

Why giving poor kids laptops doesn't improve their scholastic performance - robg
http://www.slate.com/id/2192798/pagenum/all/#page_start

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pavelludiq
I can only talk from my own personal experience. When i was a kid my parents
noticed that i was interested in computers. We couldn't afford a computer(that
was 98 i think) So they sent me to computer courses once a week. I had a lot
of fun. I played games, i played with paint and made cool word documents with
weird fonts and colors and stuff like that. I also played a lot of duke nukem.
There was a cheap internet club near my home and me and my friends went there
to play. It was all really fun. We didn't learn allot, but it was fun. 2004 we
could afford a decent machine and i spent my days just mesing around with XP.
Exploring C:/windows/win32 exploring all the cool programs my friends gave me
like winamp. It was so exiting. A year later i got internet and that was like
a super charger. I learned to type really fast so i can chat and i learned to
google effectively. Then i found this game Lock On: Modern Air Combat(its a
flight sim). I was interested in jet plains and i started playing all day
long. I used my computer only for games, or at least thats what my parents
thought. The game stored allot of it's settings in configuration files and Lua
scripts and xml files and you could modify those and change the gameplay
drastically(the most weird thing i have seen was a flying aircraft carrier).
Many of the textures were in files, so you could photoshop templates and have
custom skins and i learned how to use photoshop that way, i learned how to
search for other mods for the game and study them, there were allot of tools
to mess around with the game and yet everybody around me thought i was wasting
time. To play the game i learned allot about planes, physics and combat
tactics(the game is a hardcore sim so you have to know these stuff) I started
moding my hardware too. I made myself a throttle out of an old joystick and a
control panel. So the moral of my story is you can give 1000 people a computer
and even if only 4 people start doing great stuff with it, its better than no
people. I think PG wrote in one of his essays about that. Something about
stick gatherers and the difference in productivity if you give people a tool
like a computer.

~~~
serhei
You've been roped into a constructivist education! In plain English, the
people who make the OLPC are trying to nudge kids into doing something
similar: specifically, while you just think you're playing with a cool toy,
you're being encouraged to actually _create_ things, and hence to think, and
therefore to learn.

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neilk
I think the constructivist opportunity only works on a particular kind of
person with a particular kind of computer.

Alan Kay's vision is that everything should have a sort of "view source" so
you can see how it was done. I had an Apple //e, back in the days when it came
with a built-in BASIC interpreter and the manual, and computer mags were often
filled with BASIC source listings. Which was not great, but not bad either. I
assume the Romanian kids got Windows XP and there is no obvious path to
hacking with that OS. You're just a consumer.

But I don't think it was the machine that mattered. Plenty of my friends had
the exact same computer and all they did was trade games and play them. Given
a computer, I immediately decided to write programs with it. I'm just that
kind of person. When I learned to play piano, I immediately tried my hand at
composing. It greatly surprised me that my musical training courses were all
about learning to play rather than learning to write music.

I suspect the same is true of any hacker; for us, the point of learning
_anything_ is to synthesize.

My point is, I think Alan Kay et al. may be crafting educational programs for
ideal students, who do exist, but only as tiny fractions of the population.

~~~
acgourley
This is a very good point I haven't seen expressed elsewhere before. It's hard
to know, but the OLPC program hopefully has a few circling social scientists
who will be happy to test this hypothesis.

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bayareaguy
Although my family was very poor, I was lucky to grow up in a school district
where there were a few computers here and there. I spent countless hours
neglecting boring schoolwork in order to get access to any kind of computer I
could and I graduated from high school with poor grades in everything except
math and physics. However I taught myself basic, pascal, fortran, cobol, ibm
jcl, Z80 and 6502 assembler without ever owning a computer of my own. It
doesn't surprise me at all that computers had the effect of distracting kids
from academic goals because that's exactly what happened to me.

I can't imagine the school teachers and administrators took into account the
possibility of the computer voucher program when they designed their
curriculums. However my nascent computer skills got me the jobs I needed to
earn the money to be the first in my family to graduate from college.

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ozanonay
Of course, giving kids unsupervised access to computers they don't know how to
utilise is going to provide little educational value. But the article
distracts from the fact that with the slightest bit of guidance, computer
access can be a tremendous asset.

I remember being taught Qbasic as a kid - before then, computers were
mysterious gaming devices to me. But with just a few weeks of of guidance by
an interested teacher, a whole new world was opened up.

