3 ms·

Change also doesn't just happen because you dumped a computer in a room. I personally haven't seen a computer used effectively in a classroom, in a large part b

by mhurron 11y ago

Change also doesn't just happen because you dumped a computer in a room. I personally haven't seen a computer used effectively in a classroom, in a large part because the teachers don't know how to integrate them into their lessons. They were given devices and then given no instruction on how to use them.

jerf 11y ago
Education is just barely starting to come out of what I call the "... but on a computer!" [1] era, which is when you try to do exactly the same thing you did before, but now it's on a computer (or a tablet in this case). There's basically no advantage to taking existing classroom practices, but sticking them on a computer. You'll have to rewrite the entire education process to figure out how to harness computers. Let me give a concrete example. I am now a fantastic speller, of a language that is one of the harder languages to spell. Am I fantastic because I'm just that awesome? No! Am I fantastic because I have spent years studying lists of words and taking spelling tests? Hell no! I'm fantastic now because every major text input I use now has the red-squiggly line, and the instant I misspell a word and hit space, bam, red line. Backspace & correct. Right-click and select if I really, really can't work it out. (But with backspace & correct actually being way faster, I prefer that.) With instant feedback comes a high rate of learning. I can tell this isn't "cheating", because when I do function in an environment where I don't have this functionality, I retain my spelling skill, the golden standard of whether a skill exists in the tools or the brain. In fact I write many of my blog posts in emacs with no spelling support on, and while I still scan over my posts with a spell checker before posting them, I routinely experience writing several thousand words without a single misspelling, because I have harnessed solid technology to train my brain. I also spell well with handwriting. This is unbelievably fantastic technology for teaching spelling so efficiently and so effectively that it hardly even need be explicitly taught; sit students down in front of this technology and have them simply write and let the red squiggly handle the spelling training. (You'll still need vocabulary training, but, again, let the red squiggly handle the spelling of the vocabulary while the vocabulary training focuses on meanings.) By contrast, doing spelling tests "but on a computer" is a terrible way of doing business! First of all, if the students have to "turn in" the test before they get feedback, you've already missed the sub-second feedback rate that would have been so much better anyhow, but second of all, the fact that you're having a spelling test at all is a huge waste of their time. That's the sort of second-order effect we need to be harnessing with computers in the classroom, and we are only at the very, very beginning of that road. My first grader is just starting spelling tests. He's not quite computer savvy enough to start writing on a computer yet, but you can believe I'll be setting him up with a red squiggly as soon as is practicable. I still believe computers are going to rewrite education from top-to-bottom, but I find it is proving to be one of the most entrenched, hidebound, nearsighted, and even perhaps terrified of real change elements of society we can possibly imagine. We're so scare of what bad things might happen if we don't stuff a conventional education into our children's heads (moreso than ever, thanks to ever-more test-based education) that we're terrified of experimenting with anything new, and the only acceptable change to the "conventional" education is to precommit even more time to it, making it that much harder to work any experimentation into the system. There are major religions that treat their holy texts as more flexible than the way our culture treats the official line of How Children Are Taught. [1]: http://www.jerf.org/iri/post/2916 http://www.jerf.org/iri/post/2916
- wagglycocks 11y ago
  What you're describing as the "but on a computer" era is also known in education as the first stage of the SAMR model: Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition. This is a well known pitfall in technology integration. I don't think a lot of people in this thread are giving due credit to educators - it's their job, and there's a lot of smart people in education who have just as much common sense as the armchair teachers who think otherwise. http://www.emergingedtech.com/2015/04/examples-of-transforming-lessons-through-samr/ http://www.emergingedtech.com/2015/04/examples-of-transformi...
  - jerf 11y ago
    Educators have their hands tied. We've centralized everything, and the central bureaucracy has decided it doesn't matter how innovative educators can be because the central bureaucracy already knows everything about the best way to teach, and if you deviate from it, you're fired. (A couple of intermediate steps through failing test scores and the consequences, but that's the effect.) Until the educators get the central bureaucracy off their backs, it doesn't matter what they are capable of. If you'd like to read my point as being that the central bureaucracy is "the most entrenched, hidebound, nearsighted, and even perhaps terrified of real change" part of the system, I'm perfectly comfortable with that.
- megaman22 11y ago
  This is the number one reason I love static analysis tools like ReSharper for coding. I write a piece of dodgy code, and it tells me "Hey, this could result in trying to access a null pointer", or, "Hey, dummy, this conditional is logically inconsistent and the block below can never get executed" or "Hey, you can rewrite this great big loop with a simpler LINQ statement." Then after a few times of doing this, I internalize the rules, and start doing it on my own.
tormeh 11y ago
Yes, very freequent use of computers in classrooms are linked to significantly worse outcomes[0] 0: http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/education/students-computers-and-learning_9789264239555-en#page5 http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/educati...

