
Can Students Have Too Much Tech? - cindyceleste
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/30/opinion/can-students-have-too-much-tech.html
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analog31
I've got kids in middle and high school. And I worked in a large county
educational computing facility in the early 80's, that had every kind of
computer and piece of educational software for teachers to try out. My
observations:

1\. The computer is the "distraction machine." It is just vibrating with
distractions. Even the supposedly educational websites have things that move,
different colors, links, and so forth. Keeping my kids focused on their
lessons requires constant supervision. Most of the time spent at the computer
is recreational.

2\. I think the content tends to be superficial, possibly because making the
underlying mechanics work detracts from actually creating content. A lot of
the software that I saw in the early 80's was glorified flash cards, and I'm
not sure it's much better today. I'd estimate kids spend twice the time on
half the content.

3\. The bright side is, I think there's some tech, that is qualitatively
different than a textbook. It tends to resemble "real" software that grown-ups
use, such as programming tools, computer algebra systems, and so forth.
Schools rarely use this stuff.

~~~
aswanson
The computer is the "distraction machine."

Dead on. It's evolved to that point even for those of us that started in the
80s. Nothing but bright shiny things...a click away.

~~~
analog31
I suggested an idea to my son, who struggles greatly with the distraction
machine. Even just having Microsoft Word open is bad enough because there are
so many fonts, settings, the help system, and so forth. This, compounded by a
bit of writers block, and probably the inherent boredom of the work.

I proposed to set up a Linux system with all apps disabled save for a plain
text editor. I told him that it's not a punishment, but just a experiment in
finding a practical solution to a problem that he acknowledges.

~~~
ht_th
Your example of MS Word is interesting. Not only are these "playable" features
distracting, they don't help with learning to write non-trivial texts either.
I'd like to see them use a simple semantical text editor where they indicate
the structure of the text, which then is automatically formatted. Formatting
then is not a seemingly integral part of writing anymore, but a separate task.

More importantly, I think, is that a lot of educators and parents seem to
value "having fun" as an important characteristic of education. I am doing
research on innovative mathematics education in primary school, and, when
asking teachers to evaluate the lessons or instructional materials, they
always point out how much fun the children had (compared to the usual
instruction). If I asked further and inquire about the actual learning of the
students, most teachers aren't able to express anything beyond the
superficial, either related to class management or to regurgitating parts of
the curriculum.

