Computer use irrelevant to education outcomes, says US study The accepted wisdom that computers are an indispensable tool of modern education is under challenge in a study conducted for Germany's Centre for Economic Studies IFO (CESifo). The study, published by the University of California Santa Cruz's Robert Fairlie and Johnathan Robertson, detected no difference between computer- …
As an educator, I have a fantasy about going to the primary school after hours and taking a cricket bat to anything with a cord or batteries; calculators are to be exterminated with extreme prejudice.
I would leave an equal value in pencils, pens, proper writing paper, and some primers that are considered past their prime. Also blackboards... can't stand those miserable unerasable whiteboards and too-faint pens.
</rant>
I feel better now. Glad their findings agree with me. Use the wetware first.
from anybody who has even the least justification for an opinion - ie anybody who has been in a school.
Is that computers are mostly a complete waste of time. From the days when we had a BBC micro and a laser disk to learn about the UK in the doomsday project - to today's make a web page in Word showing why you didn't do your maths homework.
By all means put some computers in a library, along with some books, in the hope that some student discovers them and learns something (very much like the books) - but don't think that a power point replaces a teacher
I think that it is easy to overstate this case. Do computers help kids learn to read, appreciate literature, do art, learn math, etc? Generally not so much.
However, from first hand experience, computers can be a godsend to special needs children. I was fortunate enough to have computer access growing up which helped me overcome some severe difficulties with fine and gross motor coordination-- I've never had a problem with typing, but it took me years to get my handwriting to any point that would be considered legible. Computers let me focus my thought on the assignment rather than the task of handwriting.
My case is pretty minor-- there are the applications we've seen highlighted recently for children with speech difficulties to assist their communication, speech synthesis for the blind, etc.
So while I hear your point generally, I think that there are cases where considered application of technology (and instruction!) can make important differences for children.
Computers are a tool.
Used properly, they help get the job done.
In special needs cases, they are the tool to communicate, or to move, or to enable. But they do not TEACH.
However, in the average classroom, they are no more educational than a pencil (in itself) or a piece of chalk. If you leave them in a room with some kids, they won't miraculously become Turing or Torvalds. The kids who pick them up and teach themselves on them would pick up ANYTHING and teach themselves on them. The fact that they are computers doesn't make them special or superior to any other tool in the land.
However, given that my entire career has been in schools, I will give you that a good workman in charge of that tool can work wonders. No different to what a carpenter can do with the chisel that I nearly take my face off with every time I use it. But the skill is in the workman (i.e. teacher), not the tool. Give that workman a pen and paper (or a penknife if he's a carpenter) and he can do wonders with that too. Just giving the tool to a moron doesn't get you a more educated moron.
I work with teachers. Most days I despair of teachers and teaching in general. But I have to say that the skill is in the teacher, not the tool. EVERY SINGLE TIME.
Gimme a good teacher and a BBC Micro or pen and paper any day.
Yes they do help get over the crap handwriting = thick hurdle. So much so that schools have "allegedly" been classifying lots of kids as Dyslexic/Autistic/etc so they can use word processors in exams.
But that's a long way from deciding that if you can write a story and use different fonts you are not only doing better at the story but you are learning computers as well
It's only one study but, because it pretty well reflects my opinions, I tend to believe it's true. It will be interesting to see whether further studies confirm this one, and what countermeasures the tech industry adopts in order to keep the computers-for-schools gravy train rolling.
Quotes from original article
"...educational outcomes, including grades, standardized test scores, credits earned, attendance and disciplinary actions"
"It's also important to note that the research restricted itself to a single variable: the possession and use of a computer. In particular, there was no effort to integrate the computers into the respective curriculums of the recipients' schools."
We spend a fortune measuring outcomes in education. I'm beginning to think that what we can measure isn't that important really. When was the last time anyone asked what class of degree you have, or what BTEC National Diploma Unit Score you obtained?
