Classical U
Educating Families Classically....And Having A Good Bit of Fun
Nicholas Ahern: Personal Electronics for Children
Today’s classroom environment cannot provide enough individualized attention to foster independent learning in all students. Having teachers provide individual support to each student is not practical. Schools should use educational tutoring software alongside classroom teachers to produce independent learners, particularly in mathematics. Furthermore, educators should evaluate software tutors in the classroom. The evaluation of educational tutoring systems in education shall follow the role of tutors, role of technology in education, the ineffective usages of software in learning, an understanding of effective evaluation of these systems, and finally, how these systems are best utilized.
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Grant Durrell on -
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Permalink Reply by Robyn Burlew on -
I will look forward to some good debates on your topic and will enjoy sending some questions in your direction. I'm interested to know where you will go for empirical data.
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Permalink Reply by Jesse Hake on -
It looks like you'll have a steep hill to climb in making this case among some of your teachers. :) Any technologies designed for children would have to be very careful not to get between them and the stuff of creation or between them and their parents, siblings, etc.
Frankly, I have a hard time imagining technologies designed for children that would not hamper their human formation. We must mature as humans before we can begin to use tools maturely. Technological devices are specialized tools that require wise and purposeful humans to use them well. Immature or ill-formed humans tend to end up getting bogged down by the fancy tools. Perhaps most importantly, children need lots of time with good humans in order to be formed into good humans. This idea of technologies carefully designed to captivate childish attention scares me a little because it would only tempt parents to further neglect their children, leaving their formation to peers or machines. :)
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Permalink Reply by Lindsay Koach on -
This topic sounds slightly familiar =) My own opinion changed a few times when I wrote my paper on a similar topic. Have fun!
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Nick, you seem to be making a direct connection with use of digital technology and the reasoning abilities of children:
"It cannot be ignored for very much longer without lasting consequences on reasoning abilities of these children."
At first, I thought "reasoning abilities" might just have been a verbal slip. There may be significant ways in which a child's education may be truncated without sufficient exposure to the rapidly expanding technologies now employed in schools and the workplace, but I was somewhat surprised by the suggestion that a child's ability to reason would be affected. However, you seem to want to make this a focal point of your study, since you reiterate the point about reasoning abilities at the end. Are you confident that your research will support this claim? Would you be better off to advocate for benefits provided by these technologies for children that do not pertain specifically to reasoning abilities?