Reply to What explains the decline in reading and math scores ?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Because it is impossible to learn math on a computer. Kids aren't being taught to work things out with pencil and paper. You learn much more when you learn from a textbook. The school districts have been Sold A Story by all of Ed Tech. My kids were regularly given time to play Prodigy instead of math in elementary school. In Prodigy, you spend a lot of time dressing your character, navigating them around the screen and then occasionally doing a rapid-fire math problem - which you can only do if you have committed your math facts to heart already.

iReady gives "brain breaks" in the middle of a test - basically a break to play a video game. Lexia has kids playing a video game to learn to read.

Is it really easier to stick kids in front of a computer than give them pencil and paper? This is a failed experiment.

[/quote]

I agree with this. I think using apps to learn math, in particular, prevents kids from committing the information to long-term memory, which makes it impossible to build upon. I suspect it leads to summer regressions which results in more review the following year to help kids "catch up" but when the review again utilizes computer programs, kids will just lose it again.

The apps also condition kids to receive a little "reward" (it is not a real reward, it's usually a little chime or on-screen celebration that kids are conditioned to get a little hit of joy out of, like one of pavlov's dogs except those dogs actually did get food). It is not dissimilar to the way social media conditions people to seek out likes and comments on their posts. However, in both cases, these "rewards" lose their effect after a time. They aren't real so kids become immune to their effect.

With pencil and paper learning, rewards are harder to come by but more meaningful. They come with the discovery that you have actually mastered a subject. I remember the great satisfaction I discovered in geometry doing proofs, and discovering how they worked. That was what sold me on math ultimately. But it took time and practice to get there. [/quote]

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