Issues in Education: Technology
In
Brazil, a local alternative to the OLPC
Posted by Erica Ogg, c|net news.com, March 13, 2008
The citizens of Serrana, Brazil, are not waiting around for Intel or Nicholas Negroponte to deliver low-cost PCs to their school children. Instead, they're taking the matter into their own hands.
Starting at the end of this
month, the Serrana Digital Desk project will get underway when 200 surface
PCs that transform into desktop PCs will be placed in classrooms in the city
of 45,000. It's a trial run of a new, very local program that is intended to
give kids computers in the classroom while involving as many community members
as possible in the implementation of the project. See a video
of one of the desks here (Note: it's a Brazilian news feature in
Portuguese).
U.S.
educators seek lessons from Scandinavia
Article by Meris Stansbury, eSchoolNews,
March 3, 2008
A
delegation led by the Consortium
for School Networking (CoSN) recently toured Scandinavia in search of
answers for how students in that region of the world were able to score so high
on a recent international test of math and science skills. They found that
educators in
What the CoSN delegation didn’t find in those nations were competitive
grading, standardized testing, and top-down accountability—all staples of the
American education system.
Taming
Baby Rage: Why Are Some Kids So Angry?
New research indicates babies are born
with violent tendencies that most learn to control
Scientific American online, October 16,
2007
"It's a natural behavior and it's surprising that the idea that children and adolescents learn aggression from the media is still relevant," says Richard Tremblay, a professor of pediatrics, psychiatry and psychology at the University of Montreal, who has spent more than two decades tracking 35,000 Canadian children (from age five months through their 20s) in search of the roots of physical aggression. "Clearly youth were violent before television appeared."
Tremblay's previous results have suggested that children on average reach a peak of violent behavior (biting, scratching, screaming, hitting…) around 18 months of age. The level of aggression begins to taper between the ages of two and five as they begin to learn other, more sophisticated ways of communicating their needs and wants.
Tremblay on Wednesday is set to present preliminary study results showing a genetic signature consistent with chronic violent behavior at a meeting of The Royal Society, the U.K.'s academy of science, in London.
"We're looking at to what extent the chronically aggressive individuals show differences in terms of gene expressions compared to those on the normal trajectory," he told ScientificAmerican.com. "The individuals that are chronically aggressive have…more genes that are not expressed." The fact that a gene can be silenced or the level of protein it encodes reduced, he added, "is an indication that the problem is at a very basic level."
Report:
When freshmen get video games, grades dip
Article by Brittany Anas, Boulder Daily Camera, October 1, 2007
It's a good thing that Brett Forrest is quick when it comes to totally dominating alien armies and defending the universe from their nefarious threats.
Otherwise the "Halo 3" buff — who doubles as a freshman at the University of Colorado — might have a backlog of homework assignments and social commitments.
"I didn't skip class," Forrest said. "But I did put all homework on hold until I beat it."
A new report shows that freshmen with
regular access to video game consoles studied, on average, 40 minutes less each
day than their non-gaming peers. As a result, their GPA scores dropped by 6
percent — or 0.241 points on a 4.0 grading scale, according to the study from
the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Detox
For Video Game Addiction?
Experts Say Gaming Can Be A Compulsion As
Strong As Gambling
CBS News, July 3, 2006
At an addiction treatment
center in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, teenagers and young adults begin detox
by admitting they are powerless over their addiction. But these addicts aren’t
hooked on drugs or alcohol. They are going cold turkey to break their dependence
on video games.
Keith Bakker, director of Smith & Jones Addiction Consultants, tells WebMD
he created the new program in response to a growing problem among young men and
boys. “The more we looked at it, the more we saw [gaming] was taking over the
lives of kids.”
Researchers
question school in high-tech age
Article by Matthew Bigg, Toronto Globe and
Mail, August 29, 2007
As students across Canada head back to classrooms in this high-tech Information Age, there's a question in the front row that demands to be heard:
Why, in the Information Age, are students heading back to classrooms?
Researchers say
students weaned on collaborative learning with high-tech devices are suffering
in classrooms ruled by defenders of lecture-based orthodoxy wielding overhead
projectors and reciting from dog-eared history textbooks...
