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Step 1: give every kid a laptop. Step 2: learning begins?

arstechnica.com

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Re: Step 1: give every kid a laptop. Step 2: learning begins?

#11

Post by mickey7 »

step 1: give every kid a laptop. step 2: gaming begins.

accessibility definitely plays a role but it's not the main impedance to education. you could say the same about access to basic pen+paper or regular books (libraries). this ain't no panacea - if a kid has the motivation to learn he will find a way. stupid and unmotivated children will approximately remain so regardless what tools or toys you give them (from experience of 1st world education)

this obviously within the bell curve.

Re: Step 1: give every kid a laptop. Step 2: learning begins?

#12

Post by evilduck »

brador wrote: post #3
unimpressive wrote: post #2

I at one point worked on the OLPC project fixing the laptops. Lets hope that their tablets do better. However, I doubt they will. The justification being that in my view the tablet is what the PDA tried to be fully realized. Well suited for work that one cannot sit down to do, but certainly not something I would choose in favor of sitting down to a desktop machine. As the form factor of a device gets smaller, the qua…

Tablets are for consumption not creation. The key is the low bandwith input of "finger" vs. high bandwidth input of "keyboard". I say they should be working on a touchscreen + mouse or trackpad + keyboard combo. Maximum input possibilities and ideal for creation and consumption.

Touch interfaces are just fine for creating. They only become limited when you're trying to emulate a different interface, like a precision pointing device, or half assed emulation of an interface like a keyboard, which relies on precise finger placement and a variety of non-visual feedback mechanisms.

The iPad has no practical multitouch input limits (I think it's limited to what int can hold), so it can track all 10 of your fingers at once, just as fast as a keyboard. Given the right interface design it has more input bandwidth potential than a keyboard, just not the current familiarity.

Give it time, tablets and multitouch are still in their infancy.

Re: Step 1: give every kid a laptop. Step 2: learning begins?

#13

Post by mapster »

My inlaws purchased a fancy laptop for my kids. It serves as a game and Youtube hub. Occasional Wikipedia lookup for school. I help them fiddle with a few kid-level programming apps, but other than that I have the existential feeling towards computers and kids: what's the point? I'd just a soon break out the Apple 2e from the garage and let them stare at the DOS prompt - they might discover its a computer that way and have to DO something that benefits them.

Re: Step 1: give every kid a laptop. Step 2: learning begins?

#14

Post by GigabyteCoin »

I am pretty sure that is how it works, yes.

Sure, when I got my first Mac back in the day, all I wanted to play were video games. Because I was a kid and video games were cool.

Maybe it was the small selection of computer games available back then, but I quickly became disinterested in the games and wanted to start tinkering as soon as I knew it was possible.

Or perhaps we could simply persuade these children to think learning was cooler than video games. They are ours to mold at that age.

Re: Step 1: give every kid a laptop. Step 2: learning begins?

#15

Post by jerf »

evilduck wrote: post #12
brador wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tablets are for consumption not creation. The key is the low bandwith input of "finger" vs. high bandwidth input of "keyboard". I say they should be working on a touchscreen + mouse or trackpad + keyboard combo. Maximum input possibilities and ideal for creation and consumption.

Touch interfaces are just fine for creating. They only become limited when you're trying to emulate a different interface, like a precision pointing device, or half assed emulation of an interface like a keyboard, which relies on precise finger placement and a variety of non-visual feedback mechanisms. The iPad has no practical multitouch input limits (I think it's limited to what int can hold), so it can track all 1…

No, touch interfaces definitely have less bandwidth than a keyboard, and you can't make it all up with clever tech. Fingers are huge, relatively speaking, and for touch interfaces to make up for that fact they must get fewer bits out of the resulting input. The mathematics of signal processing require this. A stroke is much less definitive than a keystroke, or a mouse motion with click, etc. Moreover, you have the problem of interfering with output bandwidth as well as if you want to touch anything other than the very bottom of the screen you must obscure the screen with your hand while doing it for seconds at a time. You get less bandwidth both out and in.

What obscures this fact from your immediate recognition is that, unsurprisingly, touch interfaces are optimized to work under those circumstances, so you don't really "feel" the limitations, but you would if you really tried to push them the way a really good content creation application would.

For low-bandwidth applications they're fine, but they will never ever take over everywhere because they have weaknesses that make them unsuitable for high-precision, high-IO tasks.

Re: Step 1: give every kid a laptop. Step 2: learning begins?

#16

Post by mickey7 »

mickey7 wrote: post #11

step 1: give every kid a laptop. step 2: gaming begins. accessibility definitely plays a role but it's not the main impedance to education. you could say the same about access to basic pen+paper or regular books (libraries). this ain't no panacea - if a kid has the motivation to learn he will find a way. stupid and unmotivated children will approximately remain so regardless what tools or toys you give them (from exp…

depending on who sponsors this and what control they have over the content, a positive side effect of this social program (ironically) might be exposing the kids to the beauty of consumerism and opulent realities outside of their backward culture and spark the evolution out of it - in the sentiment of shanty towns sprinkled with satellite dishes

Re: Step 1: give every kid a laptop. Step 2: learning begins?

#17

Post by peter_l_downs »

My high school lends MacBooks to all of its students throughout the school year. I will say that it is nice to be able to look something up at almost anytime. I have learned a lot from it, but it's nothing I couldn't have learned from using a shared desktop computer or my family's home computer. Still, for students who don't already have computers (the target market of the OLPC project), having an internet connection is really nice.

I will also say that the first year we were lent computers, everyone procrastinated a ridiculous amount. Games, everywhere, all the time. Very little work was being done. But now, three years later, people mostly just use the computers for work.

I don't think a laptop in itself is that valuable. Maybe I'm just jaded - computers are pretty fantastic. I'd say that by far the most valuable part of a laptop is being able to go on the internet: wikipedia, forums, google, it's all incredible.

Re: Step 1: give every kid a laptop. Step 2: learning begins?

#18

Post by robbinspaul »

tom_b wrote: post #9
Symmetry wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that basically what Khan academy is trying to do?

Maybe. They are certainly aware of spaced repetition. I am not sure what form any adaptive response the exercises take. Any fellow HN'ers with insight?

Can't speak to Khan, but this is what we are doing at Knewton.

Re: Step 1: give every kid a laptop. Step 2: learning begins?

#20

Post by lomegor »

We may still not know the effects of having laptops in the classroom. Five years is little time to be measuring these things, specially considering that the ones who started using laptops have not reached majority of age. This is the same as saying that a new science curriculum does not work without having a real world test. We have to wait to see the results.

This should not be used as an excuse to implement one of this programs. Just saying that no results yet is different that net negative results or no new learning. Like someone in the comments in the article said, he became interested in computers because of his Commodore when he was little, which didn't reflect until he was of age.

P.S.: And the sight of kids on the streets, even the ones who are homeless or live in really precarious homes, using laptops and laughing is really a wonderful thing.

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