Once again, a study proves the obvious: there's nothing you can give your child that will magically make them smarter. As a parent, you have to be involved.
On the other hand, the study keeps saying "only computer skills were improved" as if these were not worth having. My self-taught "computer skills" are the basis of my career. Practically everything the modern knowledge worker is required to do could fall under the category of "computer skills": word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, modelling, programming. These seem like worthwhile skills.
The presence of computers has allowed me to become smarter if only because it is an outlet for my curiosity.
Nobody encouraged me or teach myself computer programming do encourage me much to do learning activities on my own. The only aspect that my parents were concerned about is the grades in school.
I was hungry for the ability to make games and then make it possible for me to do so. Now, these days, I am interested in learning electronics and did acquired the means to do so.
However, this kind of curiosity and the drive to teach oneself some sort of skills is probably very rare.
I'd somewhat disagree, and say that a kid given books, versus a kid living in a house without books, has potentially a big advantage.
I remember two main books I used to read pre-10 years old, which were "Great Men of Science" and "Encyclopedia of Wildlife". The second book especially was huge and I'm sure I'd still learn something at every page, even today, 30 years later. Reading about dinosaurs, or mammals, or birds was always a great escape from a somewhat crappy at times childhood.
Kids have a huge amount of energy, but it seems that it's far too often directed towards collecting every single McDonalds Happy Meal toy, or getting further into the latest video game.
Kids love collecting stuff, including facts, and should at least be given the opportunity to read.
Locked in a house with an infinite variety of books, many kids would gravitate to the pulp fiction, learning nothing. If you're stipulating that they're left only with educational or good books, then that's the result of at least some form of parental selection or guidance. Or it's the result of them already being curious to learn and gravitating towards the "good" books, just as some kids will use the internet for Wikipedia and others for flash games.
What's scary is that people have spent decades putting momentum behind the idea that technology is an educational force, and now we have to wonder how far in the opposite direction that might have been wrong.
If it's not wrong, we can at least see now that computers are like cars and take people where they're going faster, whether they're going straight ahead or into the gutter.
Directions of hope:
1) Maybe the spread of these technologies is in fact spreading skills that will enrich lives and economies. If so, can we identify what those are and stop wasting time with other things? (I don't get the impression at all that modeling and programming are propagating as fast as games and websurfing)
2) Maybe this is indeed the end of faithfully hoping technology will have a net educational benefit. If so, what is the next thing to try?
I think you're conflating giving technology to teachers and giving technology to students.
It seems nutty to me to imagine that just giving students computers is going to provide an educational benefit, although apparently some people would disagree. But providing schools with better technology for guided instruction (e.g. computer labs, ancillary instructional material available online, homework management software) sounds totally sensible.
On the other hand, the study keeps saying "only computer skills were improved" as if these were not worth having. My self-taught "computer skills" are the basis of my career. Practically everything the modern knowledge worker is required to do could fall under the category of "computer skills": word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, modelling, programming. These seem like worthwhile skills.