You have commented 339 times on Rantburg.

Your Name
Your e-mail (optional)
Website (optional)
My Original Nic        Pic-a-Nic        Sorry. Comments have been closed on this article.
Bold Italic Underline Strike Bullet Blockquote Small Big Link Squish Foto Photo
Submit your comments on this article
Britain
Pupils make more progress in 3Rs 'without aid of computers'
2005-03-21
The less pupils use computers at school and at home, the better they do in international tests of literacy and maths, the largest study of its kind says today.

The findings raise questions over the Government's decision, announced by Gordon Brown in the Budget last week, to spend another £1.5 billion on school computers, in addition to the £2.5 billion it has already spent.

Mr Brown said: "The teaching and educational revolution is no longer blackboards and chalk, it is computers and electronic whiteboards."

However, the study, published by the Royal Economic Society, said: "Despite numerous claims by politicians and software vendors to the contrary, the evidence so far suggests that computer use in schools does not seem to contribute substantially to students' learning of basic skills such as maths or reading."

Indeed, the more pupils used computers, the worse they performed, said Thomas Fuchs and Ludger Wossmann of Munich University.

Their report also noted that being able to use a computer at work - one of the justifications for devoting so much teaching time to ICT (information and communications technology) - had no greater impact on employability or wage levels than being able to use a telephone or a pencil.

The researchers analysed the achievements and home backgrounds of 100,000 15-year-olds in 31 countries taking part in the Pisa (Programme for International Student Assessment) study in 2000 for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Pisa, to the British and many other governments' satisfaction, claimed that the more pupils used computers the better they did. It even suggested those with more than one computer at home were a year ahead of those who had none.

The study found this conclusion "highly misleading" because computer availability at home is linked to other family-background characteristics, in the same way computer availability at school is strongly linked to availability of other resources.

Once those influences were eliminated, the relationship between use of computers and performance in maths and literacy tests was reduced to zero, showing how "careless interpretations can lead to patently false conclusions".

The more access pupils had to computers at home, the lower they scored in tests, partly because they diverted attention from homework.

Pupils tended to do worse in schools generously equipped with computers, apparently because computerised instruction replaced more effective forms of teaching.

The Government says computers are the key to "personalised learning" and computers should be "embedded" in the teaching of every subject.

Ruth Kelly, the Education Secretary, has said: "We must move the thinking about ICT from being an add-on to being an integral part of the way we teach and learn."
Posted by:tipper

#6  With all due respect, Anonymoose, nothing beats a good book for teaching reading, and nothing beats pencil, paper, a few manipulatives, and lots of hands-on practice for teaching math. Double and treble and quadruple recipes for fraction drill. Makes math taste good. Warning to parents: let the kids share the goodies with the neighbors or you'll be carrying your math assignments on your hips for 30 years.

For spelling, see Rudginski's "How to Teach Spelling." It explains the six basic syllable patterns, which go a long way toward organizing English phonics. English is 83% regular, so despite its spelling oddities a student has better than a 4/5 chance of getting a word right if he knows the rules. I've used it to teach English to a Colombian and two Argentines, as well as my kids and a few other people's kids.

Computer programs are OK for drill; the Quarter Mile Math program gives my youngest daughter a fun way to practice multiplication tables--beats flash cards. The Anonymoose Model works ONCE STUDENTS HAVE THE BASICS NAILED DOWN.

Unfortunately the schools have this one-size fits all approach. So a little wiggly boy, who may not be mentally ready to read until he's 9, gets jammed like a square peg into a round hole situation. Kids who don't get the basics immediately get pushed into situations beyond their skill level and are made to feel like they're the ones at fault.

I have home schooled our three daughters for at least five years of their school careers. The TV is in the basement--crummy reception except for one channel, and no cable--and we use videos to great benefit. Our eldest daughter got into UW Madison on the basis of her ACT scores, the science classes she took at the high school, and my reading list, which was quite formidable. During her sophomore year, and #2 daughter's 7th grade year, we studied Europe. We mapped all the countries, kept news files, used lots of films, read classic plays, and researched NATO among other things. We spent 6 weeks and 7 films on the Balkans alone.

#2 daughter spent a very intense semester in 8th grade studying the middle east, and is entering UW this fall to major in international relations. When she entered high school in the fall of 2001, she was the only student in the 1700 member student body on Sept 11 who had any idea what was happening, from where, and why.

Parental time trumps all the gadgetry.
Posted by: mom   2005-03-21 10:35:45 PM  

#5  Biged, www.math.com is a terrific site for teaching math.
Posted by: phil_b   2005-03-21 12:32:01 PM  

#4  Turns out that kids who use computers at home are also more likely to have books, a live-in father and be read to. Hummmmm..... maybe it's not computers that make the difference. Don't quote me tho... kidz and computers are me meal ticket.
Posted by: Shipman   2005-03-21 12:30:54 PM  

#3  Argue all day, guys. There is no "right" answer because every child is different. That is why schools should be different and students and parents should have a choice. It's the marketplace that has been proven to evaluate products and services best whenever it has been tried. Competition, give it a chance.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis   2005-03-21 12:02:08 PM  

#2  BigEric, age 4 does Dogz-5, and Sim-City on the computer.
My wife does reading, and I do adding and subtracting one-on-one. No computer as teacher. It is the best way, and you can see the progress. Very rewarding.

Computers can be used to write reports, etc, but you learn better with the human interaction, especially at a young age...
Posted by: BigEd   2005-03-21 11:47:38 AM  

#1  And students dropping pianos on their feet proved to be an ineffective way for them to learn to play the piano. Bill Gates is right. Our schools are taught using 19th century methods, and need to be completely redesigned. Just incorporating computers into the existing model is ridiculous. The biggest problem is that 90% of student time is wasted. A curriculum based on "the three R's" is insane: students should be taught five times as many subjects as they are now. Mastery of "the three R's" should be complete by the 3rd grade. Students should be provided an individually designed education that continually evaluates their performance, reviews skill retention, and lets them have "knowledge surges" based on their interests, as far as they want to go. Only computers can do this. Computers can follow the individual's ebb and flow of learning, so students are not held back by their slowest peer. Multi-lingual education coexists with whatever else a student is learning, as does continual vocabulary and grammer enhancement. Memory and reading skills are also integral. Another advantage is that such a computer controlled education would be transferrable to any school, a tremendous boon to transient students of which there are millions. And all of this would be in a *typical* school with an average budget. Not, as has been done in past, in a new school with unlimited funds, top teachers and motivated parents.
Posted by: Anonymoose   2005-03-21 10:13:14 AM  

00:00