96 percent of teens use
social-networking tools
Survey reveals schools have a huge opportunity to
harness technology for instruction
eSchool News August 14, 2007
Ninety-six percent of U.S.
students ages 9 to 17 who have internet access use social-networking technology
to connect with their peers, and one of their most common topics of discussion
is education, according to a new survey. Yet most schools have stringent rules
against nearly all forms of online social networking during the school day. In
light of the survey's findings, school leaders should consider reexamining their
policies and explore ways they could use social networking for educational
purposes, its authors say.
Study faults 'Einstein'
videos
Babies who watch have fewer words
Article by Amber Dance, Los Angeles Times,
August 8, 2007
Parents hoping to raise baby Einsteins by using infant educational videos instead might be creating baby Homer Simpsons, according to researchers.
In a study published yesterday
in the Journal of Pediatrics, researchers found that, among babies ages 8 months
to 16 months, every hour spent daily watching programs such as "Brainy
Baby" or "Baby Einstein" translated into six to eight fewer words
in their vocabularies as compared with other children their age.
40 percent of babies watch
TV, UW study finds
Article by Paul Nyhan, Seattle Post
Intelligencer, May 8, 2007
Baby wants a bottle, and her TV.
Babies are glued to television sets these days, with 40 percent of 3-month- olds and 90 percent of 2-year-olds regularly watching TV, according to a University of Washington study released Monday.
These tiny viewers are further proof that baby TV is a booming business in 2007. Today, infants have their own 24-hour network, Brainy Baby and Baby Einstein DVDs, and a growing list of other programs made just for them. Many also have sets in their bedrooms.
"Most of these kids are watching what
parents consider to be quote, unquote 'educational TV,' " said Dr. Dimitri
Christakis, co-author of the study and associate professor at the UW.
"There is not evidence at all that it is."
Teen TV Buffs Prone to
Learning Problems
Forbes/HealthDay News, May 7, 2007
The research, led by Jeffrey G. Johnson of
Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and the New York State
Psychiatric Institute, also found that it was TV watching that contributed to
learning problems -- not the other way around.
In digital age, more t's are
crossed poorly
Article by Mark Pothier, Boston Globe, May 6, 2007
Michael Gagnon can trace his decline to the fourth grade, when he was introduced to a computer.
"From there it was all downhill for my handwriting," he said. Today, Gagnon sometimes struggles to decipher his own writing.
"If I go back to it a day later, it's like a maze." he said. His co-workers at Teksystems in Framingham agree -- the 25-year-old technical recruiter is forbidden from muddying the office whiteboard with his scribbling. But Gagnon is not concerned about his lack of proficiency with a dry-erase marker.
"Handwriting is kind of obsolete
anyway," he said.
Rural Education 2.0
Why are urban students flocking to rural
online schools?
Article by Samuel Western, High Country
News, April
30, 2007
The man in the Sodbuster Bar walks with a slight limp, the result of old injury. “I was operating a seismograph rig when it went off a hillside outside Meteetsee, Wyo.,” he said. “It fell 382 feet with me inside. I wasn’t supposed to make it, but I did. I eventually got a settlement. Made a lot of lawyers rich in the process, though.”
Springfield is the seat of Baca County. Tucked away in the southeast corner of Colorado, the county is much more closely aligned, both in politics and soul, with Oklahoma or the Texas panhandle than with Denver. It’s flat, windy “tomorrow country,” as in, “OK, things are tough, but they’ll get better tomorrow.” It’s the kind of place where used farm equipment is a prized lawn ornament.
In 2004, Baca County ranked as one of the 50 poorest counties in the nation, both in adjusted gross income and in wages. It’s lost 10 percent of its population in the last decade, and its population is about to drop below 4,000. But like the man in the bar, the county is a survivor.
In fact, one of its school districts is
doing more than surviving. Vilas RE-5 has the highest growth rate of any of
Colorado’s 178 school districts. Its enrollment is up 405 percent since 2002.
It had 3,800 students during the 2006-2007 school year. Most of these students,
however, do not reside in Baca County, nor do they sit at desks in the Vilas
school district. They live all over Colorado, but mostly around Denver, and many
of them are low-performing, “at-risk” students. Thanks to Vilas, they attend
high school online.
