# Tech in schools proving useless



## micropage7 (Sep 6, 2011)

Kids aren’t getting smarter It appears that all efforts to bring shedloads of tech to every classroom are failing to justify the expense. Paper-less classrooms, internet access and networking have been a craze for years. However, educators are now complaining that the influx of tech did not do much to improve test scores or justify the immense expense of upgrading education.

Since 2005 test scores in the US have seen a sharp decline and tech isn’t helping. Schools are spending a lot of their budgets towards improving tech standards, making sure that every student has a laptop and proper internet access, even at the expense of traditional teaching methods. The approach, claim some, is showing no dividends.

www.fudzilla.com/home/item/23961-tech-in-schools-proving-useless
so its not like most people expected. tech not make students smarter


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## Frick (Sep 6, 2011)

I really wish you took some time editing the news you post.


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## sneekypeet (Sep 6, 2011)

Frick said:


> I really wish you took some time editing the news you post.



I did!


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## Frizz (Sep 6, 2011)

I wouldn't think it would improve their math skills etc. unless it was at areas where the tech they are given for use while in school is the actual topic for their study. I know it will help less fortunate students with graphics design, software development etc. as not everyone is blessed with more than one PC at home in a family of 4 or more.


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## btarunr (Sep 6, 2011)

Hedonism is eating to western kids. Cut their facebook/smartphone/fancy-clothes BS. Reintroduce school uniform code, reintroduce corporal punishments, reintroduce mark/rank-based merit assessment system. Problem solved. What western educators are doing is the exact opposite. They think drenching kids into unregulated technology that can entertain more than educate and liberalising school life will somehow make kids smarter. No! It will make them hedonistic at a very young age. It will put them on path to an unsustainable life.


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## PHaS3 (Sep 6, 2011)

I am the IT Manager of a private school in South Africa. We have seen an improvement the quality of content, both supplied for to the kids and produced by them, since we have installed PC's and data projectors in every classroom. The problem is that some teachers are too scared or intimidated by the tech to use it correctly or incorporate it into their lessons.

I think that as much as technology can help or hinder education, it is up to the people using it to be motivated and think outside the box when delivering their lessons. Technology itself cannot be blamed for not succeeding when it is not used at it's intended capacity. 

At our school, we try to teach the staff as well as the kids to use technology to its full potential. I, for example, will be teaching the kids about smartphones and their uses soon, in order for them to learn that smart phones are not solely for "shits and giggles" but can be a great tool in everyday life.


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## Frick (Sep 6, 2011)

I think it's more a sign that US schools are failing than more tech not helping.


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## MilkyWay (Sep 6, 2011)

Corporal punishments are cruel, a child who struggles needs help not just beating into submission.

@ btarunr - You put a lot of people into the same category which is very unfair, the United States of America is very different to European education and different individual countries in Europe have different education standards and policies. Scotland and England are both part of the UK yet the school systems had different curriculum and qualifications.

I grew up going to a Catholic primary school and high school, all Catholic schools in the UK are state run the only difference is the religious education; i wore a uniform and i actually support the use of a uniform, i also believe i benefited from technology eg. projectors, electronic presentations, being able to use computers to do research, ability to type up my essays, video. Sure most of the time we used paper jotters/notebooks to work with and textbooks but i am sure children benefit very much from the use of technology in schools but it really depends on how and where its used (application of said tech). For example throwing tech into a maths classroom for the sake of having technology in the class doesn't necessarily work, where as in history class the use of video or presentations in business management classes works.

What you are suggesting is that so called "westerners" i hate that term but yes you imply "westerners" have a very hedonistic culture which i find insulting. I find every individual has their own take on life. I find it insulting to group cultures together i find it also insulting when people from the UK stereotype towards other groups.

Over here students are able to use public library's or the school library's to get access to computers.

I personally think that the use of technology in the school should only be used where it can show significant benefits to the students rather than just using stuff for the sake of it. At least when i was in school we never had anything that was useless or could be similarly done in another form.


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## micropage7 (Sep 6, 2011)

Frick said:


> I really wish you took some time editing the news you post.



sorry for that. i posted using my phone.
next time would be better


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## FordGT90Concept (Sep 6, 2011)

"Tech's" sole purpose is to make life easier.  That tends to mean people know how to tell a computer how to do something but they don't understand what, exactly, the computer is doing.  Computer use, as such, tends to make people more productive but dumber.  Schools are all about un-dumbing the population so, unless they're teaching how to use (the basics like internet use, word processing, spreadsheets, etc. as well as programming) and/or maintain a computer, they're not helping the school's objectives.


