Month: May 2013

Would more tech at home improve the academic performance of low SES students?

If you follow edtech blog or twitter feeds, you likely encountered the description of a recently released study concluding that providing computers to low income middle school students (mostly) did nothing to improve their academic performance. I first encountered the description of this study on TechCrunch. This study has not been published, but has been released as a working paper. I located the paper by way of a search for the authors (the TechCrunch link points you to a site that wants to charge you for the paper).

Since TechCrunch could not argue that placing computers in the homes of families with low income improved academic performance, the authors concluded:

This means that the likely culprit is far more insidious: the family and environment. I taught at-risk youth for years and saw first-hand how parents who didn’t prioritize college paralyzed their eager children. In my home, it was expected that I go to graduate school before I even knew what it was

This conclusion (possibly accurate) reminds me of a study conducted by James Coleman back in the 1960s.

Let me provide a little more detail about the study (read it yourself if you want) and encourage you to come to your own conclusions. This is the type of assignment I like to require of graduate students. I want them to make decisions based on research, but I also want them to consider research with a critical eye.

Farlie and Robinson secured a large number of refurbished Windows computers and made them available to children who had no access to computers at home. They did this in a way that would eliminate concerns often raised with nonmanipulative research. They first identified children without home access and then then gave the computers to half at random (everyone received comparable equipment by the end of the study). This was pretty much it. There were no instructions for parents. I am unsure regarding Internet access but the computers had an ethernet card and modem.

The study found no treatment-related advantage in grades or standardized test scores. In comparison to the control group, the experimental group spent .8 hours more per week using computers for school work, 8. hours more for games, and .6 hours more for social networking. This confused me for a bit, but time at school and the homes of friends counted so all students did have some access. There was no significant difference in time spent on homework.

So, do you reach the same conclusion as the author of the TechCrunch article? I recall a comment (I attribute to Larry Cuban, but I am not certain) that tech advocates do not admit what they propose does little good, they assume that the resources were not sufficient, something was done wrong, etc.

What arguments can you generate that do not fit with this criticism? Would providing some training or suggestions for parents be a good thing to do or would such a suggestion not be a difference associated with SES?

Here is a criticism that occurred to me. I would predict that teachers did nothing to take advantage of the technology made available to students. How could they? Not all students could be assumed to have computers. Hence, little could change with the type of assignments teachers could offer.

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Unwanted public(ity)

I have encountered a privacy issue with Google hangouts that it seems Google has not considered. I am teaching a small graduate class and we are using Google hangouts. The quality of hangouts is better than the service purchased by the university and easy to use as well. Because I meet with these online students at a specific time, there are occasions when all students cannot attend. This situation is common when a course involves working students who may attend from several different time zones. Hangouts offers a convenient method for saving and serving video from the class. Hangouts “on air” saves a session to YouTube.

Here is the issue and the option it seems Google may not have considered. I am not particularly interested in opening up the class to causal observers. This is not a problem with a hangout as you can invite those in a circle and this limits access. However, if you also want to record the session, Google appears to assume you want to make the hangout public. This reveals the live feed in Google+.

My assumption is that Google assumes those wanting to share a video on YouTube in the future also want to make the video available as recorded. This would make sense in situations in which it was desirable to offer a video feed to more than the 10 individuals allowed to participate. The situation in which you want to limit access seems to have been ignored.

I suppose this was the case with last year’s summer class as well and I just did not realize it was happening. When participating in a hangout, one would seldom also watch the stream in Google+.

If there is a way to avoid this situation, I do not know what it is (perhaps it new options are available in the upgrade just released). The best I can do is to delete the announcement of the hangout in the Google+ stream after the class session has ended. This is not a serious issue for me, but it just seems strange that the opportunity to limit access to a circle (or circles) is then reversed by also making anything saved to YouTube a live public feed.

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The web we lost

After completing my previous post, I have continued to explore this topic and have encountered other very similar concerns (some more focused and eloquently presented). Here is a two part series from Anil Dash (ThinkUp)

This isn’t our web today. We’ve lost key features that we used to rely on, and worse, we’ve abandoned core values that used to be fundamental to the web world. To the credit of today’s social networks, they’ve brought in hundreds of millions of new participants to these networks, and they’ve certainly made a small number of people rich.

But they haven’t shown the web itself the respect and care it deserves, as a medium which has enabled them to succeed. And they’ve now narrowed the possibilities of the web for an entire generation of users who don’t realize how much more innovative and meaningful their experience could be.

The web we lost

Rebuilding the web

 

 

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Tug of war – Convenience vs. Losing Control

Tug of war – Convenience or Losing Control – A comment on the brief history and the future direction of the Internet

Alternate title: Don’t Know What You Got (Till It’s Gone) (Cinderella)

Sometimes, if you says enough stuff, you end up contradicting yourself. I find myself in this quandary. When writing for educators, I argue that efficiency is important when asking students to work with apps, online services, or software. Spending time learning a tool takes time away from time learning with the tool so select wisely and use frequently. However, on the personal level and taking the long view, I hope we do not settle in to the use of such a small number of services that the rest are unlikely to survive and no options are unlikely to emerge.

The case for efficiency

It is not about the technology, it is about …..

This is a popular refrain. Among educators, the wording might go – it is not about the technology, it is about the learning. I doubt any educator would argue the extreme version of this straw man argument. “No biology this semester. We are going to master Google Spreadsheet!”

The true concern is that advocates should push a tool only to extent that the tool offers some advantage. This is a popular theme in education. For example, Microsoft Word is worth learning only to the extent that the product improves the efficiency or quality of writing. Extensive use of a few products might make more sense than one-time use of many products.

The case for diversity

A big part of my original attraction to web authoring was the feeling that it offered me a voice. This may have been an illusion, but the feeling of visibility was sufficient to encourage a great deal of effort. I read more and I read more widely. This increase in the content I reviewed in combination with the thinking required to craft a public product seemed productive for someone in my line of work. Again, maybe an illusion. Still, I encourage these activities. Cognitive psychologists might describe activities such as these as generative. Activities that push a bit and make us think.

Here is where a different perspective emerges. As activities become popular certain forms of change are inevitable. Popular apps and services present opportunities for those looking to make a buck. The expertise that money attracts can offer users greater ease of use and power. Simply put, those with money have an advantage. Money attracts skill.

Attraction to the tools and services that are easiest to use consolidates users making options less attractive. Over time, however, a narrow focus can limit rather than improve productivity. You probably realize how this might work. Sometimes there is something better, but you already know how to do what you are already doing AND your friends are using the same tools. Facebook makes a great example. Using Facebook represents the limit of many of my relatives digital skill and I must spend time in that environment if sharing with them is something I want to do.

Without arguing the quality of the attributes of Facebook or similar popular services, an unintended consequence (or intended if you are part of the company attempting to attract users to generate create greater profits) is a reduction in options and a dumbing down of users. The case made in Program or Be Programmed is that users fit their use to the affordances of the service – we do what is easy to do. The author argues that we may give up more than we intend as a consequence. Power and money (too often the same thing) are concentrated within fewer and fewer companies and further within the high ranking officials of the companies that attract the users. Companies begin to product what they have done rather than moving on to better products.

The solution – I suppose the solution is to recognize the narrowing of opportunities and to commit to using a variety of resources. There is more to the online world than Facebook and Twitter. There is more than the iPad.

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