Tech And Academic Achievement

I just read an impressive article from Les Foltos on the relationship between classroom technology use and academic achievement in students. It is chock full of real data collected in several studies, and despite being wordy like most academic papers, it is definitely worth perusal.

Here are a few tidbits:

- Despite $5 billion annual in spending on classroom tech "fewer than 20% of teachers use technology several times a week, and up to half of all teachers didn't use technology at all."
- Using computers to teach low order thinking skills, "...[W]as negatively related to academic achievement…." Put another way, this type of computer use was worse than doing nothing. By contrast, teachers who had students use computers to solve simulations saw their students' math scores increase significantly.
- "We find that when you put the two, (inquiry based learning and true technology integration) together there's a synergy created that really boosts students' learning"

Go read it, and see how it matches against your own kids' experiences.

The Fundamental Little Hackers' Summit

I just read about a really great looking micro-conference called Art and Code that will be taking place in Pittsburgh on March 7th to 9th. One of the confirmed presenters will be the always entertaining why the lucky stiff. Too bad it is on the other side of the country... otherwise I would go for sure!

It appears that it will be a really cool event, created for "artists, young people, and the rest of us" to learn about programming. Some of the projects that will be featured, include Processing, Scratch, Alice, and one of my personal favorites Hackety Hack. In the upcoming months, I will be playing around with each of these with my 10-year-old son, and I will blog about our experiences.

Young Hackers, unite! You have nothing to lose, cause you're kids, remember? Have some fun...

Welcome, Net Grommits (And Their Parents)

Welcome to the first posting on my new blog about technology and kids! This is for all of the high tech grommits out there, and especially us, their sometimes befuddled parents.

As both a technologist, and a father of two, I have a personal stake in how kids grow up using the power available to us today. Sometimes good, sometime bad, but like it or not we live in a technological world, and this is the world in which we raise our children.

I will be talking about my opinions and personal experiences using, and sometime even creating, the modern wonders that our children have access to. From computers to videogames, and from education to playtime, anything and everything related to kids and tech will be my subject matter here.

So let the fun begin!