Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Can Students Have Too Much Tech?

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 30 posts

Re: Can Students Have Too Much Tech?

#11

Post by 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.

Re: Can Students Have Too Much Tech?

#12

Post by 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.

Re: Can Students Have Too Much Tech?

#13

Post by aswanson »

analog31 wrote: post #10

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. K…

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.

Re: Can Students Have Too Much Tech?

#14

Post by zachlatta »

aswanson wrote: post #13
analog31 wrote: post #10

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. K…

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.

It's really unfortunate that this is the case too. It seems like almost all of the services I use, namely Facebook, are designed to distract me. And, upon reflection, they are. Facebook makes more money if I'm distracted and waste time on the site.

Re: Can Students Have Too Much Tech?

#16

Post by walterbell »

Havoc wrote: post #9

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...

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

Re: Can Students Have Too Much Tech?

#17

Post by analog31 »

aswanson wrote: post #13
analog31 wrote: post #10

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. K…

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.

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.

Re: Can Students Have Too Much Tech?

#18

Post by frankosaurus »

aswanson wrote: post #13
analog31 wrote: post #10

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. K…

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.

Reading your post, I couldn't help but think of the web usability classic "Don't Make Me Think".

We've been working for over a decade to make computer use as mindless, er, easy as possible.

Re: Can Students Have Too Much Tech?

#19

Post by 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.

Post reply on HN