'd install, but fail to boot.
We should NOT be teaching programming in school, any more than we teach antenna design, television show production, lens grinding, or other trades. Especially when those who are interested are already learning it on their own.
Todays cheap laptops come with HDMI out. And today's cheap laptops surpass anything on the market 8 years ago. You couldn't buy any quad core laptop then. The first mobile 500 gig hard drives were a lot thicker. You couldn't get USB3 on a laptop 5 years ago if you wanted to. Laptops shipped with 500 meg to 2 gig of ram, not 8 gig. All these are standard on $400 laptops today, and it's only going to get better.
Simple - God wants his followers ignorant (do not eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil), the Devil wants you to know everything - because then you'll *know* that God wants his followers ignorant. It's true - the Devil is in the details:-)
At those list prices, they must think they're better than Apple. And of course, in 5 years we'll be able to buy cheap laptops with the same specs at the local big-box outlet.
Nope, it's accurate as all heck. Women in India have to travel in groups for their mutual safety, even in broad daylight. And dowries and bride burning are simply barbaric practices. Typical dowries are valued by the total number of "legs: "Take my daughter and I'll throw in a stove (4 legs), fridge (4 legs), kitchen set and 6 chairs (28 legs) sofa (6 legs), and bed (4 legs)" "What, you want 60 legs? Forget it. I'll throw in a pair of goats (8 legs)."
Even when they come to North America, the women get treated like sh*t. I have yet to see one of them where the man walks beside the woman and carries some of the bags - nope - the man walks in front, and the woman follows, carrying all the groceries.
They tolerate it, they encourage it by tolerating lax policing and a caste system, and all but one result on the first page searching for "children raped and hanged" was about India. The other was ISIS. Not very good company.
The GUI *is* a real b*tch. I's a huge problem compared to navigating constant-sized screen elements arranged in, say, an 80x25 cell grid. Those old DOS text programs had their advantages.
No, Microsoft are making Windows 95 with a few tweaks and Office 97 with a terrible icon bar added they call a ribbon, minor tweaks to two decade old products. Apple make popular well designed products. You might want to dismiss them as mere trinkets, but users with money know better.
From the one-button mouse to the hockey puck mouse, the "style over functionality" of the toaster mac to the gooseneck mac, the oh-so-greatly engineered antennagate phone to the latest bendable phone... so let's look at the software side. From updates that crash the computer to phone updates that didn't check to see if there was enough free space before attempting to install... and lets not forget the holes in their cloud storage...
Every player in the industry has had products that are poorly designed and/or poorly implemented. And that includes the free / open source ones. The price you pay is not a direct correlation with the quality of what you get in the end.
Have we forgotten the Indian practice of bride burning if the wife doesn't bring what the groom and his family considers an adequate dowry with her?
On second thought, let me rephrase that. Have we suddenly forgotten how much of a sh*thole India is if you're a woman and you're not high-caste and moneyed? The problem isn't Uber, or this crass venue-shopping. The problem is India.
But M$ poisons everything that they get their dirty fingers on!
That can pretty much be applied to many of business practices of quite a few of the big players. But as I wrote, competition is good for the consumer (us). I'd rather see them working to help develop it further than trying to kill it off.
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Tried that multiple times, with multiple distros, all failed to boot. Also, what does someone do if they don't already have Linux running?
"With a properly trained teacher". They're scarcer than unicorns in the school system - the students already know more about computers than they do.
Actually, the whole article is a clusterf*ck. The study cited has nothing to do about computers in schools, but rather the negative impact on grades of introducing computers in the home. The rest of the article is just speculation (Yes, I downloaded the study in pdf format)..
Look at the last half of the article:
Technology does have a role in education. But as Randy Yerrick, a professor of education at the University at Buffalo, told me, it is worth the investment only when it’s perfectly suited to the task, in science simulations, for example, or to teach students with learning disabilities.
And, of course, technology can work only when it is deployed as a tool by a terrific, highly trained teacher. As extensive research shows, just one year with a gifted teacher in middle school makes it far less likely that a student will get pregnant in high school, and much more likely that she will go to college, earn a decent salary, live in a good neighborhood and save for retirement. To the extent that such a teacher can benefit from classroom technology, he or she should get it. But only when such teachers are effectively trained to apply a specific application to teaching a particular topic to a particular set of students — only then does classroom technology really work.
Even then, we still have no proof that the newly acquired, tech-centric skills that students learn in the classroom transfer to novel problems that they need to solve in other areas. While we’re waiting to find out, the public money spent on wiring up classrooms should be matched by training and mentorship programs for teachers, so that a free and open Internet, reached through constantly evolving, beautifully packaged and compelling electronic tools, helps — not hampers — the progress of children who need help the most.
None of these statements about computers in schools is supported by a study that looked uniquely at the impact of introducing a computer in the home. It's just speculation because it looks like the author just skimmed a few paragraphs in the study, then wrote to make a deadline.
The kids who are interested will already know more than an intro class can teach them. It's the same as thinking of giving an course on how to win at FPS games - those who are interested already know how, and for the rest it's just a waste of time.
I tried to get my two daughters interested in programming, and now I'm happy they didn't bite. Competition is going up, salaries and benefits are going down, and the "up or out" attitude would leave them with no job when they hit 40.
Better that they learn to use computers just as a tool, to write, to do spreadsheets, and to play games and surf the web. Programming is fast becoming a dead-end job, same as web design already is.
I wrote : " Every serious (read "non-vendor-sponsored") study for the last 20 years has shown that computers in school hinder education."
You replied "Except that this one doesn't, smarty-pants. The author of the fucking article herself says as much:
And then she goes on to say that computers in the home interfere with grades. How is that inconsistent with what I wrote?
