Ask HN: Do computers and tablets really improve education at elementary level?

  less than 60% of teachers think that pupils' academic 
  performance also improves, or in other words, the impact on their marks is seen to be lower than 
  on their learning

If you were given when you were a kid a laptop or tablet (and if internet existed at the time) would you have used it to study or to look around for (choose whatever fits better) music, movies, lolcats, funny videos, maybe some p0rn and the like?

At home I think Khan Academy is a great learning resource. Also even Youtube can be handy for doing research for young kids on history/animals/facts where reference books can be a little boring.

Aside from that I think its largely for show. No one wants to be left behind or seen to be.

CAD (Onshape), programming, digital arts/photography, making video, collaborating on writing and presentations for group projects, collaborating with your classmates, doing research -- all great uses.

In other words: classroom tech is probably best (IMHO) when used in nearly the same way you would use it in a job or a non-school project.

Replacing existing educational systems and tools (conventional textbooks, testing, etc.) ... probably less useful.

http://www.securedgenetworks.com/blog/8-Studies-Show-iPads-i...

1. A study showing that giving kindergartners short-term exposure to tablet learning programs caused a short-term increase in literacy scores (probably just novelty effect)

2. A non-study anecdote from a med school

3. A survey showing kids prefer being given iPads to not being given iPads

4. The same kindergarten study again

5. A probably real study showing that math apps improve algebra test scores (probably through increased practice)

6. Another survey showing kids still want toys

7. Anecdote that tablets can improve accessibility for disabled students

8. Another legit-looking math study with a positive result

9. Another give-us-toys survey

Assuming these guys have done a good job searching for evidence of value, the only decent result for mainstream K-12 education is that it maybe makes math practice more palatable which would definitely improve math scores.

Then there are xyz companies capitalizing on this by building custom tablets/ipads with their own educational content ripping off both schools and the parents by selling "premium" content that helps students have an "edge" among their peers.

But then, for most parents this is also a matter of pride - "my kids attend a smart school! What about your kids?" which is fueling this pathetic trend.

Almost all of my cousins are enrolled in these smart schools and they don't care much since they now have device to play games on in lieu of learning something meaningful.

I feel sad to see these in a country where there aren't proper schools in thousands of villages.

EDIT: fixed typos

However, a two-way interactive device like a laptop or Chromebook? Typing homework instead of writing it? Having collaborative tools available to work with others, both in and out of school? Playing with preliminary programming environments? Trying experiments and visualizations? Yes, that can absolutely help.

Just handing a device to every student will not automatically improve education, though; they're not magic. There need to be lesson plans, adapted materials, tools (e.g. for teachers to collaborate with students and students to collaborate with each other), and not just the same lessons ported to turn in homework on a computer. That takes time and effort, but the result will be students much more adapted to a highly tech-integrated society.

(Disclaimer: the above derives from professional experience and observations, but is not a comment made with my professional hat on; not speaking for anyone else here.)

As for the comments on social media: yes, and that's something many of them will do as adults too. Many people are highly social, and hang out with each other online. Some of what they do will be educational and productive, but having a computer doesn't mean it has to be used entirely for education and productivity. Even just posting online provides practice writing and typing, both of which benefit from practice. Some of their time might be spent on random Internet forum sites arguing with each other, which of course will never be a skill they'll make use of as well-adjusted adults like us. But it'll keep kids inside and thus off your lawn.

The TL;DR is: Yes, they undeniably improve academic performance, and studies have shown this repeatedly. However, keep in mind the studies demonstrating this are done with teachers who actually knew how to use the technology, were trained to do so, and had specific instructional goals in mind for using the tech to benefit their students. If schools/districts just throw this technology at teachers without proper training and academic objectives, it will do nothing. Computers and tablets are useful in the hands of a good teacher, but they are tools. They cannot turn bad instructional practices into good instructional practices.

But in general, when I got an iPad Pro this year and looked for science/math toys to run on it, I was disappointed. There are a lot more didactic educational apps than more imaginative uses of the new medium. Some worth mentioning:

* Earth: a primer * Several apps and games to learn basic programming Scratch-style * Khan Academy * Desmos * Some interactive books from e.g. the Exploratorium * XSection from the same company as Euclidea * A digital-logic game whose name I forget * Kaleidopaint * EveryCircuit * An audio spectrum viewer

I'd like to hear of more to try.

Reflecting on my personal experience: in junior high school and above I played a lot of video games available only in English, that truly helped with my learning of the language. And now that I'm studying kanji: spaced repetition on the iPhone...

