Thursday, November 11, 2010

Super Summary pages 71-111

Chapter Three

Screen Time

Bauerlen opens this chapter in a very public place, the Apple store. If you have been reading this book at all you will soon realize this is not one of Bauerlen’s favorite places.

As in the previous two chapters he quotes study upon study of how children from ages 3 months to 21+ have been submerged into the clutches of the world wide web, and even with all this knowledge at their finger tips student’s test scores are not rising. He states, “As we’ve seen, it isn’t for lack of surfing and playing time, and the materials for sturdy mental growth are all there to be downloaded and experienced. Enough years have passed for us to expect the intellectual payoff promised by digital enthusiasts to have happened. Blogs aren’t new anymore, and neither is MySpace, The Sims, or text messaging. Students consult Wikipedia all the time. If the Web did constitute such a rich learning encounter, we would have seen its effects by now. An article in Wikipedia in Reason magazine by Katherine Mangu-Ward announces, “as with Amazon, Google and eBay, it is almost impossible to remember how much more circumscribed our world was before it existed” (June 2007). But what evidence do we have that the world has dilated, that the human mind reaches so much further than it did just a decade or two ago? The visionary rhetoric goes on, but with knowledge surveys producing one embarrassing finding after another, with reading scores flat, employers complaining about the writing skills of new hires as loudly as ever, college students majoring in math a rarity, remedial course attendance on the rise, and young people worrying less and less about not knowing the basics of history, civics, science, and the arts, the evidence against it can no longer be ignored. We should heed informed skeptics such as Bill Joy, described by Wired magazine as “software god, hero programmer, cofounder of Sun Microsystems,” who listened to fellow panelists at Aspen’s 2006 festival gushing over the learning potential of blogging and games, and finally exclaimed, “I’m skeptical that any of this has anything to do with learning. It sounds like it’s a lot of encapsulated entertainment. . . . This all, for me, for high school students sounds like a gigantic waste of time. If I was competing with the United States, I would love to have the students I’m competing with spending their time on this kind of crap.”

Bauerlen indicates that even though schools are going high-tech student’s basic skills are not advancing. There appears to be no correlation between what is being referred to as high-tech advances and traditional basic skills.

I feel there is room for both “camps” we cannot ignore all the high-tech advances that is available to today’s students but we cannot also ignore the studies that say students are not prepared for the workforce. There has to be a medium road.

5 comments:

  1. "If I was competing with the United States, I would love to have the students I’m competing with spending their time on this kind of crap.”
    I loved that quote!

    I was sort of shocked at how much the author discussed Apple. Their genius advertising ploys to compare their product to not another similar product, but to become a replacement for something the kids don't much see use for anymore (books).

    Another thing that struck me from the chapter was the comparison of "normalized" scores. Judging by today's standards, children of 1932 would have had an average IQ of 80, vs todays kids of an IQ of 120. It makes me wonder what is really considered "Normal." Perhaps it's just our measure that's out of wack.

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  2. This reminds me of a study that was done a few years after the one-to-one laptop initiative in schools which showed that students who had access to their own laptops did not show an increase in test scores overall. Just because students have access to all of this technology does not make them smarter. The author states that acquistion of basic skills is not a matter of access to more technology. With budget cuts, these statistics need to be paid attention to. We need to spend the money wisely.

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  3. I know that our high school is struggling with this very situation. Our high school test scores are low and they are not rising according to the schedule set forth. The administration and the teachers have been working together to implement higher level technology skills in order to gain the students' attention and assist them with the curriculum skills needed. Unfortunately,they are not mastering either. It makes a person think back to how we were required to learn the material and that possibly that retro type of instructional delivery was more effective.

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  4. When we first went to a one to one school - our teachers hated it and kids' grades dropped tremendously. Part of it was the "newness" of having a computer and part was teachers not being properly trained in how to implement the technology into the classroom. Many just used it as an add on. After a couple of years, the students got used to having the computers, there was less messing around, and the teachers became better trained in using the technology as a tool rather than just something to use. HOWEVER - as research has shown (I recall a particular study done in Maine where they had the computers for each student, then took them away) our students did not improve either. However, as long as they are not DROPPING in scores, we will continue to use the laptops for our students.

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  5. This chapter was rather funny and yet made me mad. This quote from Bauerlen makes me want to fume. This all, for me, for high school students sounds like a gigantic waste of time. If I was competing with the United States, I would love to have the students I’m competing with spending their time on this kind of crap.”
    It is difficult for me coming from a district that is immersed in the laptop/technology items to not want to throw out the computers. After I cool down and realize what he is talking about it is sad. I see this at the high school level. The test scores do not rise just because they are on the world wide web. Sad..

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