Can Students Have Too Much Tech?

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.

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

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.)

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.