My own couple of decades of experience in teaching, and in using computers in lessons is that any technology you buy and just give out is a waste of money. It has to be designed in.
@Turtle, at least you admit your bias and are interested to see more information. Congrats! You have just outdone a large number of researchers.
In one counterexample, a researcher found that simply giving kids access to information through the application of technology really improved their education. I have read others with mixed results (e.g. the One Laptop Per Child initiative). From what I have been able to gather, a good result is not based on tech alone, but fits into the existing environment. The success or failure depends on how good that fit is. There is no one size fits all solution.
It's sad that educational administrators are oblivious to the reality that PCs are just another tool often used as a toy and thus never achieving the desired educational value. Many school systems lack the resources to hire quality teachers or pay reasonable salaries yet they find money to buy PCs. In the end we still have a large percentage of students who graduate without much of a clue in the very basics of education.
"Many school systems lack the resources to hire quality teachers "
quality teachers - warning ! entering area of high cognitive dissonance. Proceed with caution. The teachers are the problem - simply put , very few of them can teach. Admittedly, teaching is not easy , but then that is why they are paid so well, work such short hours and have such long holidays.
My personal favourite is the "pupil-free day" sort of like army intelligence , only the results are sadder.
@sam bo
Would you like me to organise a work shadow in a local school or college for you? UK based. You will need a full CRB and two referees who have known you professionally for at least 5 years. You will need a degree in a National Curriculum subject (at least 50% of the degree). I'd advise you to look at the professional skills tests.
http://www.education.gov.uk/get-into-teaching/apply-for-teacher-training/skills-tests
UK: we have just under 450000 teachers in schools in England and Wales. The government work on 9% churn each year. So we have to find just over 40 000 new entrants each year.
That is why you are seeing a lot of advertising at present... and it is part of the reason for the Academies push. Less stringent qualifications for teachers in Academies...
"Many school systems lack the resources to hire quality teachers or pay reasonable salaries yet they find money to buy PCs."
Thats a Catch-22. If former-teachers now-administrators were of proper caliber in the first place they wouldn't misappropriate funds in attempt to buy machines to make up for teachers' shortcomings.
One can not pay teachers more to make them better teachers. One has to have the ability to hire and fire with ease so as to build a team capable of achieving the goal. In private industry higher pay comes with less job security. I'll pay you more on the chance you are worth more. But if you are not, you are gone.
In college I was hired as a sweat shop "educational" programmer. Paid $0.05 over minimum wage, every week we were given an outline of a "program" designed by PhD educators. We turned their drills into executable apps. Mindless drills. Slide shows. Very little interaction. Most complex was an "energy spreadsheet", one column of household energy consumers which one could adjust usage to see the effect on monthly energy bill.
The most useful educational computer tools to me have been word processor, C compiler, Unix, and spreadsheet. Word processor makes edits possible and practical that I simply would not undertake by hand. Much the same way as I lay out PCB's today I can push and shove things around to try which I would not have dared with tape.
"I think it would be more interesting to see what would happen if things like KhanAcadamy was promoted for home use and see if the kids are still pretty much equal."
I use selected Khan Academy videos for the higher level maths students (UK). They tend to stress drill/practice and easier more direct problems. They are very useful for that.
Tim Gowers has suggestions for harder problem solving stuff on his blog.
http://gowers.wordpress.com/2012/06/08/how-should-mathematics-be-taught-to-non-mathematicians/
Gowers also has a hilarous account of a conversation with an A level Maths student
http://gowers.wordpress.com/2012/11/20/what-maths-a-level-doesnt-necessarily-give-you/
Which might be what happens if you rely too much on the 'web based snippets of learning' approach. No coherence.
The most important thing, IMHO, in teaching is the teacher. Someone who understands their subject, can explain the subject clearly, impart passion into their teaching, inspire the pupil to learn on their own, and have the patience of a saint in dealing with pupils who have various levels of interest in the subject.
