The technology pushed into schools today is a threat to child development • Hacker News Board

Re: The technology pushed into schools today is a threat to child development

#151

Post by mrr54 » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 1:59 AM UTC

jacobolus wrote: post #132

mrr54 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of those channels you mention aren't really teaching anything beyond general knowledge and trivia. You could watch every video on every one of those channels and you might know a lot of random facts but it won't make you a physicist or a mathematician or a biologist. >That's a parenting issue not a computer issue. Teach your kids what's allowed and what's not, and check their browser history until they learn how…

There is a lot of excellent inspiring youtube content (including well presented secondary and undergraduate level math and physics lectures) buried in mountains of dreck. People can learn all sorts of useful things from youtube, but they can also easily waste huge amounts of time, become radicalized by extremists, ....

I'm not saying it can't be inspiring. I'm sure youtube videos about mathematics have inspired quite a few young people to pursue mathematics! They can foster an interest, inspire people to learn, etc. But that doesn't make them educational.

Re: The technology pushed into schools today is a threat to child development

#152

Post by daxfohl » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 2:01 AM UTC

I half think that the entirety of Common Core Math is designed by lobbyists promoting the type of technology presented in the article. "Carry the one" is the simplest thing to explain with a pencil and a blank piece of paper. All the new Common Core techniques seem to require some kind of visual representation, either via the games sold to the schools and onward to the parents, or via the overpriced blocks sold to teach these techniques. Yeah as a parent I could draw it all out, but then you end up doing 90% drawing and 10% teaching; it's pretty impractical. So I could see cynically that whether it ends up helping students is moot; it helps put money into a lot of lobbyists' pocketbooks and that's all that matters.

NB Even when I'm trying to be positive about it, I find it a bit backwards. I think giving beginning students a dozen ways to reason about the answer only adds to the confusion. IMO the better teaching method is give them one rote mechanical way to get the answer and explain that as best you can. Once they've mastered that, then start looking at additional ways to reason about it (if necessary).

Re: The technology pushed into schools today is a threat to child development

#153

Post by toasterlovin » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 2:03 AM UTC

blhack wrote: post #144

ceejayoz wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know people who sleep to TV, and it genuinely sounds like torture to me.

I do this. I have a really difficult time turning my mind off in silence. If it’s dark and quiet, my mind is working. Listening to old TV shows like TNG helps distract me enough to fall asleep.

Just gonna throw this out there (as a longtime insomniac): perhaps that’s your brains way of telling you that it needs to mull over whatever’s going on in your life. I’ve found that my insomnia is worst when I have so much going on that I’m not getting enough quiet time to process it all.

Re: The technology pushed into schools today is a threat to child development

#154

Post by mrr54 » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 2:05 AM UTC

blhack wrote: post #144

ceejayoz wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know people who sleep to TV, and it genuinely sounds like torture to me.

I do this. I have a really difficult time turning my mind off in silence. If it’s dark and quiet, my mind is working. Listening to old TV shows like TNG helps distract me enough to fall asleep.

This sounds to me like someone saying "I have a pebble in my shoe so I hop everywhere on one foot" when they should probably just take the pebble out of their shoe.

Have you tried avoiding screens for a couple of hours before bed, and reading books instead? I had the same problem - found it difficult to get to sleep - and I have experienced MUCH better sleep since moving my last hour or two before sleep to some light reading.

Re: The technology pushed into schools today is a threat to child development

#155

Post by mewpmewp2 » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 2:06 AM UTC

NeoBasilisk wrote: post #88

_audakel wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of they don't have to memorize random spellings it could free up mental resources for other things. Regardless, why be stuck in the past with things like handwriting or spelling or cursive?

You don't think it would be embarrassing to be standing at a whiteboard at work and be unable to spell basic words?

So we should study things so we don't get embarrassed? Moving on are you embarrassed because you don't know how to swordfight or any other outdated skills?

Re: The technology pushed into schools today is a threat to child development

#156

Post by Spooky23 » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 2:09 AM UTC

is0tope wrote: post #136

Spooky23 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Chromebooks are awesome, but not at grade 1. Kids are too developmentally different at that age. They range from the kids whose parents delay kindergarten a year to make them better at sports to the kids put into school early to save money on daycare. Using a trackpad and keyboard is too abstract. My kids' school uses iPads as limited enrichment devices until grade 3. As a reward, they get to independently us…

> kids whose parents delay kindergarten a year to make them better at sports Unrelated, but could you explain this?

Some people are focused on sports and want their kid to be bigger than their classmates. So you either opt out of school if the birthdays work, delay kindergarten if it isn’t mandatory, or send the kid to a private kindergarten and have them repeat.

It’s a big advantage, especially around 11 or 12, and get kids on more competitive teams earlier.

I coach little league, and we see it all of the time. It’s a compliance issue as kids get a little older and start playing tournaments.

