Your thoughts on using tablets in education (elementary-high school)

[Little_Pig]

@Czarcasm

In elementary school, how does a Chromebook help teach a student how to think? Isn’t a Chromebook primarily an internet access tool?

Assignments are up there in the Cloud or on dedicated sites.

[Little_Pig]

@Czarcasm

And you have given us no evidence that they are superior as teaching devices are that they are cost effective in the long run-you have only shown us that they are widely used.

They don’t necessarily have to be superior, just a different approach. You can do math on an abacus or a Cray.

[Little_Pig]

@The_Joker_and_the_Thief

No they aren’t. You can’t do meaningful image editing on a tablet, or compile code or easily access the filesystem (if at all). You can write, but it’ll almost certainly be slower than writing by hand or typing with a real keyboard. The only roles in which they’re better than the alternative is media consumption. If a teacher is trying to get kids to do anything more than play games on a tablet, they’re teaching poorly because some other method would probably be more effective.

Can you cite a method that “would probably be more effective.”? Just ask’in.

[The_Joker_and_the_Thief]

@Little_Pig

Can you cite a method that “would probably be more effective.”? Just ask’in.

I’m not sure what you mean. I only mentioned content creation–if you’re consuming content, a tablet might be a better option in some cases. Most schoolwork for most kids after middle school will be writing, and you can type or write quicker and more accurately with paper or a computer than on a tablet. The rest will be things like spreadsheets, powerpoints and posters, all things that are easier done the old fashioned way. And besides, using existing computers and books doesn’t cost thousands of dollars every year on support alone, plus huge costs for replacement and depreciation.

Also, the majority of teaching in my experience is the “interactive lecture” type, with a teacher talking and engaging the students, and the students following alone and taking notes. Adding tablets doesn’t improve this at all, and simply splits children’s already limited attention spans.

[Little_Pig]

@The_Joker_and_the_Thief

I’m not sure what you mean. I only mentioned content creation–if you’re consuming content, a tablet might be a better option in some cases. Most schoolwork for most kids after middle school will be writing, and you can type or write quicker and more accurately with paper or a computer than on a tablet. The rest will be things like spreadsheets, powerpoints and posters, all things that are easier done the old fashioned way. And besides, using existing computers and books doesn’t cost thousands of dollars every year on support alone, plus huge costs for replacement and depreciation.

Also, the majority of teaching in my experience is the “interactive lecture” type, with a teacher talking and engaging the students, and the students following alone and taking notes. Adding tablets doesn’t improve this at all, and simply splits children’s already limited attention spans.

I don’t think tablets and notebooks will be used exclusively. There’s still a place for paper and pencil. Where I work we use Google Gmail and Apps, the equivalent Word, Excel and PowerPoint. (We dumped Microsoft mail.) Google offers all this for free. Everything is stored in the Google cloud. Sharing documents between users is a breeze.

For all this, a $200 Chromebook is the way to go. As I mentioned above, my nephew who is in 6th grade, was given a Chromebook. Given nothing is stored on the Chromebook itself is a huge plus. I wish I spent more time with him the last time I saw him to see how he uses it. I did see him doing math exercises and watching a math tutorial YouTube.

Others are noticing.

[Czarcasm]

@Little_Pig

They don’t necessarily have to be superior, just a different approach. You can do math on an abacus or a Cray.

When school funds are so tight that teachers have to dip into their own salaries to round out school supplies for their students, then spending money on electronics instead of something else has to be justified by stats that show they work better than what they are replacing.

[carnivorousplant]

@Czarcasm

When school funds are so tight that teachers have to dip into their own salaries to round out school supplies for their students, then spending money on electronics instead of something else has to be justified by stats that show they work better than what they are replacing.

True, but there may be that some of the budget may be aside for electronics or computer equipment. There are also grants for that sort of thing.

[JohnT]

@MrDibble

This is kind of my point, that you didn’t seem to get, and which the Ethiopians were just the best example of - tablets are not just media consumption devices, they are fully-functional computers, and it’s only if Sophia’s mentors (her teachers, the principal, you) treat the device as a fancy Gameboy, that she’ll only use it as such.

For instance - she seems to have not just the physical ability, but also the licence from her mentors, to load any app she wants - why is that? Why can this not be limited? You expect a 13yo to self-police that kind of thing? That’s a failure of mentors, not of student.

You also seem to think she’ll just be limited to the game-like education apps that are part of the program at her school. Why limit her like that? Why do you not investigate and install programs that meet your own standards of pedagogy. You’ve said the device is open to installing anything non-porn. Install a decent learning SDK. Install textbooks. Install Minecraft. Whatever. But the device is in the hands of your own minor daughter - don’t blame her for what is on it. Parent.

Even granting what you say (and I agree with much of it - why did the school just dump “free-use” (for want of a better term) iPads on the students rather than locking them down so that the only apps to be installed are school approved?), the question of whether these are better or worse for her education is still unanswered.

I’ve been doing some research and have learned of studies that show that e-reading is up to 20% slower and far less effective at retention than paper-reading. To quote Scientific American:

Even so, evidence from laboratory experiments , polls and consumer reports indicates that modern screens and e-readers fail to adequately recreate certain tactile experiences of reading on paper that many people miss and, more importantly, prevent people from navigating long texts in an intuitive and satisfying way. In turn, such navigational difficulties may subtly inhibit reading comprehension. Compared with paper, screens may also drain more of our mental resources while we are reading and make it a little harder to remember what we read when we are done. A parallel line of research focuses on people’s attitudes toward different kinds of media. Whether they realize it or not, many people approach computers and tablets with a state of mind less conducive to learning than the one they bring to paper.