I don't think any computer or software could be said to be able to do any of those things.
@ A Non e-mouse
Certainly true that the teacher makes all the difference.
But the system so sucks that it's near impossible for them to function. Kids are inherently curious, but want to have fun and school is almost always the opposite. Pleasure of learning is replaced by fear of punishment. Compounded by UK private schools' obsession with sport played outside in a lousy climate -- another reason for dread.
One thing that the government here in the Netherlands might try (maybe the same elsewhere), is to let teachers teach, not administrate. I gave a few lessons of computer science at schools nearby, to show kids that CS is certainly not learning to work in MS-Office. I was appalled at how much time teachers have to waste on administration during each lesson. And then there are the endless assessments and test that are foisted upon school children here from the age of 4 upwards. Endless assessments to measure outcomes. As one teacher pointedly stated: "A pig doesn't get fatter by weighing it more often". This tendency to measure everything to death has even reached preschool creches we have. I have heard people agonize about the fact that a 3 or 4 year old kid only recognized 4 letters whereas they should know 5 at that age. As if that difference is at all meaningful!.
When teachers are assessed by the teaching outcomes of their pupils, they will train them to perform well at the test, which is not the same as giving them understanding of the subject matter (let alone stimulating them).
</rant>
I didn't have computers in K-12, not at school anyway.
But I helped build this thing we now call "The Internet" when I got to University.
IMO, K-12 is for basics. Reading, writing, arithmetic, basic interpersonal socialization, raising interest in the rest of the world, immune system strengthening, and a small measure of how time works. Not much else.
"They have to teach "it takes this long to do your homework, so inter curricular sports might not be a good idea this quarter/semester" as a post-grad physics course?"
@jake
That is dedciding goals and allocating time appropriately. Part of getting children to think about thinks in the future beyond the next 10 minutes. I fully accept that as part of the teaching role. Some parents get the idea as well. I wish they all did.
'How time works' is indeed a rather deeper issue. Google 'Ergodic hypothesis' and 'Arrow of time'.
Computers in school aren't a bad thing. Given how much people use them everyday, getting kids up-to-speed on the more boring parts of them quickly is something worthwhile. But we're talking teaching a life-skill, not an academic necessity (still haven't found a way to take down maths notation accurately in a nice way on a computer, and I'm 13 years past a maths degree).
"Computing" (as opposed to "Computer Science" which should be optional, come later, and be much more theoretical) should be taught the same as home-economics was when I was a kid. A lesson or so a week, a basic grounding in "office skills" and then that's it. Just so that they can't complain that they don't know how to get on Google because daddy never touched a computer in his life.
Above and beyond that, I have to agree that computers in schools is wrong. My job? I'm an IT Manager for schools. I try damn hard to make sure that at least we aren't throwing money away unnecessarily on tat and junk that we don't need, and instead have more money for pens, paper and decent teachers. Given the current state of many UK schools, I think that's needed at the moment. But I still get odd looks when I express the above opinion to the teachers I work with, more because they expect me to be the opposite than they don't agree.
Before we give the bean counters another excuse to slash school budgets, I would like to know the net effect on average salary for those same children, post-graduation. Average test scores are not the end of education, they are a diagnostic tool for measuring progress towards the goal of preparing students for adult life.
Useless,
From learning about Winchester drives when MFM and RLL where actually the drive controllers being used in industry to DB4 when SQL was taking over.
The education system cant teach the children anything that's current, thus all they can do is teach HOW TO USE computers and the basic theory behind them. (actually, theory is pretty useful as nothing really changes once you understand the ground rules)
You don't need a computer for this, you need an interesting/ed teacher and a class of attentive kids.
On top of that, use of devices that do the basics for you turns your brain to mush. Basic mental arithmetic is something that has noticeably different between my brain now and the one I had at school. Where I used to be able to work out sine wave coefficients in my head, after 20 years of using a calculator my ability to do basic multiplication tables is noticeably poor.
