Jul 122017
 

An article in Scientific American summarizes what lots of us observe: Students are Better Off without a Laptop in the Classroom.

We hope nobody here is shocked by this revelation. Kids use devices to mess with social media rather than for purposes of supporting instruction? Good gosh … who’d have thought …

Scholars will try new approaches in education, assess carefully and use what works by objective criteria. Of course, here we have instructors who will stampede the herd toward one or another trendy idea because it validates their notion of what ought to be done, not because they know it works. (We’ll see it when we know it, I guess.) We have administrators who promote the tech since it sounds cheaper than investing in quality people – for them tech is a replacement, or at least a force multiplier. And what about tech company support for computers in the classroom? Gee, those would be the companies that have built a business model around convincing people that tech is good? Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised if they don’t look kindly on the above study either.

 Posted by at 12:52 pm on July 12, 2017