Major Study on Software Stirs
Debate
On whole, school products found to yield no
net gains
Article by Andrew Trotter, Education Week, April
11, 2007
A long-awaited federal study of reading and math software that was released last week found no significant differences in standardized-test scores between students who used the technology in their classrooms and those who used other methods.
Representatives of the educational software
industry immediately took issue with aspects of the $10 million study of 15
commercial software products, arguing that its findings did not mean that
classroom technology had no academic payoff.
Effectiveness of Reading and
Mathematics Software Products:
Findings from the First Student Cohort
A Report to Congress by the National Center for Education Evaluation and
Regional Assistance
April, 2007
The National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance produced this major study of the effectiveness of education technology. Mandated by Congress, the report uses scientifically based research methods and control groups to focus on the impact of technology on student academic achievement. The main findings of the study are:
Senator Jay Rockefeller seeks
to extend broadband program
Article by Tom Breen, Boston Globe, Associated Press, February 28, 2007
"More than nine out of 10 public school classrooms have Internet access today, thanks to a little-known piece of federal legislation that has created billions of dollars in computer service discounts since 1998.
"In a report released on
Capitol Hill Wednesday, the so-called E-rate program is credited with bringing
the Internet to countless classrooms and libraries across the country."
Gaming advances as a learning
tool
Online article, eSchool News, January 18, 2007
Using computer games to teach
is hardly new: The military has been doing it with pilots and soldiers for
decades, and corporations have been gaming for years as well. But momentum also
is growing for using computer games to help teach students basic curricular
concepts in school--even such entertainment-focused games as "Restaurant
Empire" and "Zoo Tycoon."
The Handwriting Is on the
Wall
Researchers See a downside as Keyboards
Replace Pens in Schools
Article by Margaret Webb Pressler,
Washington Post, October 11, 2006
"The computer keyboard helped kill shorthand, and now it's threatening to finish off longhand.
"When handwritten essays were introduced on the SAT exams for the class of 2006, just 15 percent of the almost 1.5 million students wrote their answers in cursive. The rest? They printed. Block letters.
"And those college hopefuls are just the first edge of a wave of U.S. students who no longer get much handwriting instruction in the primary grades, frequently 10 minutes a day or less. As a result, more and more students struggle to read and write cursive.
"Many educators shrug. Stacked up
against teaching technology, foreign languages and the material on standardized
tests, penmanship instruction seems a relic...."
"I Said, 'Not While You Study!'
"Science Suggests Kids Can't Study and Groove at the Same Time"
Article by Jeffrey Ghassemi,
Washington Post, Sept. 5, 2006
Memo to: Frustrated parents
From: Health section staff
Subject: Your kids' study habits
There's some impressive new scientific research on your side when you tell your kids they can't possibly do their homework with the TV blaring, instant messenger crawling or MP3 player pumping. Unfortunately, explaining it will require you to get them unplugged from their iPods.
Tell them this: A recent study shows that the ruckus of such multi-tasking may make them learn less, and to use the wrong parts of their brains to store information.
An Analysis of the 2005 National Technology
Plan:
Better for Business than for Children
by Patricia Hinchey, Education
Policy Research Unit, August, 2006
"Parents warned over computer use"
BBC online article, July 17, 2006
The children's charity NCH said there was "an alarming gap" in technological knowledge between generations.
Even when parents had put controls on what youngsters could access, almost half the 1,003 children aged 11 to 16 surveyed said they could disable them.
The NCH said families had to learn more about technology to protect children.
Detox
For Video Game Addiction?
Experts Say Gaming Can Be A Compulsion As
Strong As Gambling
CBS News, July 3, 2006
At an addiction treatment
center in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, teenagers and young adults begin detox
by admitting they are powerless over their addiction. But these addicts aren’t
hooked on drugs or alcohol. They are going cold turkey to break their dependence
on video games.
Keith Bakker, director of Smith & Jones Addiction Consultants, tells WebMD
he created the new program in response to a growing problem among young men and
boys. “The more we looked at it, the more we saw [gaming] was taking over the
lives of kids.”
Report from NCH: The Children's Charity
A family guide on getting to grips with technology
NCH campaigns for wider access to information and communication technology for children from less advantaged backgrounds. We also recognize that the internet enables those who would harm children to have wider and more direct access to them. Therefore we strongly promote online safety for all children.