Is there any evidence that computers in the classroom improve results of the 3 R's ?
Google is transforming public education with low-cost laptops and free apps
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Re: Google is transforming public education with low-cost laptops and free apps
#12> I cannot answer for them what they are going to do with the quadratic equation. I don’t know why they are learning it
This sounds disingenuous to me. There are lots of things kids and college students and adults learn that have no immediately foreseeable application. I'm sure most people on HN have thought about it. I wonder what the consensus is.
My take is that learning how to use technology should not be a classroom priority, for many reasons. One of those reasons is that there is no guarantee that whatever tech you learn will stick around. I had a high school teacher insist that we use Ask Jeeves rather than Google because she "liked it better."
It feels as if the adoption of Google products is driven much more by convenience for the school system than by a strong belief that it improves learning. I'm not an expert, but I remember reading more than once that technology doesn't seem to have a meaningful main effect on learning (though perhaps has a mild interaction effect with the teacher.)
The article itself barely addresses the question of learning outcomes, and focuses so much more on privacy.
Re: Google is transforming public education with low-cost laptops and free apps
#13For us Microsoft tools were the highest price point and we didn't use 50% of the features. Apple Enterprise is a joke though they are making good progress now. Google had just enough of a tool at a price we could really justify to the tax payers. As for Google evangelism we offer Google docs and office 365 online. Students are free to choose as Google and Microsoft have been awesome at cooperation in tools. We also h…
I would be very happy if the kids became conversant in libre office. It has all the functionality they need and they would be comfortable with it going into college.
For us we only have 2 of us to cover all technology in our district. That is every from servers to networking to security appliances to the apps on the kindergarten iPads to writing custom tools for admin. We have to carefully choose tools we can manage in mass. I wish we could offer more, but there is no money for it.
Re: Google is transforming public education with low-cost laptops and free apps
#14I'm still on the fence to whether or not the ability for big companies to give away free software is a net good or not. On one hand, schools theoretically have more money now to spend on mission critical things. On the other hand, the theoretically best possible product will in all likelihood will not be free. Such a product could give exponential gains in productivity to teachers, easily offsetting whatever cost is…
> exponential gains in productivity to teachers
What are you thinking of? What are the big advances in education that have been made in the past few decades? I have kids in high school right now and I can say they are learning things earlier than I ever did. They have a lot more pressure on them as well. I'm not certain that's a good thing though.
As far as technology goes, I don't see much change other than acceptance of it. My kids are encouraged to use their cell phones productively (calendar, communication, camera, etc...). But the process of education itself seems about the same as it always has been. Gains certainly haven't been exponential.
Re: Google is transforming public education with low-cost laptops and free apps
#15"Free" apps. The only cost is the student's privacy. Gotta get them sucking at the Google teat early, and in to their database as soon as possible.
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Re: Google is transforming public education with low-cost laptops and free apps
#16 “I cannot answer for them
what they are going to do
with the quadratic equation.
I don’t know why they are
learning it.”
Re: Google is transforming public education with low-cost laptops and free apps
#17For us Microsoft tools were the highest price point and we didn't use 50% of the features. Apple Enterprise is a joke though they are making good progress now. Google had just enough of a tool at a price we could really justify to the tax payers. As for Google evangelism we offer Google docs and office 365 online. Students are free to choose as Google and Microsoft have been awesome at cooperation in tools. We also h…
> For us Microsoft tools were the highest price point [...]
Why talk like this? Why not say: "Microsoft tools were the most expensive"? Honestly asking, does the sentence convey any extra information by phrasing it in this weird way?
And what's the difference between a price point and a price?
Re: Google is transforming public education with low-cost laptops and free apps
#18> I cannot answer for them what they are going to do with the quadratic equation. I don’t know why they are learning it This sounds disingenuous to me. There are lots of things kids and college students and adults learn that have no immediately foreseeable application. I'm sure most people on HN have thought about it. I wonder what the consensus is. My take is that learning how to use technology should not be a class…
> there is no guarantee that whatever tech you learn will stick around.
Ok, but there are plenty of aspects of using tech that transcend the lifetime of the actually device you are using. Coding, of course, is timeless, but even the basic idea of experimenting/discovery within a UI is something that many older adults lack from not having tech when they were younger.
Re: Google is transforming public education with low-cost laptops and free apps
#19“I cannot answer for them what they are going to do with the quadratic equation. I don’t know why they are learning it.” If Mr Rochelle cannot answer this question, and recommends just googling it, he might not be a good person to be anywhere near STEM eduction.
Only a person who had once learned it before would be able to quickly get back up to speed by googling it. Math is a language not trivia.
Re: Google is transforming public education with low-cost laptops and free apps
#20> he said: “I cannot answer for them what they are going to do with the quadratic equation. I don’t know why they are learning it.” He added, “And I don’t know why they can’t ask Google for the answer if the answer is right there.”
Wow. Back when I worked for Boeing on the 757 design, there were engineers that were "formula pluggers" who pulled formulas out of manuals and used them. Then there were engineers who understood the formulas - where they came from, what assumptions they were based on, and how to derive them.
The latter used the formulas correctly, the former often blindly misused and misapplied them.
Googling for a formula is not how proper engineering is done.