Also, if you really want to call me a smarty-pants, chew on this: this study has nothing to do with computers in schools. If you downloaded the actual study (it's in pdf format), here's what it says:
Using within-student variation in home computer access, and across ZIP code variation in the timing of the introduction of highspeed internet service, the authors demonstrate that the introduction of home computer technology is associated with modest but statistically significant and persistent negative impacts on student math and reading test scores. Further evidence suggests that providing universal access to home computers and highspeed internet access would broaden, rather than narrow, math and reading achievement gaps.
The article talks about a study of HOME computer use, not school use. So this study says nothing about computer use in schools, and the article author conflated the two.
I had to try several usb creators before I found one that actually worked. A couple of them can't handle usb drive boot partitions bigger than 8 gig. They'd install, but fail to boot.
We should NOT be teaching programming in school, any more than we teach antenna design, television show production, lens grinding, or other trades. Especially when those who are interested are already learning it on their own.
Todays cheap laptops come with HDMI out. And today's cheap laptops surpass anything on the market 8 years ago. You couldn't buy any quad core laptop then. The first mobile 500 gig hard drives were a lot thicker. You couldn't get USB3 on a laptop 5 years ago if you wanted to. Laptops shipped with 500 meg to 2 gig of ram, not 8 gig. All these are standard on $400 laptops today, and it's only going to get better.
Sigh. Okay, desktop linux is now at the point where grandma and grandpa can use it, it wasn't always so.
I don't care about fragmentation in this context. As a viable alternative to osx/windows, linux has been getting progressively 'better'.
Grandma and grandpa don't use a desktop any more. That ship has sailed a while ago.
Every serious (read "non-vendor-sponsored") study for the last 20 years has shown that computers in school hinder education.
Respondents in the landline sample were selected by randomly asking for the youngest adult male or female who is now at home
And people were dumb enough to give their youngest the phone? Sounds like pedophiles now have a new prospecting technique.
How do you tell God and Devil apart? http://dwindlinginunbelief.blo...
Simple - God wants his followers ignorant (do not eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil), the Devil wants you to know everything - because then you'll *know* that God wants his followers ignorant. It's true - the Devil is in the details :-)
Have fun trying to boot your Slackware install DVD from the non-existent DVD reader.
At those list prices, they must think they're better than Apple. And of course, in 5 years we'll be able to buy cheap laptops with the same specs at the local big-box outlet.
Now, as then, the system is weighted in favor of those with money. $10 was a LOT of money in the 1800s for someone who was broke.
Nope, it's accurate as all heck. Women in India have to travel in groups for their mutual safety, even in broad daylight. And dowries and bride burning are simply barbaric practices. Typical dowries are valued by the total number of "legs: "Take my daughter and I'll throw in a stove (4 legs), fridge (4 legs), kitchen set and 6 chairs (28 legs) sofa (6 legs), and bed (4 legs)" "What, you want 60 legs? Forget it. I'll throw in a pair of goats (8 legs)."
Even when they come to North America, the women get treated like sh*t. I have yet to see one of them where the man walks beside the woman and carries some of the bags - nope - the man walks in front, and the woman follows, carrying all the groceries.
They tolerate it, they encourage it by tolerating lax policing and a caste system, and all but one result on the first page searching for "children raped and hanged" was about India. The other was ISIS. Not very good company.
You had me until "much like desktop Linux has been constantly getting better". It's been constantly getting more fragmented. That is not "better."
Neither Elisha Gray nor Bell invented the telephone. Antoinion Meucci beat them both.
Sony's failure started 2 decades ago, when even a Magnavox TV looked better than the Sony sitting next to it.
There are plenty of terms that might not merit censoring in general speech but still would be considered insulting, you insensitive clod!
The GUI *is* a real b*tch. I's a huge problem compared to navigating constant-sized screen elements arranged in, say, an 80x25 cell grid. Those old DOS text programs had their advantages.
No, Microsoft are making Windows 95 with a few tweaks and Office 97 with a terrible icon bar added they call a ribbon, minor tweaks to two decade old products. Apple make popular well designed products. You might want to dismiss them as mere trinkets, but users with money know better.
From the one-button mouse to the hockey puck mouse, the "style over functionality" of the toaster mac to the gooseneck mac, the oh-so-greatly engineered antennagate phone to the latest bendable phone ... so let's look at the software side. From updates that crash the computer to phone updates that didn't check to see if there was enough free space before attempting to install ... and lets not forget the holes in their cloud storage ...
Every player in the industry has had products that are poorly designed and/or poorly implemented. And that includes the free / open source ones. The price you pay is not a direct correlation with the quality of what you get in the end.
Okay - how about "breed a hell of a lot less?"
Have we suddenly forgotten how totally crappy public transport in India is? Where 6 men can rape a woman to death with a steel pipe in a crowded pubic bus and nobody intervenes? Or the 6 guys who raped a Swiss tourist who was bicycling? Or this copycat rape where the bus driver and bus conductor refused to let the woman off the bus, drove to an isolated spot, raped her, and 5 others also joined in? Or the police refusing to listen, instead laughing when the family tried to report their two girls missing - they were later found raped and hanged?
Have we forgotten the Indian practice of bride burning if the wife doesn't bring what the groom and his family considers an adequate dowry with her?
On second thought, let me rephrase that. Have we suddenly forgotten how much of a sh*thole India is if you're a woman and you're not high-caste and moneyed? The problem isn't Uber, or this crass venue-shopping. The problem is India.
But M$ poisons everything that they get their dirty fingers on!
That can pretty much be applied to many of business practices of quite a few of the big players. But as I wrote, competition is good for the consumer (us). I'd rather see them working to help develop it further than trying to kill it off.