Anyway, all of the above means nothing. Education is no longer about giving a child the mental tools and the store of knowledge to help them learn, it is about ensuring that all children "pass"
In the UK this is achieved by making the pass rates so high that all should get a B or higher, pass rate inflation or something.
Obviously they were too scared to provide computers AND free internet access, the combo that really would have made a difference to any kids that had a thirst for learning. Hell, if you gave me a computer tomorrow that I couldn't hook into the web, it would go in a cupboard until I needed a portable DVD player. If the study is limited to ONLY the provision of a computer and nothing of the surrounding infrastructure then the study is useless.
You might as well give me a free car with no insurance, no tax, no licence and no MOT and draw the same "it makes no difference" conclusion when I don't use it.
I had many un-networked computers before tehintrawebtubes existed.
Made sense to connect them ... so I did.
I learned lots. And helped to build tehintrawebtubes.
Free network access to tehintrawebtubes didn't exist as we built it. It was spendy. But we persisted.
And today, auburnman. you gripe if a computer can't run TCP/IP & connect to the Internet right from the git-go in a learning situation? ... You seem to be completely clueless. Hint: You can't run before you can walk.
Your car simile is bogus ... there is no licensing with computers (alas).
Yes I do gripe if a computer can't connect to the internet in a learning situation. Because a kid might have no technical aptitude whatsoever, or come from a family who don't already have an internet connection and genuinely can't afford to get one for their kid.
There will be youths out there like you who will fall in love with the technology itself and will do whatever it takes to get it working and hopefully go on to a wonderful career in IT. But for every one of those there will be many more children who are left with an overpriced doorstep when they could be learning about Physics or Chemistry or history or even just browsing Wikipedia or watching shitty manufactured boybands on Youtube - you never know what might kindle an interest in learning more.
You seem to ignore the opportunity for learning outside of the IT sphere. Just the slightest bit of extra investment could have opened up a whole new world to disadvantaged children.
Right now in schools pupils are not taught to use technology they are taught to be users of technology.
MPs, MSPs, unions, head teachers, and other higher level organisations are all in thrall of technology especially 'apps' and 'cloud' without the slightest understanding or any desire to understand how it works or what these companies do with the information they insist on being uploaded to these companies.
All they know is that they MUST be the one to shout loudest about using technology.
It's a race to the bottom.
2 pass assembler construction? No.
Self modifying code? No.
Programming in an obsolete language? No.
Touch typing? Yes.
How many decades have we thought the QWERTY keyboard obsolete? How many decades has it continued to persist? For bulk data entry this is still the state of the art. How many people actually use voice recognition text entry? Pen?
If' you never do a "real" IT job it will still be damm handy.
The people of Xerox PARC introduced school children to computers as ways to enable the child's creativity, not to shackle them to the command sets of Windows applications forever.
> Programming in an obsolete language? No.
This isn't job-training, its teaching how to think of algorithms, using a handy computer language. It may include how relational algebra works, or the principles behind view planes and how perspective relates to 3D graphics. It's why Logo has a place, but Excel macros probably don't.
Just like most physics classes, it probably won't ever be used, but Comp Sci classes should be available. Just don't go near that ICT rubbish.
This post has been deleted by its author
I am an ICT Technician in a UK school, so may have a unique perspective.
Children will need an understanding of how to use types of program like a spreadsheet or wordporcessor, and ICT gives the students that however that teaches them how to use Office 2010, and 2013's changes make that knowledge is obslite before they have even started learning it.
The only good suggestion of the UK education review is an increased focus on computer science however no teacher in the school (a high school for 13-19 year olds) has an understanding of computer science so who would teach it, the Technicians?
Computers are useful, but many teachers use a lession in a computer room as a bribe to try to convince children to behave, reaserch performed on the computers could just as easily be done in the library (which is far better than when I was a student) however most students are lost if you suggest they use a book for reaserch, book reserch is becoming a forgotten skill.
the school has roughly 600 PCs, 100 staff and 1000 students, our oldest PCs are about 9 years old.