The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper versus Screens

Since the purpose of school is education, should the tools provided by the school make the activity of learning “less conducive”?

Another (European) study shows:

A new study which found that readers using a Kindle were “significantly” worse than paperback readers at recalling when events occurred in a mystery story is part of major new Europe-wide research looking at the impact of digitisation on the reading experience.

…

(Lead researcher Anne) Mangen also pointed to a paper published last year, which gave 72 Norwegian 10th-graders texts to read in print, or in PDF on a computer screen, followed by comprehension tests. She and her fellow researchers found that “students who read texts in print scored significantly better on the reading comprehension test than students who read the texts digitally”.

Again, regardless of whether the things are locked down or not, the question remains: are they better educational tools than the tools they are replacing?

[carnivorousplant]

@JohnT

why did the school just dump “free-use” (for want of a better term) iPads on the students rather than locking them down so that the only apps to be installed are school approved?)

Their reasoning may be that if the students take them home, they will be loaded up with trash anyway.

[Little_Pig]

@Czarcasm

When school funds are so tight that teachers have to dip into their own salaries to round out school supplies for their students, then spending money on electronics instead of something else has to be justified by stats that show they work better than what they are replacing.

Okay. Here too.

[carnivorousplant]

And Amazon makes more money when people see how cool Kindle is and want one at home.
:rolleyes:

[sleestak]

I think that tablets in schools is an absolutely horrid idea for the following reasons:

#1. Reading comprehension. Other have posted about this.
#2. Distractions. Between smart phones and tablets, we are becoming even more of a short attention span nation.
#3. Related to #2 - it seems to me that instant information is killing critical thinking. Don’t get something, don’t worry, just google it. No actual thinking involved.
#4. Related to #3 - for many subjects the best way (at least it seems to me) is rote repetition. Math is one of those where understanding, at least for me, comes not only from understanding the idea behind whatever operation is being done, but by doing it multiple times until it really sinks in. My general rule for myself is that I do problems when I am learning a new subject until I hit burn out. My brain knows when I fully understand a subject and it lets me know
#5. I believe, though I don’t have any proof of this, that writing things out by hand, or at least editing things by hand with a pencil and paper leads to thinking about what you are doing on a deeper level. This, as I said, is a personal belief and I don’t have anything to back it up.

Note, I am a system administrator. I work on computers all day long. I am constantly learning about new systems. When I really need to understand something, I print the manual (or buy a hardcopy book), lock myself in my office and study until I get it. And we have three tablets, four laptops and three desktops in the house, not including phones…

Slee

[MrDibble]

@The_Joker_and_the_Thief

No they aren’t. You can’t do meaningful image editing on a tablet

Define “meaningful”…for a 13 year old.

, or compile code or easily access the filesystem (if at all)

Of course you can. Well, maybe not on an iPad, but certainly on an Android tablet you can do both those things.

. You can write, but it’ll almost certainly be slower than writing by hand or typing with a real keyboard.

I don’t see where the OP is forbidden from attaching a keyboard to the iPad.

The only roles in which they’re better than the alternative is media consumption.

The role in which they’re better than, say, a book, is “mobile, internet-connected computing platform” - the only thing better than a tablet at that is a laptop, which loses out in the portability wars.

And don’t knock media consumption - it doesn’t have to be stupid games.

[MrDibble]

@JohnT

I’ve been doing some research and have learned of studies that show that e-reading is up to 20% slower and far less effective at retention than paper-reading. To quote Scientific American:
The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper versus Screens | Scientific American
Since the purpose of school is education, should the tools provided by the school make the activity of learning “less conducive”?
Another (European) study shows:
Again, regardless of whether the things are locked down or not, the question remains: are they better educational tools than the tools they are replacing?

I don’t think a one-for-one comparison just based on reading text is exactly fair to electronic devices - you can’t embed video and animated examples into a paper textbook, for instance. There’s more opportunities for a different kind of textbook.

[Little_Pig]

@carnivorousplant

And Amazon makes more money when people see how cool Kindle is and want one at home.
:rolleyes:

carnivorousplant, you’re absolutely correct.

“There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home.” - Ken Olsen, co-founder of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). - 1977

[even_sven]

You know, I have a Kindle Library of maybe 500 books, and most of them are pretty dense political science and anthropology tomes. I really do not feel impaired by reading them on a screen. Could these studies be working with people who just aren’t used to it?

[Czarcasm]

@even_sven

You know, I have a Kindle Library of maybe 500 books, and most of them are pretty dense political science and anthropology tomes. I really do not feel impaired by reading them on a screen. Could these studies be working with people who just aren’t used to it?

A school isn’t going to give a kid a Kindle filled with stuff like that. That isn’t usually the electronics being offered our educational system, and the costs of loading up the tablets like that would be rather high.

[carnivorousplant]

@Little_Pig

carnivorousplant, you’re absolutely correct.

“There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home.” - Ken Olsen, co-founder of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). - 1977

Jesus, will you people give warning before you agree with me?

I think I stroked out…

[even_sven]

@Czarcasm

A school isn’t going to give a kid a Kindle filled with stuff like that. That isn’t usually the electronics being offered our educational system, and the costs of loading up the tablets like that would be rather high.

My point isn’t that they are going to be giving kids a Kindle full of Francis Fukuyama. My point is that if it’s actually a serious impediment to read on a tablet (actually I do most of my reading on an iPhone), it’s news to me.

[Thudlow_Boink]

@even_sven

Could these studies be working with people who just aren’t used to it?

I wondered about that too. The Guardian article that JohnT linked to said

The Elizabeth George study included only two experienced Kindle users, and she is keen to replicate it using a greater proportion of Kindle regulars.