I'm honestly not all that surprised, seeing as nearly every "technology in education" initiative really just amounts to using iPads for virtual textbooks. If schools used the technology to enrich education (specifically where it would be useful rather than just every single class) then at the very least it would be helpful in teaching new skills. However, treating computers as a magical gateway to better educations will never accomplish anything and I fail to comprehend how people thought it would be in the first place.
Kentaro Toyama talks about education and the failed promise of the OLPC program and other technological endeavors in education in <i>Geek Heresy</i>. His thesis is that technology "amplifies" the characteristics in society and self. If you have an underperforming school with ill-equipped or overwhelmed instructors, technology won't fix these issues. But in education research, where studies very carefully select a field site, you don't see experiments involving problem schools; you find experimental deployments in idyllic settings, with instructors who are extremely competent, and the researchers might even take a relatively hands-on role to ensure the technology gets used as desired by the protocol of the study.<p>In one chapter he points out that studies such as the OECD's tend to find middling results (as this one seems to, although I see more explicitly negative conclusions, like that students do <i>worse</i> with technology in some circumstances) mainly because you're studying students from across all schools; look at the successful schools and see how technology affects them, and he seems to argue that you'll find those students make even greater leaps over the underprivileged students.<p>His bigger point is that technology's benefit is contextually determined by human factors, and that we need to understand the cultures in which we hope to use technology to benefit the members of that culture. Throwing tablets, laptops, or smartphones at everyone won't magically make the world a better place. It's a good read (so far, at least).<p>Also, I'm getting more and more annoyed seeing news outlets publishing summaries of third party studies without linking to <i>anything</i>. The BBC don't even link to the OECD's homepage, let alone the study they ostensibly published.
I've got two kids in school (grades 8 and 10, relatively affluent district in the US), and I'm not shocked by this result. Anecdotally, whatever the possible upsides of computer use are, they are mitigated by some severe downsides:<p>* While promising the potential to be a learning tool, the computer is also an addiction. I've observed that it's almost impossible for some kids to manage their time, and to maintain their focus, while doing lessons on the computer. This has been a <i>huge</i> setback for one of my kids. Fortunately, math is still done on paper, so he gets something out of that.<p>* I've looked at the online lessons. My impression is that the effort of programming the interactive environment for online lessons tends to limit the breadth and depth of those lessons. Math instruction has abandoned proofs. A huge amount of the computerized lessons are busywork.<p>* There's no limit to the amount of homework that can be pushed on kids.<p>This is nothing new. Roughly 30 years ago I had an internship at an educational computing center that had almost every kind of computer and educational software title in a demo lab, for teachers to try out. The vast amount of apps amounted to glorified flash cards.<p>How great it could actually be is lost on the teachers. Instead of working through canned lessons, or surfing for stuff to paste into a report, kids could explore "real" software such as (just listing some of my favorites), Scratch, iPython Notebook, Arduino, etc.
From a quick scan of the actual OECD report, it is quite clear that the authors are far less certain of the general conclusions than than the reporter from the BBC.<p>"With this data, patterns of correlation can be identified, but these must be interpreted carefully, because several alternative explanations give rise to similar patterns"<p>and<p>"Nothing guarantees that students who are more exposed to computers can be compared to with students who are less exposed, and that the observed performance differences can be attributed to such differences in exposure."<p>and<p>"Non-random selection and reverse causality thus plague within-country analyses, even after accounting for observable differences across students and schools."<p><a href="http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/education/students-computers-and-learning_9789264239555-en#page1" rel="nofollow">http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/educati...</a>
There are several scenarios where computer use would not just be great but accelerate learning process:<p>-Teaching about planets, universe, Big Bang through interactive simulations<p>-Virtual interactive dissection for biology class<p>-Interactive geometry for understanding proofs<p>-Playing with molecular structure of material<p>-Interactive virtual model of steam engine and internal combustion engines<p>-Interactive excercise for basic arithmetic and trignometry<p>-Learning about WWII with photos, animations on map, graphs, data, videos.<p>I would have truely loved all these to be there in my school years. The key is that you need a <i>great</i> software that is targeted towards specific parts of topics. Remember <i>interactivity</i> is the key and only computers can offer that so cheaply and effectively even to the most disadvantaged students in remotest part of the world.<p>Instead of all these, when I hear "Tech for Education" it usually means, replacing books by ebooks, submitting homework electronically, ask questions in class chat rooms, recording activities in e-log and so on. Those things are triviality with negligible benefits towards actually understanding the subject - more likely negative benefit as it just adds on distraction. No one wants to do real tech in Ed like above examples because it's hard, requires lot of expensive talent and risk taking. Building chat rooms for class shouldn't even be called "tech in Ed", IMo.<p>Unfortunately schools are blowing 100s of million on just that and governments and philanthropists are happy to shove their cash in to creating ever more advanced chat rooms and classroom management systems rather than create actual interactive content that helps understanding of the subject.<p>It would have been nice if study pointed this out instead of denouncing use of computers in education straight up.<p>PS: No one should compare student performance with Shanghai or Mumbai. Those places have extra-super-heavy emphasis on passing exams and memorizations. You will find tons of students there who can acurately list down every single important date for WWII and without pretty much any understanding of dynamics that caused Holocast or even Holocast itself.