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## MilkyWay (Sep 6, 2011)

Tech is about teaching in a different way, its about how you utilise the stuff.
Tech doesnt just boil down to using a pc or laptop. It can be video or using a projector or electronic board. Without tech you wouldn't be able to write up and print worksheets to give to a class easily.


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## insane 360 (Sep 6, 2011)

i think its more the fact that public schools forget to teach students critical thinking skills. 

have a math problem, here have a calculator, i don't care that it's 2+2...use the calculator.

since "no child left behind" has started its all been about getting test grades up, so they teach students how to test, not how to think...

you can see how well that mindset has worked out for us.

i think tech shouldn't be introduced as a method for doing everything for the students and really shouldn't be an issue until middle school/high school so that the children have a base of critical learning and thinking to build upon


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## MilkyWay (Sep 6, 2011)

WELL in Scotland you get separate non calculator paper and a calculator paper in the maths exam, Intermediates and Highers.

Like i said different places different education.


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## Kreij (Sep 6, 2011)

Using presentation devices in a classroom as a teaching tool has been around for decades. For instance, showing a historical documentary (movie) and then initiating discourse to get the students thinking, or using overhead projectors.

Tech for the sake of making things easier for the students should not be used unless the student(s) can prove they can accomplish the same task without the device.

Just my opinion.


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## Arctucas (Sep 6, 2011)

I believe that the issue is one of laziness; not so much much on the students part, but rather the teachers.

The teachers here in the U.S., since the institution of the the Department of Education by Jimmy Carter, have, in my opinion, gained such a sense of entitlement as to become less instructor, and more overseer. I believe they are more interested in furthering their own well-being, and their agenda of social engineering, and are less interested in actually educating.

Furthermore, I contend that said teachers see technology as a convenient tool to placate and dull the impressionable minds of youth.

As to corporal punishment, MilkyWay, I do not believe anyone suggested, 'beating into submission' those less capable. But rather that the lack of discipline, and thereby the fact we are teaching our children that actions have no consequences, is the root cause of the  blatant lack of self-responsibility and the sense of self-entitlement we are witnessing.

No, technology is merely a tool. And as with any other tool, when it is misused, the results are not as initially intended.


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## Wrigleyvillain (Sep 6, 2011)

Yeah. I blame Jimmy Carter!


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## micropage7 (Sep 6, 2011)

i remember one of my friend. she use to be bright in mathematics but since the teacher use 'interactive tech' she said it makes her not understand at all
thats kinda sad where it changes how we learn, we aint gonna hear teacher explaining much anymore, less writing on white board anymore, all we get just from cd and we just watch it like watching movie
sad. sad


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## Kreij (Sep 6, 2011)

When I was working on my degree is electronics, we could use calculators to verify our results, but we still had to show longhand how we accopmlished it on the test. You could not just fill in the answer.
You either knew what you were doing or you failed. There was always help available from either the teachers or the teaching assistants (which I was one). 
The drop-out rate was unbelievable. We lost 50% of our class in the first 3 months. 130 started, 30 made it to final graduation.
People were getting free money to go to school and did not have the basic math skills to even understand the simplest electronic formulas (like Ohm's law). When we hit RF electronics we lost almost another 50% of those who were left. :/


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## assaulter_99 (Sep 6, 2011)

How can it help kids when at the first hurdle, a serious question, they are gonna www.google.com or www.wikipedia.org? As great as it is, technology, if not used right, will only make us dumber. When I was kid, I'd read countless books, reports, news and the rest to get the maximum info in my head. Whenever I was challenged, I'd go deep down into my brain to get the answer. Seems it ain't the case nowadays. A good read on the subject is "Is Google Making Us Stupid?: What the Internet is doing to our brains".


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## Kreij (Sep 6, 2011)

The internet is a huge "reference book", but if someone does not take the time to learn something for themselves, and apply it, it will not make them suited to do something they simply read about.

Case in point. I read up on replacing the shaft on my Stihl weed whacker. Yay, it's really easy.
I still can't get the !@#$ thing working right.


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## assaulter_99 (Sep 6, 2011)

Kreij said:


> The internet is a huge "reference book", but if someone does not take the time to learn something for themselves, and apply it, it will not make them suited to do something they simply read about.



