Email Arne Duncan & Bill Gates! Duke University study finds Computers hurt students

[Karmadillo]

Shucks. I had thought it was all about the need for more charter schools & less effective teachers' unions.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/06/19/96209/duke-study-pcs-hurt-students-grades.html#storylink=omni_popular

Duke study: PCs hurt students

You may want to stop and reconsider whether you think a home computer will help your child with reading and math.

A new Duke University study says North Carolina middle school students' test scores dropped after they got home computers, suggesting they spent more time playing "The Sims" than working practice math problems.

The study by Jacob Vigdor and Helen Ladd at Duke's Sanford School of Public Policy challenges the accepted wisdom that children who don't have computers at home are at a disadvantage compared with their wired classmates.

more...

[Warpy]

1. Playing The Sims might be teaching them useful skills, too

but parents need to realize that their kids are flaky and that the home computer is a toy to them and should be used after the boring old homework has been done.

Any parent who expects a kid to use a computer strictly for educational purposes is a fool.

[msongs]

2. choices made by students when using computers is a more likely cause nt

[NYC_SKP]

3. Interesting "conclusions" to draw from the "study".

I read the story, couldn't find the actual study.

http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/06/19/540968/study-pcs-hurt-middler-grades.html

I'd be interested in knowing their research procedures and in reading their findings and recommendations, if any.

The digital divide is not a myth.

Children with state of the art computers and high speed Internet have an significant advantage over their peers from more disadvantaged households that may have no access or poor access to the Internet.

The advantage increases as schools and teachers depend upon Internet use in the completion of projects.

We would reduce pedestrian fatalities if we eliminated cars. This article reads a little like that to me.

:donut:

[mzteris]

4. it's not reallly the computers you know,

it's the use to which they are put. . .

[no_hypocrisy]

7. Part of the problem is that the computer thinks for you as far as probl3em-solving

with its preprogrammed formulas. Nothing akin to the experience of carrying over a ten or a hundred when doing vertical addition.

[Recursion]

5. I have been steadily employed for years because I had a computer as a kid

And learned to fix and program computers.

That probably doesn't apply to the kids today as much, since in my cohort it was unusual to come to college with a knowledge of computers. Still. Just tell them if they want to use a computer they have to use Linux, let them spend two years figuring it out, and they'll never want for work.

[Dont_Bogart_the_Pretzel]

6. But "The Sim's" were soo yesturday...

it's now all about FarmVille! :) :P

[Odin2005]

8. This study is BS!

[nichomachus]

9. OK -- now I understand. Thanks for the explanation.

[nichomachus]

10. One possible flaw in the study

Is that it seems to be taking students who had no computer and introducing a new and exciting technology to them. There's always a pattern to accepting a new technology that seems to take you away from what it can and should really be used for. At first, it's a distraction.

When I got my license and got a car, I would get in it and drive around just to drive around -- not really going anywhere -- it was just new and exciting. Now, I drive only when I absolutely need to and even then, I try to gang up things so I minimize my trips.

We all remember when friends got their first computer and we were bombarded with jokes we'd seen 1,000 times, hysterical "The World is Ending, send this to everyone in your address book" emails, pictures of kittens with cute sayings. etc.

Hopefully, most people get over that quickly.

The best computer adoption story I've heard is the aid workers who were in a Peruvian village and got two computers and Internet access thinking that the locals could use it to connect to the outside world and to research better agricultural methods, etc.

Within a month, all the women were at one computer looking up stuff on women's rights. All the men were on the other computer downloading porn.