This brings back memories of my days as a technician too. A few teachers were experimenting with using computers effectively but all the kids who caused the most trouble were put into a single class and they spent more time in the computer suite than any other class by far.
"Children will need an understanding of how to use types of program like a spreadsheet or wordporcessor, and ICT gives the students that however that teaches them how to use Office 2010, and 2013's changes make that knowledge is obslite before they have even started learning it."
True.
But are you typing this on a phone?
Spell check is your friend.
Kids should learn how to touch type. I learned on a manual typewriter and every mistake was painful, no backspace key... I learned to do it correctly because it was a pain the ass to correct. Now I'm a more than decent typist.
There were computers in my home from the 70's on so I guess I had an advantage but I was never taught to use them. My father gave me one and allowed me to discover and explore it myself. I was interested and I figured it out through trial and error. I feel like teaching the 'right' way is taking away from the possibilities a computer offers. Higher level theory and general best practices are one thing but teaching to a specific package is not teaching, it is training: Two wholly different things.
No child left behind, and other misdirected initiatives, leave little flexibility in teaching. We don't USE computers in the classroom. At best, they are test taking boxes, and typing practice tools.
We need to use them to open children's horizons, but the tight curricula, the required lowest-common-denominator method of teaching to the weakest skills in the class, and setting the curriculum around a low target all make typical computer use rather pointless.
We need exciting curricula, better content, and the flexibility to let kids explore their Internet world.
"Overall, these results suggest that increasing access to home computers among students who do not already have access is unlikely to greatly improve educational outcomes"
Presumably because the students were too busy assembling electronic kit and writing their own games in assembler, to be bothered to spend effort on passing exams, which is what modern education is mostly about. Access to the Raspberry Pi would do more for their education than all the proper curriculum on the planet.
I've been working as ICT support in schools for ages (10+ years) and I can tell you that about 90% of the comments here are an accurate reflection of the state of affairs.
From where I stand, it's obvious, common knowledge that computers are just tools, not magic. The application of the tool is what's important. If the teacher isn't trained in how to apply computer use into achieving quality outcomes, then save the money and give the teacher more of what that particular teacher needs to stuff an education into the child's head.
Just as some students are "hands on" learners, some are visual learners and some are verbal learners, so too with the teachers. They all have differing styles and forcing them to use a cookie cutter teaching style that lies outside their comfort zone, area of training or expertise generated from decades of experience is only going to be detrimental to everyone involved.
But never mind. It's all for naught. Nobody ever asks the people at the coalface what they think, need or would like. Politicians and overseers who wish they were politicians will make decrees and then be promoted for their amazing forward thinking and use of buzzwords and won't hang around long enough to see the fuckup they have caused.
It always seems strange to me that in most of North America it is a given that no matter how little teachers are paid, it is considered to be too much. Yet no parent or voter ever seems to mind paying a high hourly rate to their BMW mechanic, dentist, hairdresser, or pool boy.
It is disturbing that so many people feel that money spent on educating children is somehow money wasted.
In all seriousness, can you ever pay a good teacher too much? Even a mid-range teacher will have an indelible influence on thousands of people over the course of a career. Is this really an intelligent place to pinch pennies?
(Paris, because, well - you figure it out.)
I'm not surprised. Students were simply handed laptops at the beginning of the year and said "good luck". All this suggests is that handing students technology without training or support, ways to integrate laptops into curriculum areas in any meaningful or authentic ways, doesn't have any effect on learning. All of the research on purposeful 1:1 laptop programs that I have read says the opposite. For example, 1:1 laptop programs have shown to have a significant effect on engagement, achievement and research skills. http://napoleon.bc.edu/ojs/index.php/jtla/article/viewFile/1607/1462
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