Yeah thats the point. The internet is a great tool, if used wisely, not lazily. It has saved, me for instance, thousands of bucks (even though I pay my internet, so it kind of negates it ) and time on books or other stuff I'd have to buy and wait to buy, cause nowadays, everything is a couple of clicks away. (compared to having an eureka moment and wanting to go deeper but having to wait for a friend, colleague or a bookstore/library to open)


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## HossHuge (Sep 6, 2011)

Okay, so let me see if I've got this right.

Kids are getting dumber
The Earth is getting hotter
And dirtier
The space around the Earth is getting dirtier
More and more animals and plants are becoming extinct
The oceans are becoming emptified (just made that word up)
The population keeps expanding 
more and more people are starving 
Countries are spending more than ever on arms
Am I missing something?

*Right now I wondering why I brought kids into this world.*


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## micropage7 (Sep 6, 2011)

google wikipedia and others help us to find anything
but sometimes it makes us get lazy to remember. wanna look for it? just google it
how many homeworks that just from copy paste and del and thats the fact where technology at certain level just give bags of side effect


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## Kreij (Sep 6, 2011)

@Hoss : You brought kids into this world because they are the single most precious thing you will ever have. You will teach them life is not fair and they are going to have to work and fight for what they feel is right, and you are going to watch them grow-up and become self-sufficient.
When you watch them leave the home to follow thier own dreams, you will be more proud of them than anyone without children could ever imagine.
There is nothing else like it.


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## qubit (Sep 6, 2011)

MilkyWay said:


> Corporal punishments are cruel, a child who struggles needs help not just beating into submission.



Whether it's right or not depends on the application in my book.

It's bad if: the child is well behaved, but not getting good grades for whatever reason. There's usually any one of a number of underlying reasons, such the rather general "learning difficulties", emotional problems (broken home, bullying etc), dyslexia, genuinely lower intelligence (how the hell do you measure this one fully objectively?!)

Corporal punishment applied in this scenario is indeed cruel, sadistic, unnecessary and should be treated as assault.

However, it's absolutely perfect for: bullies, classroom disruptors* and general bad behaviour including lack of respect for teacher's authority and all the problems that go with it. Sure there can be some cases where the kid's got issues and these should be checked out first, but frankly, it can be pretty obvious when the kid is just being a little shit, so yeah, corporal punishment is very appropriate for these people.

As BTA didn't qualify his use of corporal punishment, I can't say which use he's referring to and I'd be interested to know. I generally agree with his general ethos of installing discipline in the little buggers though. 

*Sounds like some deadly sci-fi weapon, doesn't it?


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## assaulter_99 (Sep 6, 2011)

HossHuge said:


> The oceans are becoming emptified (just made that word up)



This ones not right though, with climate change, it will be the opposite.

Haha, got your point though, in the aftermath of the second world war, people were optimists, then the cloud of the iron curtain came and threw in doom, now its terrorists! I guess its what drives people forward. Fear.


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## HossHuge (Sep 6, 2011)

Kreij said:


> @Hoss : You brought kids into this world because they are the single most precious thing you will ever have. You will teach them life is not fair and they are going to have to work and fight for what they feel is right, and you are going to watch them grow-up and become self-sufficient.
> When you watch them leave the home to follow thier own dreams, you will be more proud of them than anyone without children could ever imagine.
> There is nothing else like it.



You are right and I love the way you put it, but I fear for their future.


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## lilhasselhoffer (Sep 6, 2011)

btarunr said:


> Hedonism is eating to western kids. Cut their facebook/smartphone/fancy-clothes BS. Reintroduce school uniform code, reintroduce corporal punishments, reintroduce mark/rank-based merit assessment system. Problem solved. What western educators are doing is the exact opposite. They think drenching kids into unregulated technology that can entertain more than educate and liberalising school life will somehow make kids smarter. No! It will make them hedonistic at a very young age. It will put them on path to an unsustainable life.



What the heck?

I understand bringing back some of the punishments to the school system.  Having run through the US public school system myself, I know that often the only discipline is internal from the value system you've installed in yourself.  In other words, the school didn't discipline me, I disciplined myself.

This said, you've gone a bit off the deep end.  In India school is a priviledge, in the US it's basically cheap babysitting.  We will have to pay for this idiocy sooner or later.... 




Frick said:


> I think it's more a sign that US schools are failing than more tech not helping.



Agreed.  No child left behind, then the litany of hate that followed, damaged the US.  Our school systems have been on the decline for years, but parents are unwilling to allow teachers to met out punishment.  Having no consequences, in the child's perception at least, breeds children that don't feel that education is a priviledge.  This will be the downfall of the public education system in the long run.