"Computers in education", at least in my country (Portugal), was never about improving pupil results or <i>education</i> per se.<p>"Computers in education" is all about clientelism; filling the pockets of a selected few which produce mediocre technology, a quid pro quo between politic executive power and the private sector.
I agree.<p>My daughter has just hit secondary school in the UK. She was disappointed to find that they rarely touch a computer.<p>What they did do is on day one of science drop her a proper lab notebook and start talking about the scientific method and proper experimental recording, in mathematics they started talking about propositional logic and in RE they talked about logical reason. They're also not allowed to read eBooks; only paper ones.<p>I'm shitting myself with joy if I'm honest that they didn't stick them in front of a Flash game like they did in primary school and assume that was the end game for technology in education. They learned close to nothing and we had to do all the educating.
The real promise of education technology isn't to plop computers in front of kids and hope they do better it's to get persistent, dynamic, individualized curriculum for every student.<p>Right now a kid that scrapes by with a D in 3rd grade English starts up at the same place as the kid that sat around bored because they'd read all the required reading the first week.<p>TL;DR We need a Young Ladies Illustrated Primer - <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age</a>
Interesting. I'm most fearful that this will be interpreted as "technology is bad! Keep it out of schools!" - rather than "ok, now we have learned that randomly situating computers throughout a school may not be the right approach to introducing new technology into the school in an attempt to improve outcomes", and possibly, "should we revisit the outcomes that we are seeking in this new world?"
What about the benefits to teachers? Taking a test on a computer won't make you perform any better, but it frees up a lot of the teacher's time grading, which is often spend "after hours".
"The role that the computer can play most strongly has little to do with information. It is to give children a greater sense of empowerment, of being able to do more than they could do before. But too often, I see the computer being used to lead the child step by step through the learning process."<p><a href="http://www.papert.org/articles/ACritiqueofTechnocentrism.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.papert.org/articles/ACritiqueofTechnocentrism.htm...</a>
For most applications computers do not make activities higher quality - they make them faster. And they need software to do this. History has shown that really good novel software is extremely hard to come by.<p>Before being productive on a computer a person has to learn to think and how to be creative. And after that one needs good software.<p>Sure, 1 in a 1000 kids is a born natural programmer and given a computer will make programming his/hers lifelong passion. For the rest of the crafts - unless exceptional applications are available like Photoshop and (Cintiq/Surface) for art, Scratch for learning programming, etc - traditional analogue learning materials may be superior.
This has been known for years. The only thing computers really help are learning disabled kids.<p>It's like exercise. You can attach a motor to the exercise machine to do the work for you, the work gets done, but you don't get any stronger.<p>The same goes for learning. Learning requires effort. No effort = no improvement. Jobs called computers a "bicycle for the mind". Biking will get you further than jogging, but not stronger.
When I was little, I remember this racing game and this block building game. You did multiplications (like 6x7) and if you got it correctly you would get another block in your wall. It was really addicting to be faster than you little friends.
Stradivarius violins in schools won't help if teachers are not musicians. The whole notion of professional "teachers" instead of professionals is broken. My best teachers were practicing scientists, programmers and crafstmen
I would have liked to see some data on the accompanying human resources and expenditure, if technology investment is taking from human resources investment then it's not a surprise that the results are poor.
I think they have found this result because technology is not used correctly in schools. These "edtech" softwares are very weak most of the time.
What the "International Tests" are optimized for?<p>I wonder if, a century ago, the increase use of automobiles led to a measurable decline in buggy handling skills.