by mhurron 11y ago

jerf 11y ago

Education is just barely starting to come out of what I call the "... but on a computer!" [1] era, which is when you try to do exactly the same thing you did before, but now it's on a computer (or a tablet in this case). There's basically no advantage to taking existing classroom practices, but sticking them on a computer. You'll have to rewrite the entire education process to figure out how to harness computers. Let me give a concrete example. I am now a fantastic speller, of a language that is one of the harder languages to spell. Am I fantastic because I'm just that awesome? No! Am I fantastic because I have spent years studying lists of words and taking spelling tests? Hell no! I'm fantastic now because every major text input I use now has the red-squiggly line, and the instant I misspell a word and hit space, bam, red line. Backspace & correct. Right-click and select if I really, really can't work it out. (But with backspace & correct actually being way faster, I prefer that.) With instant feedback comes a high rate of learning. I can tell this isn't "cheating", because when I do function in an environment where I don't have this functionality, I retain my spelling skill, the golden standard of whether a skill exists in the tools or the brain. In fact I write many of my blog posts in emacs with no spelling support on, and while I still scan over my posts with a spell checker before posting them, I routinely experience writing several thousand words without a single misspelling, because I have harnessed solid technology to train my brain. I also spell well with handwriting. This is unbelievably fantastic technology for teaching spelling so efficiently and so effectively that it hardly even need be explicitly taught; sit students down in front of this technology and have them simply write and let the red squiggly handle the spelling training. (You'll still need vocabulary training, but, again, let the red squiggly handle the spelling of the vocabulary while the vocabulary training focuses on meanings.) By contrast, doing spelling tests "but on a computer" is a terrible way of doing business! First of all, if the students have to "turn in" the test before they get feedback, you've already missed the sub-second feedback rate that would have been so much better anyhow, but second of all, the fact that you're having a spelling test at all is a huge waste of their time. That's the sort of second-order effect we need to be harnessing with computers in the classroom, and we are only at the very, very beginning of that road. My first grader is just starting spelling tests. He's not quite computer savvy enough to start writing on a computer yet, but you can believe I'll be setting him up with a red squiggly as soon as is practicable. I still believe computers are going to rewrite education from top-to-bottom, but I find it is proving to be one of the most entrenched, hidebound, nearsighted, and even perhaps terrified of real change elements of society we can possibly imagine. We're so scare of what bad things might happen if we don't stuff a conventional education into our children's heads (moreso than ever, thanks to ever-more test-based education) that we're terrified of experimenting with anything new, and the only acceptable change to the "conventional" education is to precommit even more time to it, making it that much harder to work any experimentation into the system. There are major religions that treat their holy texts as more flexible than the way our culture treats the official line of How Children Are Taught. [1]: http://www.jerf.org/iri/post/2916 http://www.jerf.org/iri/post/2916

wagglycocks 11y ago
What you're describing as the "but on a computer" era is also known in education as the first stage of the SAMR model: Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition. This is a well known pitfall in technology integration. I don't think a lot of people in this thread are giving due credit to educators - it's their job, and there's a lot of smart people in education who have just as much common sense as the armchair teachers who think otherwise. http://www.emergingedtech.com/2015/04/examples-of-transforming-lessons-through-samr/ http://www.emergingedtech.com/2015/04/examples-of-transformi...
- jerf 11y ago
  Educators have their hands tied. We've centralized everything, and the central bureaucracy has decided it doesn't matter how innovative educators can be because the central bureaucracy already knows everything about the best way to teach, and if you deviate from it, you're fired. (A couple of intermediate steps through failing test scores and the consequences, but that's the effect.) Until the educators get the central bureaucracy off their backs, it doesn't matter what they are capable of. If you'd like to read my point as being that the central bureaucracy is "the most entrenched, hidebound, nearsighted, and even perhaps terrified of real change" part of the system, I'm perfectly comfortable with that.
megaman22 11y ago
This is the number one reason I love static analysis tools like ReSharper for coding. I write a piece of dodgy code, and it tells me "Hey, this could result in trying to access a null pointer", or, "Hey, dummy, this conditional is logically inconsistent and the block below can never get executed" or "Hey, you can rewrite this great big loop with a simpler LINQ statement." Then after a few times of doing this, I internalize the rules, and start doing it on my own.

tormeh 11y ago

Yes, very freequent use of computers in classrooms are linked to significantly worse outcomes[0] 0: http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/education/students-computers-and-learning_9789264239555-en#page5 http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/educati...