Category: education

These “computers in education” posts almost merit their own category.

Professors Vie With Web for Class’s Attention

“When you see 25 percent of the screens playing solitaire, besides its being distracting, you feel like a sucker for paying attention,” Professor Ayres said.

Unless law students are fully engaged in the class, he said, they miss out on the give and take of ideas in class discussion and do not develop the critical thinking skills that emerge from “deeply tearing apart a case.”
[ . . . . ]
Professor Ayres tried to prohibit all Internet use in his classroom. The students “went ballistic,” he said, and insisted that their multitasking ways made them more productive and even more alert in class.

So let them go ballistic. They pay their fees for an education, not to be permitted to waste people’s time.

It would be interesting to see the relationship between in-class surfing and grades.
Continue reading “whose classroom is it, anyway?”

BBC NEWS | Programmes | Analysis | Mr Chips or Microchips?

Computers have been hailed as the transformers of education, a dazzling technology that changes the whole nature of learning, reduces the burdens on teachers and equips everyone for the modern economy.

Yet disturbing evidence is emerging that computers may harm, rather than help, educational progress. There is still much debate among even the most enthusiastic supporters of high technology about how computers can best be used.

Interesting story here from the BBC. Thanks to Wade who saw it on slashdot.

The most insightful quote comes from the reporter, Frances Craincross:
After all, girls in Britain
increasingly outshine boys in core subjects such as English. So
might more time at the keyboard improve boys� performance? Or
might it be that girls do well because the use of computers brings
few benefits to most pupils?

That’s a really good question: is there a difference between how boys and girls learn that can be attributed to time spend at the keyboard?

My two younger learners got LeapPads this christmas, and I think these are as appropriate a technology as you can find for kids that young (4 and 5).

It’s a folding plastic shell that holds a paper workbook and a rechargeable cartridge that explains and drills the user based on the page being displayed. Some pages are to be written on (the book is laminated) and other are just used as a touchscreen: there is an attached stylus.

What’s missing from this is an operating system, a keyboard, and a display: in other words, it’s not a computer (though the kids call them computers). It’s expandable: simply add a new paper book and cartridge and work with different or more advance subject matter.

What I like most about them is that they’re engaging enough for kids to like them and as as result the hardest part of learning — drilling and repetition — becomes much mess painful.

And for less than $40, it’s hard to beat.

Handheld Instructional Technology

Their teachers reported the handhelds had a tremendous positive impact on student involvement. Using handhelds, students asked engaging questions and were more “on task” than usual, and were effective collaborators.

This article was linked to this one via waypath. This is getting better all the time.

The Seattle Times: Nation & World: Laptops for all? ‘Stupidest idea’ makes grade

But the governor compares the critics to naysayers who rose up generations ago when schools talked about sending children home with other learning devices. “They said they could throw them at each other, or dump them in mud puddles and destroy them,” King said. “They were talking about books.”

I have been and continue to be opposed to widespread use of computers in the classroom for a variety of reasons. But this article may answer a lot of my arguments.

For one, there’s no access problem: everyone gets one. For another, I suspect they didn’t cost as much as if each parent had bought their own (Apple would love to get back into education and if I read the story right, some Gates Foundation money funded this: sweet irony). And while it’s early, it seems to be effective at getting kids focused on their work: discipline problems are down, attendance is up. Obviously, some other things have changed to make the equipment useful: the same old “chalk and talk” techniques don’t really leverage a school full of wireless networked laptops, and that aspect of things didn’t get much attention.

For now, I’ll stay with my old position: I still think, given the way coursework is designed and taught, all a computer is really good for is to teach typing or keyboarding as it’s now known.

One of my biggest issues has been that by teaching with a computer, you teach the student about the computer itself: it becomes a distraction. And given the pace of innovation (slow though it is in these monopoly-dominated times), what will a seventh grader learn that will help him ten years later as he enters the job market? Put another way, do you need ten years to learn how to manage files and do basic word processing?

Of course not. And we’re starting to see exciting developments in the interfaces we use (mouse gestures, for example) that make keyboard skills less essential. Funny how the big innovative company makes the only browsers that don’t use this . . . . . .

Mark me down as interested but not convinced.

CNN.com – Voucher students going back to public schools – Nov. 4, 2002

More than one in four students who took a voucher to attend private school in Florida this semester have transferred back to public education, a newspaper reported.
[ . . .. ]
Critics of vouchers, a cornerstone of the education policies implemented by Gov. Jeb Bush, said the returning students show that vouchers are misguided.

But a spokeswoman for Bush called the trend a triumph of school choice.

“No longer are these children trapped in failing schools,” Katie Muniz said. “Now they have a choice — and some prefer to stay in their home school. These were choices they never had before.”

Can anyone explain how the existence of failed schools is a triumph of any kind? It’s easy to take the position that their lack of ambition reflects the quality of their political leaders, but leaving that aside for the moment, I’d like to know why they return to schools that the state government itself claims are substandard. If they opt to go the voucher-funded route and then go back, why? Is it the lack of peers? A more rigorous curriculum? Did no one prepare them for this?

10/11/2002: Mandatory military service in the US?

HR 3598, the Universal Military Training and Service Act of 2001 (Introduced in House), would, if passed: “… require the induction into the Armed Forces of young men registered under the Military Selective Service Act, and to authorize young women to volunteer, to receive basic military training and education for a period of up to one year.”
Continue reading “national service: need it be military service?”

Plaid’s Out, Again, as Schools Give Up Requiring Uniforms

This is a simple case of parents and kids not buying into the program. Or more to the point, it’s the old pattern of affluent suburban parents thinking they don’t need to follow the same rules as everyone else and being unwilling or unable to tell their kids “no” when it comes to simple behavior rules.

“But I think uniforms have peaked for now. If there are a couple of school shootings tomorrow, we may see it again. But my sense is that right now people are focused on larger issues.”

What’s a larger issue than safety or community or basic civics/citizenship? And why will take school shootings to bring that back into focus?

KDE educational tools

I’m actually opposed to computers in schools: I think it’s silly to think a computer is going to teach anything better than an actual teacher can. Consider that the people who invented the computer didn’t have access to one, nor did the writers of most the great works of literature, etc. They’re just tools, after all.

Anyway, I upgraded my desktop to KDE3 today and discovered the kedu package, a couple of useful educational things. One to learn touch-typing (I’ve needed that for years), and one to allow simple tests to be composed as a drilling aid. It takes the questions and answers through simple form-based UI, and creates little XML docs that can be read in as tests. See an example below:
Continue reading “educational software that might actually work”