~~~
joncrocks
FWIW, this is what a LaTeX editor might give you. You write paragraphs of
text, with some tags to indicate the semantics of the text, and converting
that into 'pretty' text on a page is (generally) a second step.

~~~
ht_th
I was more thinking about something like LyX and hide the typesetting engine /
markup language for a while. Although when children have experience with an
editor like this, supporting them to learn something like HTML (of LaTeX) is
probably a lot easier as they understand the concept of structural elements.

------
skywhopper
I think it's most useful to think about these questions in terms of the
quality of the technologies involved. Technology does not just include
computers and the Internet, but also books, paper, writing utensils,
chalkboards/whiteboards, workspaces, etc.

Taken from that perspective, we should then judge each piece of technology on
how well it does its job. A high-quality textbook with a good index, good
writing, good editing, and good organization is extremely valuable and useful.
A poor quality textbook with an incomplete index, errors, and poor
organization is not nearly as useful.

How does this compare to computer tools for learning? Well, we can't just
judge the tablets or laptops as hardware. Computers are only as good as their
software and the content available. And how does that fare? In my experience,
it's universally terrible.

In general, content on the Internet is poor to counterproductive in terms of
quality. Some sources are good, but the general trend towards massively huge
variety served up by completely automated tools, not to mention the inevitable
spam that shows up in low-barrier-to-entry zones reveals itself across the
board. Current search technology is woefully insufficient to make sense of the
surfeit of content. This is obvious on Google, but even in narrower cases like
Amazon.com or the various mobile app stores, there's just too much content out
there, 99% of which is junk.

That doesn't even begin to address the terrible user interfaces. Compared to a
book, which is far less flexible but light-years easier to use and interact
with, most software fails miserably.

Virtual textbooks, for example, are easier to search, but harder to use in
every other way, from just reading to browsing, to perusing indexes or sharing
with classmates. And that's assuming the licensing and access issues don't
cause you problems. My daughter's online history textbook was taken away a
week or so ago because of a mistake somewhere between the school
administration and the textbook company in renewing the license. So now the
kids just don't have a textbook until someone resolves the problem. This
doesn't happen with actual books.

Books and lecturing have had centuries to be perfected. We take it for
granted, but it's true. Computers and the Internet are newborn tech by
comparison. So long as we fall for snake oil pitches and pour money into this
new tech indiscriminately in the hopes it will solve our education problems,
we're just encouraging the already horrific state of the technology. Let's
focus on the stuff we know works and let the flashbang tech mature a bit more.

------
eigenvector
Can students have too much tech? Probably not. TV didn't ruin kids, and
neither will the Internet. But this article is completely correct that more
technology is not a panacea. Putting more technology into classrooms does not,
by itself, improve learning outcomes.

Science and engineering, at the university level, are still largely taught the
same way they have been for 100 years. This has not hampered the ability of
engineers to dream up and create amazing and innovative products, nor the
ability of mathematicians and scientists to push the boundaries of their
respective fields. If (when) an engineering student takes a course on
differential equations and doesn't grasp the material well enough to apply it
to their future work, that's much more likely to be because:

a) They didn't understand how these concepts would be applied to practical
engineering work and thus failed to apply themselves; or b) They found
lectures difficult to follow and didn't have any resources to fall back on
(e.g. professor office hours; teaching assistants)

not c) There wasn't enough technology in the classroom

Technology is needed for vocational training - whatever technology would be
used to do the job needs to be present in the classroom. But in
primary/secondary school and university, you need to teach fundamental,
abstract skills and a chalkboard is perfectly adequate for that.

------
jdhawk
I feel like the roots of this movement were to make a more computer literate
society, when access to technology was a larger hurdle than it is today.

Kids of all economic classes are currently exposed to technology daily, so the
aim has to shift. Can we create software that helps children learn faster than
a traditional environment? Can we teach them things that are not available
without technology?

Slapping a kid in front of a computer to play some stupid vocabulary game
might have been useful in 1990, when learning to type, use a mouse, navigate
an operating system, was a useful skill. Not so much now.

Can we teach them logic and problem solving skills through coding? Can we
create software that makes them eager to learn and explore? Become Critical
Thinkers?

The physical devices are only part of the issue. The curriculum has to be
targeted and useful.

~~~
graeme
Typing and using a mouse on an operating system are still useful. I work with
students aged 16-21. By and large they hardly know how to operate computers.
Typing speeds are very low.

A common occurrence. I see them do a search on chrome. The search bar sends
them to spam search site "yeblorsk". I ask why it does that. They shrug and
say "isn't that what it's supposed to do?"

They don't even know their browser has been hijacks. And these are university
or university track students.

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frankosaurus
I suspect that technology can be a great learning tool if:

1) The computing environment encourages kids to practice problem solving,
critical thinking, and systematizing.

2) The kids are intrinsically motivated to spend their "screen" time using
software that encourages the above, as opposed to any of the myriad
distractions on computers.

#1 is a problem of finding and identifying the good software in the haystack
of diversions. This was easier in the pre-internet days because computers
simply had far fewer consumer-oriented features.

#2 requires that kids actually be interested in and disciplined about thinking
deeply about problems. It also really helps if kids have a problem that they
personally want to solve, which motivates them.

------
microcolonel
Who cares? Let them figure it out for themselves for once, self control is
only learned through binging and gorging on the sweet stuff until it hurts.