Kreij said:


> Using presentation devices in a classroom as a teaching tool has been around for decades. For instance, showing a historical documentary (movie) and then initiating discourse to get the students thinking, or using overhead projectors.
> 
> Tech for the sake of making things easier for the students should not be used unless the student(s) can prove they can accomplish the same task without the device.
> 
> Just my opinion.



Dang skippy.  I remember watching VHS tapes to understand WWII, human biology, and scince.  Technology made a textbook fit into a couple of videos, and gave me a less dry way of learning.

On the other hand, I've experienced "movie days" whenever a teacher was too lazy, or didn't want to broach the next subject.  Technology doesn't teach children.  

Either a teacher makes the subject interesting enough for the student to want to teach themselves, or they ram the subject down a student's mouth to supress the gag reflex.  Any other teaching methodology is going to fall flat, because the knowledge isn't interesting enough or ingrained deeply enough.

Some students fall into the self teaching category.  You have gifted and talented programs for them.  The students on the opposite end go to special classes and get attention from negative actions.  Those students in the middle are without either attention, and flounder.  

I guess this author (cited article for this thread, not those that comment) thought that tech would be the magical panacea that gave those in the middle the attention they actually deserved.  Looking at this problem wholistically; unless the tech is the nannybot 9000, and allowed to deliver negative and positive reinforcement, it won't come anywhere close to solving the problem


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## MilkyWay (Sep 6, 2011)

Id batter the teacher who hit my child (if i had one), its unregulated abuse, regulated abuse would be even worse as that's borderline fascism.

There is always a reason a child is a little shit, they don't just do things for no reason. You need to tackle a root problem not just beat a child, if you just hit them they don't learn its wrong to misbehave they learn not to get caught or they take out the abuse on other children in the playground or carry it into the home.

Ill batter your children see how you like it chances are you wont and i will be arrested for assault and child abuse. Cynical? no not really as to me that's the hard cold facts. If corporal punishment was so great in the first place why was it abolished? THINK ABOUT IT FOR A MOMENT. Also you act like most children are out of control when its a tiny percentage that could be dealt with in other manners.


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## Kreij (Sep 6, 2011)

HossHuge said:


> You are right and I love the way you put it, but I fear for their future.



You worry no more than any other good parent who has gone before you or will come after.

The purpose of a school is to educate your children in what they will need to be able to compete in the job market successfully and/or continue on to get an advanced degree is a specialized discipline. 
It is not there to babysit kids because the parents have no interest in doing that themselves. Unfortunately, that is not the reality especially in many urban public schools.

Schools, especially elementary schools and high schools, should not be wasting time or money teaching social agendas and other BS. It is the parents job to raise the kids, not the school's.

If a child is neglected, undisciplined and left to run amock, no amount of tech in a school is going to make any difference.

Again, just my opinion.


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## casual swift (Sep 7, 2011)

btarunr said:


> Hedonism is eating to western kids. Cut their facebook/smartphone/fancy-clothes BS. Reintroduce school uniform code, reintroduce corporal punishments, reintroduce mark/rank-based merit assessment system. Problem solved. What western educators are doing is the exact opposite. They think drenching kids into unregulated technology that can entertain more than educate and liberalising school life will somehow make kids smarter. No! It will make them hedonistic at a very young age. It will put them on path to an unsustainable life.



+1 Agreed


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## MadClown (Sep 7, 2011)

I was told to never use my brain and only use my calculator, eventually i went from perfect math grades to mediocre grades.  Since then I made it my mission to avoid educational establishments and try to learn everything by myself.  That being said, google, and the internet as a whole has actually taught me more about this world and its history more than school has.


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## casual swift (Sep 7, 2011)

MadClown said:


> I was told to never use my brain and only use my calculator



Teaching fail...


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## bostonbuddy (Sep 7, 2011)

It's because power point is a buisness presentation tool being misused as a teaching aid.


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## hat (Sep 8, 2011)

The tech in my high school didn't help much. Computers all over the place and all they could do was browse the net... and for game websites that weren't blocked most of the time. I did all of the computer work at home, on a computer that wasn't locked down, was set up the way I was used to, and had all my files and such right there... not stuck at school and not able to take it back home with me cause everything was blocked, restricted and incompatable to the point where legitimately using the computers were next to useless. The best thing we had was the smart boards which were commonly seen in the math classrooms... and then the notes would then be posted online, where I could look at them at home if needed.


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