I'm sure I know nothing of that. At all.
The NYT ran a story on bringing computers to middle schoolers in low income homes. Apparently, it lowers test scores (I was too lazy to read the actual paper, but the NYT didn't say by how much) because the kids are playing games instead of doing homework.
First of all, I still don't believe test scores are the end-all be-all of education. Quantifiable, yes, but not necessarily the best measure of anything. Secondly, how much "homework" do middle school kids have to do on a computer? I remember writing papers in MS word (or Open Office, in my case) and occasionally doing online research for said papers, but it's not like I was writing code or searching academic journals or anything else that I needed a computer for. Finally, the NYT at least didn't blame the computers for it: it is all about supervision and usage, etc. etc.
Interestingly, the end of the article points out that the kids did learn better computer skills (duh), but also that apparently a bunch of them managed to find work arounds or hacks to get beyond the restrictions put in place by the schools. That, my friends, is infinitely more valuable than test scores.
W
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