It sickens me that even now, many kids here in Sydney don't have computer
access in schools until they're in their teens, and even then it's at
atrocious student-to-computer ratios and with little guidance.

Part of the problem is that Luddites in the community misrepresent articles
like these, thereby diminishing the public interest towards computers in
education.

~~~
babul
In initial stages there will be a slow down until they learn to use the tech.

Grades etc. may fall as there are only so many hours in a day and if you spend
time away from books/study to spend it learning to use a computer by yourself
or with little tutition, then you should expect to see a grade drop.

However, in a few cyles we should see the opposite occurring i.e. grades
improving with the aid of tech and people with proficiency teaching each other
to the benefit of all.

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acgourley
1) This article ONLY makes claims about scholastic performance, it makes no
claims about intelligence, quality of life or the (personal and societal)
benefits of a more robust technical aptitude.

2) These probably were not laptops that were brought to school and used
together as a class. They were probably windows machines sitting at home.

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aswanson
It might be a good idea to have them do some of the final assembly; ship the
computers as kits, and have someone instruct them on what each part does. That
way,they are forced to learn some functional aspects of what the thing is
comprised of and how it works. This might spark a deeper interest and
understanding than just handing it to them would.

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MaysonL
Reports from the field of the effects of OLPC in poor villages are extremely
encouraging. See <http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Peru/Arahuay>
<http://www.technologyreview.com/video/laptop> for more.

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Alex3917
"'Vouchered' kids also spent less time doing homework, got lower grades, and
reported lower educational aspirations than the 'unvouchered' kids."

Hyperlinks subvert hierarchies.

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babul
Laptops provide them more opportunities for them (via understanind/access to
tech), but being poor, I dare to say they will find more innovative uses.

~~~
babul
I have seen first hand how being poor forces you to innovate in such
countries. Hence, I agree with pg and the like that startups should be poor at
the begining stages too.

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edw519
Just try to get the right change whenever the cash register is down.

 _That's_ what happens when you have technology replace fundamentals too soon.

Honestly, this is what happens when rich people try to decide what's best for
poor children. Problem is they just don't get it. They're stuck at Maslow's
Level 6 when the rest of the world is still stuggling at Levels 1 and 2. How
can someone who has never missed a meal (or a tennis lesson) understand what
those born without really need?

These children need 3 healthy meals per day. (Even one or two would do.) They
need sunshine, fresh air, and clean water. They need good teachers and
doctors. They need books and medical supplies and a world where they don't
have to work full time before they reach puberty. They need a mother who won't
beat them and a father who won't rape them. Computers? They don't even make
the Top 25.

These are just "feel good" programs for people who have never wanted for
anything. If they really wanted to help, let them pitch in and solve the
_real_ problems of the world. Hopefully, that won't interrupt their tee times.

~~~
asdflkj
The real problem is not what children need, but what societies need.
Tragically, these two are are in opposition. If you give Africans (for
example) their Levels 1 and 2, in 20 years you'll have a tripled population
that's just as destitute and dysfunctional as before, if not more.

It's the food and medicine programs that are "feel good". Without reducing
African birthrates (which are the highest in the world), they probably only
make things worse in the long run.

~~~
serhei
There is actually a consistent inverse correlation between development level
and fertility rate. Economically affluent countries have lower fertility.

This suggests that improving the standard of living is the most, perhaps the
only, humane way of dealing with the population problem. Other measures, even
measures like China's "One Child Policy", tend to have unanticipated
repercussions. (Example: everybody in China wants a boy, to such a degree that
some families end up abandoning newborn girls out on a street somewhere, if
not resorting to downright infanticide.)

So the argument that raising Africa's standard of living will worsen the
population explosion doesn't really hold water; the exact opposite argument
can also be made.

~~~
asdflkj
Food and medicine programs are making the standard of living higher in the
short term and lower in the long term. That was exactly my point: if you want
to feel good, then short term is important. If you want to solve real
problems, like unsustainable birthrates, then long term is important. We don't
actually disagree.

If we had enough money to bootstrap the whole (or part) of Africa into a
decent way of life, it would be one thing. But we don't. And half-measures are
worse than nothing. If you don't have enough strength to lift an injured
person over a fence, picking him up and dropping him back down won't do any
good. But, it'll look like you're trying if you squint hard enough.

