23 Jul 09 A spanner in Rudd’s digital education revolution?
The Sydney Morning Herald recently released this article entitled: “Rudd’s laptops send standards backwards”
THE centrepiece of the Federal Government’s so-called education revolution may be worse than useless, a visiting American researcher says. Jacob Vigdor, of Duke University, North Carolina, has conducted what is probably the world’s biggest study on the effect on maths and reading scores of gaining a home computer. He finds “statistically significant” evidence that it sends them backwards.
“Children in homes with computers tend to do better than those in homes without – there’s no doubt about that…”
Peter Martin, July 20, 2009 http://ow.ly/hEsX
Perhaps negativity such as this is to be expected amid the turmoil of the most comprehensive and fundamental changes to education in living memory. Certainly those Luddites resisting these changes will enthusiastically point to such research with loud ‘ah hahs!’, thinking yes, we knew it all along, and we won’t be dragged into the 21st century kicking and screaming or otherwise.
Tags: digital education revoltion, education, Kevin Rudd, North Carolina, Research, student laptops, Sydney Morning Herald
