> And after 30 minutes, she told us, most of the children have had enough and want to go and play outside. Reassuring for anyone who, like me, would rather not have a child who prefers apps to apples.
But why? Faced with straightforward evidence of better performance, even for UK children, why should we be relieved that the app fails at 30 minutes?
We should be talking about making games that teach kids for hours! That little tablet is way more engaging than 99% of the experiences impoverished Malawi children are going to have. Perhaps sadly, the tablet is way more engaging that some large majority of experiences UK children will have too.
It's obvious to anyone who plays video games that achieving that level of attention is possible. And with games like Civilization and Europa Universalis, you can certainly make a long-play game that teaches kids traditional educational knowledge.
I hate the conspiracy idea that educators are opposed to this technology out-of-hand because it threatens them as an institution. And I'm relieved that there are researchers with government backing showing games teaching kids in rich Western countries.
At some point though, parents will have to confront teachers to do what improves performance. The question is not, when will games be capable of improving educational performance? That has already happened, and the evidence will mount inevitably.
The question is, when will we abandon the pastoral fantasy of today's schooling? When will parents have no opinion whether a child "prefers apps to apples," whatever that means?
The dark-age Carolingians made the template for today's public schooling. If a magic book capable of delivering all the world's knowledge (i.e., an iPad) were available to them, don't you think they'd make a very different education system?
You make it sound like they use it once and put it down forever. They don't. They put it down to go play (which, at that age, is another type of learning). Then they come back, maybe later that day, or the next.
Haven't there been studies on this? The human brain is not good at absorbing information after durations longer than this. It has to have time to process information before it can build on top of it. This is why khan academy and duolingo are so effective, too - you consume little bites of knowledge, go away and process them, and then come back.
Entertainment is not the same thing as learning. Videogames and movies are so completely different from the learning process. Yeah, you can learn from them, but for that amount of time not to be taxing you have to fill it with other stuff. Like a storyline and action and drama. They have passive elements which constitute most of their length.
The constant force-stream of modern classrooms is what makes them so dull and tiring, and gives us stupid kids and disappointing graduates. I think it's pretty awesome that they get to focus for half an hour and learn at their own pace (the most critical part), then get to enjoy being kids for a while.
And 30 minutes is about the point where sitting stationary becomes physically bad for you. To the previous poster, try sitting and playing a strategy game for 6 to 10 hours. You should feel like shit afterwords.
Putting my adult body through sitting in a school desk 5 days a week, my health would be in serious trouble within a few months.
I've got a 5 year old son in UK schools, and frankly it annoys me that he's even in school at this age in the first place.
There's minimal evidence that there's any benefit to starting formalised learning this early. The brain is developing very rapidly at this age, and having seen the curriculum it seems bizarre to me. I'm from Norway, and started school at 7 (Norway has later lowered the starting age to 6, with pretty much no effect). We covered my son entire reception year curriculum in a couple of weeks, alongside a number of other subjects.
This also means that I'm unsurprised that they could cover 18 months of the UK early learning curriculum in weeks: There's not much there. Kids in reception in UK schools still spend most of their time with play activities. Thankfully.
My starting point is that when he wants to learn, he should have the opportunity, but I'm perfectly happy for him to run out and play too. Especially because children learns important lessons during play as well. If your kid spends all day playing a game, they'd for example lose out on a whole lot of social skills and other "soft learning" that we don't test for but that is equally vital.
But why? Faced with straightforward evidence of better performance, even for UK children, why should we be relieved that the app fails at 30 minutes?
We should be talking about making games that teach kids for hours! That little tablet is way more engaging than 99% of the experiences impoverished Malawi children are going to have. Perhaps sadly, the tablet is way more engaging that some large majority of experiences UK children will have too.
It's obvious to anyone who plays video games that achieving that level of attention is possible. And with games like Civilization and Europa Universalis, you can certainly make a long-play game that teaches kids traditional educational knowledge.
I hate the conspiracy idea that educators are opposed to this technology out-of-hand because it threatens them as an institution. And I'm relieved that there are researchers with government backing showing games teaching kids in rich Western countries.
At some point though, parents will have to confront teachers to do what improves performance. The question is not, when will games be capable of improving educational performance? That has already happened, and the evidence will mount inevitably.
The question is, when will we abandon the pastoral fantasy of today's schooling? When will parents have no opinion whether a child "prefers apps to apples," whatever that means?
The dark-age Carolingians made the template for today's public schooling. If a magic book capable of delivering all the world's knowledge (i.e., an iPad) were available to them, don't you think they'd make a very different education system?