I loopholed my way out of school in grade 7, and for two years after that, I
did nothing but watch anime, the crudest and sickest misogynist anime you
could lay your eyes on; you would assume I learned nothing from that, but
you'd be wrong.

Turns out that if you watch enough anime, you start picking up Japanese
whether you like it or not. That binge taught me a skill that helped me, in
addition to the computational skills required to pirate so much anime on mere
ADSL, get a first job at 17, with income competitive to that of both of my
legal guardians, and every last one of my contemporaries.

No matter how much you think they're just loitering around with no aim, they
have passions, and soon they'll have developed pre-frontal cortices that can
bring them closer to what they love.

It won't have anything to do with your strict prohibition of everything they
enjoy. What will save them is those precious daylight hours they spend truant
from your mind-numbing institutions.

~~~
mercer
Consider substance addiction. Being a heroin addict might actually teach you
how to hide things, steal things, and stick needles into yourself without
dying. And eventually you might clean up, 'grow' out of it and use what you've
learned for good.

And yet I think most people would agree that prohibiting or strongly
discouraging heroin use, at least by children, a good thing.

Obviously heroin is an extreme example. My point is that the things we enjoy
lie on a continuum, and with some of these things it's good to discourage or
even prohibit, and not 'let people figure it out for themselves', especially
not at a young age.

Computer use probably covers most of this continuum. Non-stop candy-crush?
Probably more on the bad side of things. Games that involve group activity
(WoW, etc.)? Probably a lot better. Games that also involve creation and even
'programming' such as Minecraft? Even better.

When you let children do what they want, there's no guarantee that they will
gravitate towards the good stuff in the same way that letting children eat
what they want is unlikely to turn them into adults with healthy diets.

Finding the balance between letting children discover for themselves and
strictly prohibiting their behavior is very tricky. And that's why it's good
to care about these things and discuss them.

------
aswanson
Absolutely. Technology has evolved computing to the least common denominator,
as it it supposed to do. This 'easiness' has nothing to do with critical
thinking, analysis, and other thinking skills humans need to develop. There is
certainly a place for computer-based learning; I learned more about Linear
Algebra and Continuous and Discrete Signal Processing from machines than I did
from any professor...but expecting to place elementary level kids in front of
a machine and expecting them to emerge as Karl Gauss is idiotic.

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Havoc
Sure. I've got like 6 different source of calendar info inflows... None of
which sync properly. And I'm willing to bet that is fairly modest by Western
standards.

It's a complete fkin mess.

And it gets worse once most of the info is confidential...no you can't make a
note of that thing on your phone... It would get syncd to an unencrypted
cloud. Fk...

~~~
walterbell
Can't you delete the connection to the unencrypted cloud?

------
ivan_ah
Books, not iPads. That's what I say!

And you know what, students say so too --- see related discussion about the
effectiveness of eTexts vs Print books:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8882481](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8882481)

------
dxbydt
Rediscovering Koblitz (inventor of ECC ) two decades later ?!
[http://www.math.washington.edu/~koblitz/mi.html](http://www.math.washington.edu/~koblitz/mi.html)

------
nether
> Never forget that the human race with technology is like an alcoholic with a
> barrel of wine.

Dr. Ted Kaczynski (social critic, mathematician)

~~~
jacquesm
'Social Critic' is a bit mild.

------
alayne
This is Steven Pinker's sister, if anyone was wondering.

------
jerf
Well, prior to the writing of this article, the answer was indeed yes, as the
article discusses. However, thanks to the magic of Betteridge's Law, which as
we all on Hacker News know is UTTERLY UNASSAILABLE, the answer is now "No!"

Thanks for solving this problem so handily, New York Times! May you use your
powers only for the force of good.

~~~
Crito
My life goal is to become a journalist and publish an article about
Betteridge's Law that is titled _" Is Betteridge's Law Correct?"_.

 _(One answer is seemingly contradictory, but actually consistent. The other
answer is paradoxical.)_

