DCI: Too much focus on tablets/devices?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I prefer that my kid learns to write, compose and take notes on a screen which is what he'll be doing in college and in real life. No one writes with a pencil and paper anymore except kids in early elementary who are being taught to write their letters. The sooner they learn to type the better.

Bring on the chrome books!

- signed a mom who hasn't written anything by hand in years other my signiture.

See, that's the thing: they WILL learn how to write, compose and take notes on a screen no matter what. They'll do plenty of it at DCI even if they only take half their classes on tablets. The idea that they somehow would not learn that is really odd and pretty much impossible.

Balance means both. And that's fine that you haven't written anything by hand in years - the fact that you're a mom still means you did once learn how to do it and you have no idea of the benefits vs. costs of kids today NOT learning writing by hand or reading physical books. When I started law school, even though there was Lexis and Westlaw and all these easy ways to do legal research online, the school FORBID us to use online legal research our first year as 1Ls and we had to learn to research everything by book in the law library. They explained it very clearly: they felt that was the best way for us to understand the way case law is organized, not just literally where is it in the library, but how do you follow an argument or a situation to find out what happened in the string of cases, how do you craft an argument and find the case law to support it, and how is legal information organized. Sure you can just plug in key words or the name of a case online, but you don't learn all the logical underpinnings of it that way.

That is a long way of saying: even then, where there was an easier, more "modern" way to do the work, there was a clear and understood benefit to learning the paper way, and my school still has that policy and is a top 15 law school nationally. And somehow we still all graduated very skilled at online legal research. Both are possible.

I don't know if there has ever been a bigger waste of time in my entire education than looking up all that crap in the digests. Absolutely unnecessary and antiquated practice. They made us do it because they were still scared of computers. In my 15 years of being a lawyer, this skull has not paid off once. Instead if wasting three hours and probably missing stuff, I go to westlaw and I press the citation button. It takes less than a minute and does a much better job.

Wow, way to miss the point completely. The PP you're replying to never said his/her school did it because they thought it was the better way to look up cites. Maybe all that time online has affected your reading comprehension?

[Anonymous]

They said that they did it because it helps with the understanding of the process. It does not. It did nothing to further legal understanding, research or writing skills. Thus it has since been dropped from the curriculums. It is an excellent example of how we often waste time and resources doing things as they used to be done just because that is how the teachers were raised.

[Anonymous]

There must be some benefit to learning how to chisel in stone.

[Anonymous]

Look, there is no need to keep arguing the point. Those of us with kids in a feeder (YY for my kid) can try for lottery into other schools, or go private if we don't like the DCI program. That is my intent and I hope my kid is lucky and can leave his DCI space for another kid whose parent doesn't think it is an issue.

[Anonymous]

Thank PP. You are right. I think, though, that the debate is an interesting and one that will continue to be debated by educators and scientists in the future.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/30/opinion/can-students-have-too-much-tech.html?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share

New York Times article about how giving poorer kids electronic devices lowers their academic achievement.

That's an article about giving low income kids internet access at home, where kids use them unsupervised, not about using devices at school in a classroom.

Is DCI also paying for home internet for low income kids?

they are getting them a reduced rate, yes

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/30/opinion/can-students-have-too-much-tech.html?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share

New York Times article about how giving poorer kids electronic devices lowers their academic achievement.

That's an article about giving low income kids internet access at home, where kids use them unsupervised, not about using devices at school in a classroom.

Is DCI also paying for home internet for low income kids?

they are getting them a reduced rate, yes

From DCI? There are already programs that provide internet at reduced rates to low income families. Are DCI families using these programs, or is DCI providing them with something different?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Article talking about differences between handwriting and typing notes.

http://www.nj.com/mercer/index.ssf/2014/06/princeton_university_study_finds_students_more_likely_to_learn_by_taking_handwritten_notes.html

I think that there's an interesting point here, which is that students taking handwritten notes are forced to summarize, whereas many students can type fast enough that they can just write down what the teacher says verbatim.

It seems to me, that the take away from this would be to do research into ways to structure notes on a computer or device so that students develop and use summarizing skills. In what ways are DCI students taught to format their notes?

[Anonymous]

And what kind of keyboarding classes are students getting?

[Anonymous]

Another link

http://www.npr.org/blogs/ed/2014/08/28/343735856/kids-and-screen-time-what-does-the-research-say

[Anonymous]

13:17, not from DCI. From the internet provider.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:And what kind of keyboarding classes are students getting?

Keyboarding should be taught in elementary school, which DCI has been working on getting the feeders to do....

[Anonymous]

Why isn't it called typing anymore?

[Anonymous]

Because we use keyboards not typewriters.

[Anonymous]

Fair enough.