Anecdotally, I've seen recent immigrant children struggling to understand user interfaces (that I would argue were poorly designed, not that it matters to anyone caught in the bureaucracy) that more computer literate kids "get" immediately. The struggles with UI, such as kids literally spending dozens of minutes trying to get to the next question, undoubtedly exhaust and frustrate them. One can only guesstimate the effect on test scores but it can't be positive.

More exposure to a variety​ of software/UIs seems to matter.

If there was solid evidence it worked, you'd see that evidence cited everywhere.

There is evidence, however, that it helps kids with learning disabilities.

I have seen good evidence that computers do the opposite, in the form of Toyama's book Geek Heresy: https://jakeseliger.com/2015/11/17/geek-heresy-rescuing-soci... .

Hey! I did that..

Blended learning and personalized learning are two methodologies in which technology is actively valuable. You can learn more about those on sites like Edutopia and EdWeek. Here's a great summary article from EdWeek looking at concepts for technology in education: http://www.edweek.org/ew/issues/technology-in-education/

I'm a big fan of using digital games as an engagement modality and curriculum augmentation. GlassLab and SRI did some work together a few years ago and their meta-analysis indicated that adding a digital game to a traditional curriculum could on average increase cognitive learning outcomes by 12%. Of course it varies wildly depending on the game and circumstance. https://www.sri.com/sites/default/files/brochures/digital-ga...

Tablets/e-readers are great for schools. There are plenty of DRM-free e-books. Instead of buying crates of books, you can just buy some files and them copy them to all the e-readers on the school network.

I've never been able to manage physical flash-card decks, but once I got a smartphone I started using spaced repetition system (SRS) flash-card apps, which can organize (probably) millions of flash-cards and show them to you in the most optimal way for exploiting the long-term memory. I've learned over 3,000 Arabic, Japanese, and Korean words combined, thanks to SRS flash-card apps.

And in this day-and age where pretty much everyone is a network/system administrator (they just don't know it) it's important for kids to learn how to really use a real computer. The most useful thing I learned in my digital media class was how to organize files. I've never met an employer or coworker who could maintain a neat filesystem, even though an untamed Downloads directory would often be the source of their computer troubles.

There is a huge opportunity for these technologies to make schools better. But at the same time, that opportunity has been here for over a decade now.

One more observation: american public schools have horrible taste in software.

1.) I grew up in a poor area. For high school they introduced an alternative school where you could come in whenever-- basically just rooms full of computers, you would take the whole lesson on the computer. They were able to use only a few teachers for a lot of students this way. While the courses themselves could use a little more work, overall it allowed people to finish high school that otherwise wouldn't have. I think the "let the computer do a lot of the teaching" method is a great one. Lets people work at their own pace and takes some pressure off the teachers.

2.) In an ideal world I would think you could buy a laptop and then save money on books, but at least here in the USA I don't usually see it done that way.

3.) Even if they're doing totally irrelevant stuff, knowing how to use a computer to search for answers and filter out bad information is a great skill to have. So while yes, they need to do their homework, I don't think it's awful if they also use it for playing on.

I have never seen a math teacher who I would trust with a hammer. English (language) classes might have a paper mache hammer - one student made as a prop for a play and it has been hanging on the wall since. Physics teachers need a cartoon oversized sized rubber hammer. Shop class will have 60 different hammers, for some types there will be one for each student. Art class will have a couple, and once in a while borrow a bunch from the shop class...

Now that our mindset is correct we can re-ask the question: are computers useful? The answer is what are you going to do with them.

Part of modern English (language) class is typing. Starting perhaps 3rd grade there should be regular streams of reports handed in electronically. As students get older much of the literature they need to read is available free on a computer and hard to find in paper form. Other than a caution about handwriting and spelling still being useful skills I expect to see a lot of computers in language classrooms. As the kids get older things like web pages will be added to English class. (web pages have more in common with journalism than computer science!)

When the kids get older I expect art to be done on a computer, but for elementary aged kids art with messy paints is better than the computer. (some professional artists find painting on a computer is better than real paint: it works the same way until you want to hit undo or need the paint to dry at a different speed - but that is for older kids)

Math is about reasoning through a problem. Computers running flashcards can be useful at times (single digit addition, subtraction, multiplication should be memorized), but ultimately computers are easily harmful to the goal of teaching reasoning. In fact real math problems the arithmetic is easy enough that not being able to do it is a sign you made a mistake.

Science is like math, except the real world is messy and so an equation solver is helpful. Most of the learning is actually before the point or writing up your report though, and not using a computer is an advantage as it forces you to think about how you will measure something.

Shop class (though this barely exists anymore - I think this is a great loss) should cover CNC and 3d printing.

(My answer is no, here's my proposal for a better model: https://medium.com/@prendalearn/nanoschool-a-new-take-on-edu...)