Re: The technology pushed into schools today is a threat to child development

#157

Post by imron » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 2:10 AM UTC

jacobolus wrote: post #102

OnlineGladiator wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have studies, but the idea is they never have to learn it because the computer just does it for them. So why bother? It's anecdotal, but growing up the students who relied on their calculators never really learned to do mental math the same. The difference was palpable. But I'm not a formal teacher or expert when it comes to the psychology of learning, so I also welcome studies on this subject.

Spellcheck is not like a handheld electronic calculator. It doesn’t write for you. It’s more like a system that would let you practice doing arithmetic with pen and paper but then immediately show errors. Look at how people practice board games nowadays: they try making their own moves but get a precise computer analysis to reveal when they have made a blunder on the spot, for real-time feedback. This is not the same…

> It doesn’t write for you.

Modern ones kind of do - for example, gmail's spell checker now comes with predictive input.

Re: The technology pushed into schools today is a threat to child development

#158

Post by kochikame » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 2:13 AM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #138

shard wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In related news, the younger generation of kids in Asian countries are getting worse and worse at writing Chinese characters because they can just type the Romanized versions without learning how to write it. Personally I am able to read Chinese at a moderately high level (can read newspapers) but I cannot write most characters off the top of my head. This is what happens when you emphasize reading over physical writ…

Is that a bad thing? You can still write in Chinese with an IME, and most uses are on some sort of phone or computer anyways. 27 year old me learned how to text in Chinese but skipped learning the muscle memory to write characters, first I'm left handed so stroke order was bizarrely awkward anyways, but also...it just didn't feel important anymore.

If you live in a Chinese-speaking country then, yes, it's a bad thing.

There are plenty of situations in which you still have to write; at the post office, applying for things, hospitals, places like that. Maybe not every day, I'll grant you that, but you are going to hit barriers when required to write your address or apply for a driving license or similar.

You don't want to be the guy painstakingly copying characters stroke by stroke off his phone while a line grows behind you.

I live in Japan and often regret that my writing is so far behind my reading comprehension. Like, it doesn't need to be AS good, but it would be better if it were close.

Re: The technology pushed into schools today is a threat to child development

#159

Post by grawprog » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 2:17 AM UTC

dnqthao wrote: post #133

grawprog wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The ideal way to teach spelling is (1) get kids to read a whole lot, (2) show students their mistakes in context when they make them on as short a feedback loop as possible, without judgment. I'm not sure I agree with this. This doesn't teach the fundamentals and rules of how words are put together. Learning to spell isn't memorizing lists of words, it's learning the rules of English and how words are actually put t…

Like English spelling has any rules. There are a lot of irregularities with English spelling that students need to learn by heart how the word is spelled compared to how it is pronounced.

English spelling has plenty of rules. It's just inconsistent and full of exceptions because English has its roots in many different languages and unfortunately inherits rules from all of them as well as having a bunch of its own.

Re: The technology pushed into schools today is a threat to child development

#160

Post by mrr54 » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 2:19 AM UTC

daxfohl wrote: post #152

I half think that the entirety of Common Core Math is designed by lobbyists promoting the type of technology presented in the article. "Carry the one" is the simplest thing to explain with a pencil and a blank piece of paper. All the new Common Core techniques seem to require some kind of visual representation, either via the games sold to the schools and onward to the parents, or via the overpriced blocks sold to te…

What are these 'common core math' techniques? I went to primary school in New Zealand. In around 2005 they introduced a new way of teaching mathematics that we referred to as the 'numeracy programme'. It wasn't very popular with students and parents obviously all thought it was crap because parents are naturally scared of change in education negatively affecting their kids.

But when we actually did it, it was basically fine. Obviously everyone still learnt the standard place value algorithms (by that point we already knew them, and they didn't stop teaching them to younger kids), but people also learnt other strategies like: if I'm adding 47 to 54, I can simplify that by instead adding 50 (47 + 3) to 57 (54 + 3), which is 107. It was about learning what you to terms like 47 + 54 without changing the value.

Another one I think I remember being mentioned was thinking of 124 x 52 as 100 x 52 + 20 x 52 + 4 x 52. Of course, that's exactly what you're doing with the standard algorithm! The 'algorithm' you learn when you're 5 is just the same as the 'strategy' you learn when you're 10, but presented as something you do on paper rather than something you do in your head.

I also remember learning about ways to approximate these sorts of things. So you want to work out 4241 x 1245 - well you can work it out, but you should probably also work out what 4000 x 1000 is and use that to check that your answer is of the right order of magnitude. And if you're just working something out quickly, then maybe all you need is 4200 x 1300, that's obviously close enough for any practical usage.

I don't remember exactly what I learnt then which to me is a sign it was probably very effective: I internalised the strategies, some of which I was probably already using, some of which I probably didn't remember but thought about again later. It all seems very obvious now, of course, but it's different when you're 10.