Middle School students are champion time-wasters. And the personal computer may be the ultimate time-wasting appliance. Put the two together at home, without hovering supervision, and logic suggests that you won’t witness a miraculous educational transformation.
Still, wherever there is a low-income household unboxing the family’s very first personal computer, there is an automatic inclination to think of the machine in its most idealized form, as the Great Equalizer. In developing countries, computers are outfitted with grand educational hopes, like those that animate the One Laptop Per Child initiative, which was examined in this space in April. The same is true of computers that go to poor households in the United States.
Economists are trying to measure a home computer’s educational impact on schoolchildren in low-income households. Taking widely varying routes, they are arriving at similar conclusions: little or no educational benefit is found. Worse, computers seem to have further separated children in low-income households, whose test scores often decline after the machine arrives, from their more privileged counterparts.
I have two daughters who grew up with computers in the household. They only used them for writing papers or doing occasional research for high school and college. Other than that, they just played games or participated in social forums.
Giving a junior-high kid a computer is a waste. Do they write papers or do research at that age? Hardly. Are they going to go to funwithmath.com because their idealistic teacher told them they could have “fun with math”? No way. 99% of junior high kids in poor families will become the computer “experts” in those families. Unless their parents have computer experience, they won’t know what to look for in guiding their kid for proper use. You are opening the world up to them without guidance or restraint…. but who are we to tell someone else how to raise their kid?
Let me rephrase the sentences, “They only used them for writing papers or doing occasional research for high school and college. occasional research for high school and college. Other than that, they just played games or participated in social forums.”
It should have read, “They would seldom use them for school, occasionally writing papers or doing research for high school and college. The rest of the time on the computers was spent on social forums and playing games.”
Umbridge,
I had the same experience with my son and daughter.
Our kids use a computer – non internet enabled with only approved programs (like language and math) on it. They like it but it does not envelop their lives.
It is not uncommon. in my neck of the woods, for teenagers to take their entire high school curriculum via computer. The Colorado Education Commission makes provision for kids who live in isolated areas… where they might have to spend up to three hours a day on the bus to get to and from school… to attend high school on internet. Our young neighbor qualified (the 5th of 8 children to complete high school either by correspondence or by internet). He graduated well, works full time apprenticing as a master mechanic and also attends technical college with the career goal of designing automobiles.
My granddaughter (living on Ft Peck Reservation in Montana)attended Red Oak Academy, Fort Worth, TX, via internet. She completed her high school curriculum in three years, finishing 4th in her class. She has spent a year studying independently, a year studying cosmetology, and is employed and living independatly at age 19.
Maybe the truth is that how useful the computer is for education depends a great deal upon the teenager and his/her parents.
I taught keyboarding and word processing at the high school level.
My students responded well to using the computer as a tool for educational advancement.
Frances Scott
I suspect the currently prevailing view in regards to computers either in the home or the classroom is out-of-date and relates back to the genuine advantages obtained by those who 20 or 25 years ago were children in homes with computers.
One of my sons is a network administrator in a mega-church, and the other is a lead aviation software developper with IBM. They began using computers in 1984, and in that era pretty much all you [i]could[/i] do on them was fairly serious work. Both boys messed with hardware, wrote little programs to help manage the farm, used the primitive spreadsheets of that era, and so on.
The turnkey stuff these days, especially consumer ware, is overwhelmingly frivolous, with (I believe) the consequence that the advantages enjoyed by my kids no longer exist. Today’s adults, however, remember how the geeks ran circles around them, and (I suspect) they still resent the higher income so often garnered today by the early geeks of that era.
As a result they draw the erroneous conclusion that a computer in the home or the classroom will give today’s kids an advantage.
“Technology” really describes things that generally did not exist in the speaker’s childhood or environment. Nobody calls a telephone or a radio “technology” any more, but 80 years ago they did.
Educate yourselves on the topic.
Check out the [url=http://center.uoregon.edu/ISTE/2010/program/session_list.php?category=Formal+Session||Research+Paper]ISTE conference program[/url]
Look at free programs like [url=http://www.geogebra.org/cms/ ]GeoGebra[/url].
I think what you’re trying to say is that ignorance on the parts of teachers and parents is undermining the usefulness of the tool.
I hope that no one is surprised at this conclusion. One more epiphany that illuminates the obtuseness of the liberal mentality. Now we are going to await the blast of insight that illuminates all the states who think that selling marijuana to “medical necessities” will not create an even more massive market for the drug which will permeate society as it never has before – until it effects are studied and discovered to be socially and personally deleterious. “Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain.” L
I am pneumahagion777; I have been trying to track down Evan Miller. I have a photo, actualy I have several of Evan. If this is the same man, he is abusive towards others and a user of good people who have care and compasion. If I am wrong, and this is not the same peprson, I certainy am sorry, but, if you find that this man seems to be “hyper” and cannot sit still, but does like computers, and likes to burry his nose in books, we have the same man who is a thief, and immoral, which is as much as I will say in that category. This man, if it be the same, has a Trust in the millions that allows him to travel worldwide, and come and go from peoples lives, leaving behind great wreckage due to his meth abuse, and deviate behaviors, and psychotic isssues that are untreated. I am a nurse, and within 9 days I had this man pinned down for who and what he was. There is no love in his heart for man or God. Please be warned, or at least be open minded enought to watch for the behaviors of an addict and a theif. I had my VISA stolen, and many hundreds of dollas taken for the use of a cell phone from T-Mobile, international. If he is hiding from police, or Interpol, they will find him and his reckoning will be severe. When I did a google search for this man, and read some of his posts, they did sound like it could be the same man. Again, if I am wrong, forgive me, but please be careful, as he moves quickly from place to place using his
Trust Money left him by is fabulously rich Mother. Please be forewarned. He may even use different names, but mostly I think he uses Evan miller as he moves so quickly from country to country. Much of his time is spent in China. This entry I have made is not out of spite, but a warning to all who would be his friend out of sympahy for his supposed “hard times” position in life. He appears well dressd and groomed, well spoken, and indeed almost has a magnetic personality that is hard to ignore or let pass by without tryng to help him. Again, forgive me if I am wrong, for I am sincerely trying to track him down, and turn him in. Much love to all who are in Christ Jesus, and willling to consider my words. Pneumahagon (greek).